I can't agree more.
I've worked a lot of jobs, many “entry level”, where people require little to no prior experience with the job in order to successfully do the job, but NONE of those jobs have required no skills whatsoever.
What I find is that people use the term “unskilled” to generally mean:
Skills that a 'normal' person acquires through growing up and existing in society.
In other words, things like:
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Being able to fake-smile to customers
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Counting money
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Moving things from warehouse to shelf
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Bagging things
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Following instructions such as “bring that thing over here”
The problem is that many “not skills” required by “unskilled” jobs are NOT the kinds of things that people develop naturally, and tend to be skills that are really counterintuitive to how humans live, learn, and thrive. For example:
- Interacting with the public consistently with the purpose of presenting a positive image of the company at all times and maximizing retention / repeat customers
Seems like a “not skill” that everyone can just…have, but this is the kind of thing that's learned through capitalist propaganda and imposed on workers to be part of corporate culture. In other words, peer pressure – the very thing we were taught to RESIST growing up. We were taught to resist it for good reason: It discourages thinking, speaking out about issues, results in falling in with the “wrong crowds”, takes away their voice when conflict arises, and prevents people from getting out when they're uncomfortable or see red flags.
- Lifting, stocking, using basic tools (hammering), etc.
Plenty of skills are involved here: coordination that not everybody has, endurance to keep up with the task, knowledge of what goes where in order to work efficiently enough to meet company demands, ability to work ergonomically without injuring yourself…but most importantly, the skill here is the capacity to work at a sufficient pace without significantly beating up your body in the process! And many jobs make having this skill impossible: The demanded pace is too fast, there is pressure to work too hard or too long, without enough rest time, etc. Instantly, this goes from being “not a skill” to being an unobtainable skill. Anyone willing to actually do this should be treated like a fucking god because they're being asked to employ an almost-impossible skill to have.
The list goes on. Behind every “not a skill” demanded by a job is a skill that runs contrary to basic human upbringing and existence. Unskilled jobs therefore are jobs that demand the most from humanity. But realistically, almost every job has unskilled components where we can invoke these same points.
In response to someone who says that “we'll work hard even if we're not traditionally employed. If a storm is coming, we'll overexert ourselves to prepare our shelter for the storm”. Sure, absolutely. The difference is, that storm doesn't come every day, 5 or 6 days a week, 8-12 hours a day, for years on end.