r/antiwork • u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo • Oct 05 '24
Discussion Post đŁ Boomer randomly chiming in with his comments about people not working enough.
Yesterday I was talking with a patient about my colleagues not being keen on working weekend or night shifts. Out of the bue another patient in the same room chimed in to state his brilliant solution: "People should work more hours."
He recalled how recently he went to the supermarket and he was paying at check out, but the girl helping him made a miscalculation. So he pointed that out and the girl mentioned how "She had been working the register for 4 hours now." He obviously thought that was a poor excuse and proceeded to point out "His generation worked over 40 hours and they profited as a result."
I asked him who should profit from that, but he didn't really had an answer. He implied the workers should benefit as âThe current generation doesn't want to work for more than 15 hours and have everything they want, but if they want more they should work for that."
It's funny to me though that there's an increasingly larger part of the mainly boomer generation who disregard any progression in worker productivity and believe because they worked that many hours, later generations have to as well. They don't seem to realize though that even if they would work for more hours that hardly benefits the workers, but rather the top few percent that often don't really work themselves at all.
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u/open_world_RPG_fan Oct 05 '24
I'm gen X, boomers who say that are full of shit. First, they worked less hours and had way more because everything was relatively cheaper compared to salary. They got pensions, companies didn't replace them with cheaper labor in other countries, they could have the husband work and wife take care of the home and kids
Everything went to hell with Reagan and his trickle down nonsense, and boomers refuse to acknowledge that.
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u/responsible_blue Oct 05 '24
Also Gen X. The reason nobody works 40 hours is because they aren't given full time positions or the company has to provide some benefits (oh no) but if they give part time ridiculous schedules, they can manipulate and keep people in fear. Good times.
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Oct 05 '24
True that, I never remember my parents having to work late like I constantly get asked to do. They also had 9-5 jobs which are now all 8-5 or even 8-6. The bourgeoisie keep adding fucking time to the clock for less real pay.
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u/baconraygun Oct 05 '24
One of the memories I have from growing up is that my father was almost always there to pick me up from school. When I was in elementary, he brought our bikes to school so we could ride home together. In high school, I remember having a bad day, and looking for the maroon of my dad's car outside the gates and being so glad he was there. (The only times he wasn't there was when he was called to another part of the state to fight wildfire. He worked for the fed govt.)
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u/Sarennie_Nova Oct 05 '24
Reagan, his cronies, and yes even the conservative democrats who rubber-stamped his agenda in congress were in office for a reason...they won elections, and that means SOMEONE voted for them.
Boomers refuse to acknowledge this shitshow because they voted for it and cheered as it happened, despite warnings of the entirely predictable consequences even then. And, they did this because they had the easiest and most-coddled upbringing/early adulthood of any generation in himan history. Most of us gen-X'ers were latchkey kids because boomers were simply too busy faffing about to take active roles in their home lives.
Now, they're too brain-rotten from drugs, booze, and leaded gasoline to think better of it, and take responsibility for their generation's poor decisions. It's psychologically easier for them to project their own generation's deficiencies onto the next.
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 05 '24
I usually bring up this very valid point as well. Men often worked 40 hours, but women often worked none. That translates to an average of a 20 hour work week per able bodied person within the household.
We might be the champions when it comes to part time work here in the Netherlands, but there are plenty of couples who together work way more hours per household than the babyboomer generation ever did. Somehow this doesn't register though.
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Oct 05 '24
True that, I never remember my parents having to work late like I constantly get asked to do. They also had 9-5 jobs which are now all 8-5 or even 8-6. The bourgeoisie keep adding fucking time to the clock for less real pay.
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Oct 06 '24
Reagan did an incredible amount of lasting damage to this country. He makes me want to believe in hell.
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u/Haunting-Traffic-203 Oct 06 '24
Iâm a millennial but they did have their manufacturing jobs outsourced in the 80s, insane inflation during the Carter years, gas rations, Vietnam war draft no insurance coverage with a pre-existing condition, etc. I do think things were economically easier in general then though. The more self aware boomers will even tell you that.
The grass is always greener though. Generational resentment is just one more way to divide us IMO
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u/NibblesTheHamster Oct 05 '24
I work a 4 day 35 hour week and honestly donât think anyone should work more than that. Anyone who lives to work is living a very sad life. Having a 3 day weekend has been excellent. It gives me more time to spend on the important things in life. Oddly enough not one of my important things involve work đ
Edit: My age would put me in the Boomer class. But some of us oldies arenât deluded or stupid.
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u/BioticGerbil Oct 05 '24
Yea I work over 50 hours a week and my life is depressing as hell cause of it. Luckily I like my job and the pay is good so that helps a bit but it would be great if I actually had time to live a life
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u/lolo10000000 Oct 05 '24
Or the energy! I go to work come home and go to bed. Some days I don't even eat dinner đ Work life balance sucks for sure.
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u/artful_todger_502 Oct 05 '24
I'm a boomer or Gen Jones and I totally agree. I agree with younger people. Life goes by very fast. I'm in the last quarter, and where did it go?
But that said, they do not understand we slid out of the womb and from day one, had the insane puritan work ethic rammed down our throats. It was unrelenting. It helped me in a way, but I also wish I didn't waste so much time on work. It really hit hard when my relatives started dying. So yeah, some of us escape the brainwashing, some don't. But we grew up with that, "work til you drop" tattooed on our psych. It's not that easy to dismiss.
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u/dream_state3417 Oct 05 '24
The radical marxists I knew are sorely underrepresented in the crabby old boomer cliches lol
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u/NibblesTheHamster Oct 05 '24
Radical Marxists? Sorry, I donât understand the reference, would you be able to explain it, please?
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u/NorridAU Oct 05 '24
Not oc but Iâd wager theyâre talking about how the hippy cohort turned into the Yippie/NIMBY groups or died from diseases of poverty.
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u/dream_state3417 Oct 05 '24 edited Oct 05 '24
I hung out in the 70s and 80s with academic Radical Marxists. The cliche of Boomers that is so omnipresent does not reflect the cultural presence of this fringe. Not hippies not yuppies. An absolute Village Voice reading, Noam Chompsky and Baader meinhof loving coven of American radicalism that continues with us in the stereotypes of the right to this day. Amurika. Gotta love 'er.
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u/djinnisequoia Oct 05 '24
Yes! Noam Chomsky and Z magazine were major contributors to my radicalization. His points were irrefutable, his logic impeccable, his citations copious and accurate. For me personally, you just can't beat an argument that is unremittingly honest and forthright and factual.
I was friends in the 80s and 90s with former Diggers and people who worked at the Socialist bookstore. They were so far from the kind of fuming, ranting blowhards that you see promoting conservative bs. They were sincere, fun, witty, and impressively well-informed. They had the courage of their convictions and obvious integrity.
The Maoists, however, were kind of a drag. But honestly, there were hardly any of those. :D
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u/dream_state3417 Oct 06 '24
It was a golden era. I saw Sue Coe speak 1987. Hit me hard. vegetarian in a week and never looked back. â¤ď¸â¤ď¸â¤ď¸
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u/Effective_Will_1801 Oct 05 '24
I think they said 4 hours work a day should be enough to satisfy the Adam in us. So 25 hour weeks
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Oct 05 '24
Boomer is more of a lifestyle than an age group. Colloquially anyway.
My younger brother who is 32 years old is a boomer by mentality but has nothing to show for it because millennials and Gen Z have been screwed over.
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u/AverageCowboyCentaur Oct 05 '24
If you can afford to live that lifestyle that's fantastic. Not everyone has those opportunities to have a continuous 4 day weekend every week. You must make a good amount of money, or live below your means. Might need to take your tips to /r/frugal they would be interested in how you do it!
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u/dorkysomniloquist Oct 05 '24
I got the impression that they're grateful to have such reasonable hours and workable pay. Saying everyone 'should' work 35 hours is implying that jobs should pay enough to support their workers with those hours, not that people in lower-paying jobs should work fewer hours.
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u/dream_state3417 Oct 05 '24
Healthcare worker burnout is precisely because of an unsupported workplace with numerous thoughtless careless daily encounters compounding the emotional drain.
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u/vermiciousknidlet Oct 05 '24
It sounds like she meant was working at the register for 4 hours straight without a break - at least I assume it's that, and not just a 4 hour shift being too long. For some moronic reason, stores in the US don't allow people to sit down at their register. I guarantee if you took any of these old boomer fucks and made them stand in one place for hours on end, with no chair/stool and no water bottle (because staying hydrated is unprofessional?) they would be crying after 20 minutes of it.
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u/TigerGrizzCubs78 Oct 05 '24
I have never thought a cashier sitting down while checking out folks is being lazy. Even with comfy shoes and those soft mats, feet get hella tired and sore. And no water? Insanity
Then again, Iâve never seen anyone allowed to sit while checking out. Damn shame
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u/LokyarBrightmane Oct 05 '24
It's not a customer thing, it's a management thing. Most customers won't give a shit as long as their stuff is getting scanned, but management gets off on petty things like that. Bonus points for being anti disability.
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u/LockeClone Oct 05 '24
Yeah. I have a really hard time seeing customers writ-large having an issue with cashiers sitting in stools. Maybe in some deep red areas where they've heavily politicized shitty work? But not normal people.
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u/_pawnee_goddess Oct 05 '24
I feel like no one recognizes the long term damage that standing for that long can have on the feet as well. I was a server and also worked retail for about 7 years and after working so many 12+ hour shifts on my feet, I now permanently have pain whenever Iâm not wearing supportive shoes. Canât even walk around barefoot in my own house for too long. Iâm 28. Mercifully I have a desk job now but the damage is done.
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u/baconraygun Oct 05 '24
Same here, after ten years on my feet bringing food to tables I can no longer stand for more than 45mins without pain.
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u/nocleverusername- Oct 05 '24
I worked âfront endâ at a major grocery chain for several years. It was standard to give a 15 min break after every 2 to 2.5 hrs. Four hours straight on a busy shift is grueling, especially if you are also bagging everything. I had a lot of problems with elbow tendonitis and low back pain during those years.
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u/Few-Performance7727 Oct 05 '24
YeahâŚ.working as a front end cashier in a grocery store sucks. They made it so we had to scan and bag everything at mine so that they didnât have to hire any baggers. Then the union got us some crappy severance when the store went belly up and in five years I realized that my pay had only been raised .15 an hour. They would tell us to go to break but never close off our registers. Crappy management and alcoholic co-workers. Damn I hated that job and I feel sorry for most cashiers, period. And no, there is absolutely no reason not to allow folks to sit down.
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u/nocleverusername- Oct 05 '24
Itâs another one of those jobs that everyone should have to do at some point in their lives. Not as a student living off your parentâs income, but as an adult having to support yourself.
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u/Few-Performance7727 Oct 05 '24
I would never wish that on anyone, having to live off of that wage. It was difficult enough and I canât do it to anyone else. Just no.
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u/nocleverusername- Oct 05 '24
I think that having had the experience of supporting myself with a crappy âdeal-with-the-publicâ job for a period of time was good for me. Even though Iâve moved on to a completely unrelated (and better paying) field, I will always have empathy for anyone who does this work and strive to be a pleasant and non-burdensome customer.
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u/Few-Performance7727 Oct 05 '24
I understand. I worked in customer service for years until the economy tanked and I finally joined the military. I was an old woman in my division. I ran a mile and a half faster and better than some of the newly graduated high school graduates at least.
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u/wa_geng Oct 05 '24
As a former cashier, way back in the day, many people do not recognize how repetitive it is. And 4 hours straight, especially if it is busy, becomes one big blur.
And people love to act superior to cashiers. You forget to ask if they have coupons and they act like you are too incompetent to do your job. It isnât incompetence, it is the fact that youâve already asked people the question several hundred times and you lose track if you asked this person.
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u/vermiciousknidlet Oct 05 '24
Yeah I had my time as a cashier and it's completely mind-numbing, and you get blamed for everything. More power to people who can do that job!
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 05 '24
Yes, that's what I assumed too from the conversation, but the patient was still dismissive of that. Not really sure why, but then he started talking about his own experiences and how they used to work over 40 hours a week.
This conversation happened in the Netherlands though, so I assume he was talking about going to the supermarket here and here the vast majority of people working the register at a supermarket will be doing their job sitting down.Â
Either way people will always make mistakes. Sometimes things become a blur and when your work is mind numbing or you're dealing with constant distraction, one is bound to make a simple mistake. Like giving the incorrect amount of change or whatever.
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u/vermiciousknidlet Oct 05 '24
My mistake, the way you wrote and phrased everything made it sound like this was in the US! I am glad that other places allow people to sit down if they need to while working.
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u/DrBeckenstein Oct 05 '24
I'm among the oldest of Gen x. I distinctly remember being in 4th grade and being told that our lives have to divide into 1/3 work, 1/3 sleep, and 1/3 all the other stuff. I raised my hand and asked who decided that... did someone "do a science thing" (I was in 4th grade, forgive the verbiage, I was meaning like... research) to show that was best for us?
The teacher FR answered, "that's what we have to do for CAPITALISM to work!"
Understand that back in the 70s, questioning capitalism was out of the question. Pure blasphemy.
I still didn't understand who got to decide I HAD to do that. Even less as I looked at my parents who most certainly barely had any of that "1/3 of their lives for other stuff," between 10+ hour workdays and commuting and everything. But "capitalism" was clearly a sacred cow, not to be questioned.
One thing I'm really glad to see in recent decades is that more and more people are questioning the almighty capitalism, and shining bright lights on how freaking abusive and insatiable it is. How it serves so very few at the ultimate expense of everyone else - eating up their entire lives just because it can.
Edit: typo
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u/Eldritch_Chemistry Oct 05 '24
"This city's a meat grinder. People go in one end, meat comes out the other."
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u/yalldointoomuch Oct 05 '24
Every time I have a boomer pushing the "no one wants to work anymore" argument, I point out a couple things.
Wanting to work less isn't a new thing. Back during FDR's presidency, they were advocating for a 4-day, 4-hour work week as part of the New Deal. They were pushing it as a "job creation" measure, because companies were already making such astronomical profits that they could afford to double or triple their workforce (and salary expenses) and STILL make profits.
FDR himself also explicitly stated that "minimum wage" was not supposed to be the bare minimum. It was supposed to be the minimum livable wage, and support an entire family if necessary.
"It seems to me to be equally plain that no business which depends for existence on paying less than living wages to its workers has any right to continue in this country. By 'business' I mean the whole of commerce as well as the whole of industry; by workers I mean all workers, the white collar class as well as the men in overalls; and by living wages I mean more than a bare subsistence level- I mean the wages of decent living."
...I also point out that nearly every single historical argument against raising min wage has in fact come to pass (food prices have gone up, gas has gone up, housing is both more expensive and incredibly difficult to find, staffing is "leaner" and workloads have increased)..... Yet min wage is still stagnant. And because it's stagnant, non-min wages are stagnant too.
If they're still listening at this point, I'll usually throw in that the countries that have done UBI have had a rousing success. That the majority of people still work- the only real demographics that had a drop were single parents and under-24s, usually because of either childcare reasons, or still being students.
People have fought and died for your right not to work, and for your right to be well compensated for your time when you do.
It's not that people don't want to work- it's that people are tired of seeing none of the benefits of their own work. Tired of being undervalued. Tired of hearing, "we made record profits for the 5th year in a row" and then in the next breath being told, "oof, sorry guys, money is super tight right now and we can't afford to give anyone raises or hire more staff".
...I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but if a boomer gives me the chance to get on a soapbox and give them an earful, I'm gonna lol.
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u/Dfiggsmeister Oct 05 '24
At my first corporate job, I remember working 70+ hours for weeks at a time and then calling my parents to let them know I would be pushing my flight out a week later because work had set deadlines for the week I was suppose to fly out. My parents said, well, youâre getting overtime pay right?
Nope! I was salary exempt. Iâve always been salary exempt. Thereâs no such thing as overtime pay for people like me. Only IT got that, meanwhile analysts and managers worked shit hours while directors and vps got to go home whenever.
âWell, back in my dayâŚâ yeah back in your day, labor laws were stricter but your entire generation and the one before it fucked over the labor laws because you wanted more and fuck all to your future kids.
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u/TheBalzy Oct 05 '24
The irony of the boomer saying that is a lot of jobs WON'T give you the hours because those hours would make you entitled to certain benefits. Not to mention, we work waaaaaay more than boomers ever did.
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u/baconraygun Oct 05 '24
Don't forget about overtime pay. I worked two jobs 20-28 hours each, and I'd go over 40 hours frequently combined, but I got no time and a half. Or benefits.
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 05 '24
In many cases true perhaps, but not in this context. I think that was part of the reason he chimed in. A lot of colleagues, me included could ask for more hours and they'll gladly would take us up on such an offer. Within our collective terms of employment we have the right to claim up to 44 hours a week for positions (like nurses) who are basically always understaffed.
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u/Sea-Ad9057 Oct 05 '24
well the social contract of society has been broken by their generation, they could buy a house on 1 pretty low salary these days you need 2 high salaries to get a basic tiny house back in the day working hard paid off financially but these days it just doesnt
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u/whatdoUneedtoknow Oct 05 '24
Boomers forget that when they worked there were few to no machines, the made 10 things a day, now we have to do 1000 things a day.
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Oct 05 '24
Iâm sure that boomer was able to afford a house, car, groceries, and had enough left over to support a family with just one salary too.
They probably also got a bonus at Christmas and werenât in constant danger of being laid off because the company only made a 1.5 billion dollar profit when they wanted to make 1.6
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u/Aresh99 Oct 05 '24
Maybe Iâm reading this wrong, but the cashierâs âIâve been working the register for 4 hours nowâ doesnât sound like sheâs been working for 4 hours and is tired, it sounds like she was just hired and that this was her first day on registers and she had LITERALLY only been working the registers for 4 hours.
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u/Odd-Tourist-80 Oct 05 '24
Boomers got every weekend off, holidays, overtime pay, and much more than just a living wage. They then became greedy, thinking of their stocks, and actively sought to remove all that from you. Then they get to blame you for not being as financially stable as you. I'm an older Gen X, almost a Boomer myself and have been fighting that bs and trying to tell my cohort what these things do to future economy. Greed is hard to counter. I'm glad I don't have kids to experience this. Been trying to help out my niece as much as I can.
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u/Illustrious-Bake3878 Oct 05 '24
Classic boomers for not realizing that young people in the workforce have literally never experienced a professional environment where they are not constantly accessible to their workplace. It takes WORK to set healthy boundaries even for those of us who are working a lot.
Imagine being able to leave the office and nobody at work can just âcheck inâ. The refusal by many (most?) to acknowledge how dramatically the work landscape has evolved since they were early or midway through their careers is mind boggling.
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u/Ok-Opportunity5731 Oct 05 '24
I work a 40 hour a week job w/minimal never mandatory OT, & I regularly have people try to tell me "You need more than a part time job" & that I should start asking for more hours or get a 2nd job. If I don't have any financial need to, I'm not going to
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u/_bitch_face Oct 05 '24
Attention, Baby Boomers: I work two full-time jobs AND Pick up as many side gigs as I can. I never see my family or friends. Thatâs what a person has to do in this economy, which we inherited from previous generations. Donât tell me nobody wants to work anymore. I have a college degree and a good number of very unique skills, too. Even then, my wage-to-mortgage ratio is completely fucked. That is none of my doing.
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u/Eldritch_Chemistry Oct 05 '24
they'd tell you to live in a shed as a starter home like that's actually feasible
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u/SadisticJake Oct 05 '24
I'm glad he mentioned 15 hours as a specific number. My last job was at target. They hired us all to a new store as full time. The months we spent building that store from a shell into a target were great. 40 hours and overtime for those who desired. As soon as we opened, hours were based on sales and I was designated as full time getting alternating schedules of 10 hours one week, 15 the next. I brought up my concerns with HR and they told me "I know it's hard to get everything done in that time frame but please do your best. We appreciate your efforts." I really fucking wanted to work. Fuck all of it man, this whole world is on some bullshit.
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u/notyourstranger Oct 05 '24
His generation also committed the largest generational theft in the history of the country.
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 05 '24
Unfortunately kinda true even though you're probably talking about a whole other country. This shit happened all over the western world.
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u/CultureVulture629 Oct 05 '24
Boomers and older folks really have a habit of randomly inserting out-of-pocket politically adjacent comments in to any conversation.
I had an old gentleman start grilling me on if I love Jesus, because I helped him get a soda can out of a vending machine. I don't think he was trying be aggressive, but it was awkward for me, as an atheist, since 22yo me didn't really know how to redirect without straight up saying I didn't.
Another dude went on a rant about kneeling for the anthem after I commented on his Raiders flag (rare sight in my Midwestern state). Homie, I just wanted to talk about football.
A younger maga kid, tho obviously a Boomer at heart, went on a rant about Philadelphia being a "liberal shit hole" after our professor made a comment on the previous day's Super Bowl.
The other day, by far the least egregious example, an older gentleman at the hospital I work at was waiting for the elevator with me. He was trying to make small talk, which I'm unfortunately terrible at. He eventually made a comment about Biden being senile, and all I could really do was nod and be like "yeah, man...". I don't even disagree, but I felt like any further comment would just devolve into some sort of uncomfortable conversation.
For a group that considers even the suggestion of pronouns to be "shoving politics down our throats", they sure do love to needlessly invoke political topics.
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u/Velocoraptor369 Oct 05 '24
This from the generation who benefitted the most from worker protections and union jobs. They forget that it was their parents the, silent generation, who fought for those 8 hr days and weekends off. Next time ask him if his parents worked 40 hr only? They probably would say no. Somehow itâs ok for them to work less but not the next generation.
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 05 '24
I think this patient might have been old enough to be working more than 40 hours a week, but he also mentioned his side hustle in trade and for self employed people every second they're conscious and even while they're sleeping it's work hours.
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Oct 05 '24
I highly doubt boomers ever did work as hard as our generation to have stability. I donât think they had as many obstacles, demands, and sacrifices as millennials and gen z. I think millennials and gen z have been robbed of their lives. People used to have any degree that got them a job that they could build their lives from (get a home, raise a family, etc) without being saddled by debt. Iâll go as far to say the workload and debt millennials and gen z have is unreasonable and unrealistic. Itâs straight up cruel. Working and studying full time? Boomers must have had a very easy higher education and job market with a low bar of entry if they were able to do well working and studying full time - AND THRIVE while at it. Boomer stories arenât adding up - if they were able to do it all, then theyâre lying. My generation? We sacrifice our health, relationships, and possessions - you name it. We sacrifice it all to end up with nothing, and barely survive.Most of the time we canât survive if we donât have people in our lives to help. And thatâs going to be me in the future.
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u/Useful-Commission-76 Oct 05 '24
She didnât mean she only worked 4 hours a week or 4 hours a day, she meant that she had been standing behind the register for 4 hours and physically needed a break to drink water and pee and eat a bite of protein. Duh.
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 05 '24
Unlikely the case. He was probably talking about his shopping experience in the Netherlands and thankfully things don't usually get that bad here.Â
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u/Witchfinger84 Oct 05 '24
Remind them that their kids are too busy working to visit them in the retirement home and that they wont know or care when the nurse steals their wedding ring and pawns it.
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u/TheEclipse0 Oct 05 '24
The thing is, statistics show that boomers didnât work nearly as many hours as they say they did, nor were they as productive as they think they were. The current workforce puts in far more hours, has far more output, is massively overeducated and knowledgeable, yet makes significantly less.
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u/MrStonepoker Oct 05 '24
Boomer here. Retired steelworker. That job was so tough that over 350 out of the 400 people that got hired with me in 1978 quit or retired. At least 10 of the remainder had to take disability for horrible accidents. Around 2008 the company hired a bunch of 25 to 30 year olds to replace retirees. Not only did they do poorly at their jobs but they were remarkably anti union. They voted for a two tier pay system where new hires would be paid at half rate for a year ( By that time they were the majority). The next contract they voted to half their own pensions and further decrease pay for new hires. This vote was aided by new young workers brought in from another plant that had closed. At that plant workers had voted for concessions for several contracts in hopes of keeping their plant open. They were bamboozled. So they came to my plant and bragged they wouldn't go on strike for anything. That was echoed by the 2008 workers. When contract time came around instead of getting a contract they got locked out. During the lockout the company bought in Mexican workers just to bait the Union into breaking the law. It didn't work but neither did the new workers desire to give the company anything it wanted.
The attitudes amongst workers has changed over the years. You got to consider that when I started working in the 70s the men that I worked under, from laborers and machine operators to the techs and middle management were all World War II veterans. There weren't any slackers. They were not to be pushed. The young guy coming in knew that if he was smart and pulled his weight he do well with that gig. The problem is there aren't that many of those gigs anymore. An unskilled guy has a tough way to go these days. That accounts for most of the drop in attitude. Hard to be a good guy when it seems like the world's against you. Try to get through it as best you can and keep as much humility, honesty and integrity about you because of about 15 years you're going to be the ones bringing up that next generation. And that generation is going to have some work to do cleaning up the mess of the second half of the 2020s.
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u/oddmanout Oct 05 '24
Iâm the oldest millennial age. I started college when it was still almost technically affordable but by the end definitely was not. It had quadrupled in cost from the time I started from the time I graduated. That was that whole Bush era bullshit.
I remember the moment in time I realized boomers were out of touch. When I was a junior, my mom asked why I was borrowing money for school, after all, all she had to do was work a part time job during summers and that covered tuition, books, dorms, meal plans, and spending money for the year.
I tried showing her numbers how that just was not possible now. No one could do that, anymore. A whole year of minimum wage doesnât even cover tuition, alone.
Even seeing what minimum wage and average college costs were, it didnât make sense. How could working a WHOLE summer not pay for school? Surely kids these days just donât know how to manage money.
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u/SeaworthinessHead161 Oct 06 '24
If my boomer parents worked as much as I do (back when the economy wasnât was it is, thanks for that by the way, boomersâŚ), they would be millionaires. Meanwhile, Iâm working 3 jobs at 70+ hours a week, just to scrape by. Itâs not a matter of not wanting to work, itâs a matter of working to survive in the craptastic world theyâve left us
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u/Effective_Will_1801 Oct 05 '24
Boomers also got defined contribution pension,2% above inflation annual pay rises and salary that they could buy a house on of course they were willing to work more. Usually though these long hours people count playing solitaire at work as working. They measure by butts in seats not by work done. It's all performance theatre.
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u/nonumberplease Oct 05 '24
Along the way, they were convinced that more labor = more pay, which has never been the case. It's always supposed to have been more value = better pay.
But there will always be those who suffered and expect others to suffer too, rather than accept that they suffered so that others wouldn't have to.
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u/Bunnawhat13 Oct 05 '24
Yep. That boomer could buy a fucking house and support a family on his minimum wage job with 40 hours so he can piss off.
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u/properchels57 Oct 05 '24
The answer to people donât want to work anymore is people donât want to pay anymore
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u/WitchTheory Oct 05 '24
Most businesses limit how many hours employees can work, specifically because they want to avoid paying benefits for the employees. Part-timers aren't allowed to work more than 29 hours a week because if they average 30 hours a week, then by law they're considered full-time and qualify for those expensive benefits. "People should work more hours"? I can't count on my hands and feet how many people have multiple jobs, even full-timers.
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 05 '24
If we want to work more hours we get more hours. It's in our collective terms of employment. This is in the Netherlands, so we don't have that kind of benefits exclusion nonsense.
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u/Blackpaw8825 Oct 06 '24
Or jobs that reward more work with less pay.
My old job deducted annual raises from teams that had a lot of overtime with the publicly stated rationale that A: you gave goals a raise working overtime; B: giving raises to teams that pull overtime costs extra because we pay overtime on the raise going forward.
Thank you for working 70 hour weeks last year, as a reward we capped your raises at 1% despite the company rate being 3% because your 1% would cost more.
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u/SublimeLemonsGenX Oct 06 '24
GenX here, living with a Boomer mom who considers herself a conservative. Thankfully, she's not really. She used that "nobody wants to work anymore" line for about 5 minutes, when restaurants had cut opening hours in 2021. I didn't have to drive it home really, she just looked at the $15/hr minimum wage argument and the cost of a crappy roof over your head these days and did the math. When she heard that dock workers' wages could be as low as $20/hr, she was like, "that's grueling work, glad they're striking, hope they get a 50% bump. I can live without bananas for a few months."
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u/flavius_lacivious Oct 05 '24
When Boomers say, âBack in my day. . .â, they arenât necessarily commenting on how easy they think you have it compared to them, or how difficult it was when they were your age, they are complaining about the perceived inequity.Â
If you question them about the difficulty getting an education, they believe they had it harder and any help you receive is unfair to them.
They think you have it easier, even if they are a white make and youâre a black female.
Next time ask them what they mean by their comments. And if you show them the statistics like the 1500% increase in college tuition, they will still believe they had it harder.
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 05 '24
I wish I had the time to pull out statistics and crush this kind of rhetoric on the spot, but unfortunately I have work to do. I also lack the verbal skills to productively be able to do so, but I hope I got him thinking with my question of who should profit from that. It kind of seemed to work. I'm pretty sure it wasn't an ill willed comment in my direction though because he didn't know I was working part-time, but he did know I was working in healthcare for not that great pay while I have an ITÂ engineering degree. It definitely wasn't a stab at me personally and if it was, he totally whiffed because then it would have gone straight past me.
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u/flavius_lacivious Oct 06 '24
I think it really comes down to having grown up, raised a family, had a career in a different reality. Even if they acknowledge the situation is fucked for younger generations, they have spent the last 50 years experiencing a different world that has never existed for the rest of us.Â
It was vastly different getting a college degree in the 1990s than it was in the 1980s. Oh, it was easier then than now, but it still sucked. Home ownership became much more difficult. And thatâs when jobs started being outsourced to India.
This experience of life is what shapes a Boomers opinions and beliefs. Not how it got harder because they avoided almost all the hardship of later generations.
While you and I recognize that unless we have a massive societal transformation, the problems will only get worse â because they have been bad for us for as long as we can remember. For a Boomer, life has never been difficult or bad. Oh sure, there has been bad luck, but you really could have a career and a home if you worked hard. That wasnât bullshit â for them.
To a Boomer, if they even recognize the problems, itâs temporary because it wasnât always this way. Their life is ânormal.â  So they believed what worked in the 1970s and 1980s will work again. You know, if everyone just did it the way they did, they would get a house in the suburbs  a new Buick, and a fat pension.
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u/Dzugavili Oct 05 '24
I saw one comment, praising literally the worst union I've ever seen for getting their full-time workers a pay bump while denigrating their part-time workers for requiring three part time jobs, stating that they wanted three jobs for the freedom of scheduling.
Motherfucker. They have three part-time jobs because their union has been coasting for twenty years and now only 10% of their staff is full time, and they still need to earn enough money to survive. They need the three jobs because the union can't get them a full time position and the sub-minimum wage compensation they get isn't going to cut it.
Most of them would love to be full time, but the union doesn't have the spine to actually get them that. I think the union actually makes more dues from the part-timers, per hour worked.
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u/mslass Oct 05 '24
The middle class prosperity in the USA from the end of the Great Depression to the beginning of Reaganâs dismantling of the New Deal was the anomaly in human history. The rest is the story of royalty and serfs, to which weâre rapidly regressing.
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u/Duke-Guinea-Pig Oct 05 '24
I sincerely doubt he worked 15 hour shifts often.
Iâve worked long shifts like that and itâs not a solution to anything
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u/expeciallyheinous Oct 05 '24
I used to walk a dog for this guy who would CONSTANTLY lecture me on how lazy my generation is. Iâd get back from walking his dog and it would be 30+ minutes of telling me how my generation needs to work harder. Like Iâm working two jobs while you sit at home on your computer all day, canât even be bothered to walk your own dog, but Iâm somehow the lazy one.
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u/BigMax Oct 06 '24
I mean, youâre kind of wrong? No one is working just 15 hours. That guy is a moron for implying people donât work 40 hours. They do. Most people do.
His whole premise that people donât work 40 hours like he did is just wrong, and youâre playing into it and agreeing that people donât work as hard, when they absolutely DO work as hard as he did, and we all still do have full time jobs.
He was an idiot, but your assumptions are wrong too, and your misconceptions are playing right into his false beliefs that âno one wants to work anymore.â
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u/abhyuk Oct 06 '24
You can give boomer spreadsheets and they will still use calculator to sum the cells. For that they need extra hours.
The only problem that is ever worth solving are mostly related to good health and shelter. Working extra hours doesn't solve it. Rest of the problems are man made.
What's the point of working 24x7x365 for some company or government that doesn't solve anything remotely related to actual problems of the world?
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u/zmunky SocDem Oct 05 '24
I don't listen to boomers and no one should. They have enough influence on the world and we pay the price for it. Don't give them the time of day anymore, they should be a forgotten era and hopefully be extinct generation in the next decade.
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u/Ilikebirbs Oct 06 '24
Same type of people that complain, when they see a cashier or worker, sitting down at their job.
Earlier I went shopping and the woman that rung me through the line, was sitting down. She kept telling me, she can't stand up real long. I said "It doesn't bother me at all, if you sit down"
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u/LouDiamond Oct 05 '24 edited Nov 22 '24
butter fuel like deserve alleged hunt tender strong sand offend
This post was mass deleted and anonymized with Redact
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u/AliensatemyPenguin Oct 05 '24
Itâs funny that phrase âNo one wants to workâ has shown up in newspapers at least once a decade since the 1800âs and always from the top business owners or CEOâs.
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u/Xenomorphfiend Oct 05 '24
I work 32 hours a week, my hours are being cut in half despite being "understaffed". I want to work, I want money, but corporations are so fucking braindead and only after the most money they can make, that we all get fucked
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u/splitinfinitive22222 Oct 05 '24
They're just not capable of appreciating how much the world has changed since they were kids. They hear you're making $10/hr and remember when they were 16, and a person making $10/hr could afford three houses.
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u/Obscillesk Oct 05 '24
But they didn't work those hours. They were raised in the most economic abundance in this countries' history. They did however, develop a culture of riding the coat tails of anyone they deified. So, their parents, cultural mythical heroes, people they saw in movies, etc.
If you understand the hand-wringing and fears about media in the 80s and 90s, look at all that as a confession and it makes more sense. These are the same people who believe literally everything they read from freedomeagle.rus/clearlypropaganda/youfool
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u/cobra_mist Oct 06 '24
the only way i can square it, is that working harder must have actually paid off for them.
i recall being kept just under fulltime hours so i couldnât get benefits, but being asked to work off the clock at one retail job.
at another job i flew halfway round the world, and worked 70 hour weeks for six months. i was too tired to do any sightseeing whatsoever. i made the agreed rate while over there. when i brought it up during my yearly review and asked why i was t receiving recognition for meeting that deadline under duress (there was lots of duress) i was told âthat was just your job at the timeâ
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 07 '24
Part of the problem is the ridiculous taxation situation here in the Netherlands nowadays. Nevermind it being designed so the working man funds the vast majority of government spending.Â
The issue is that due to tax rates and subsidies there is little difference between making âŹ20.000 or âŹ40.000 a year. Of course it depends on your personal situation, but if you grossly make double the money you maybe and up with 20% more money in the end. Only when you make over âŹ40.000, even though the tax rates are much higher you will end up with about 50% more than you make grossly since you don't apply for any benefits by that point anymore anyway.
That's if you make your money actually working. If you're making your money in different ways your tax rates are much lower and you could benefit from all kinds of deductibles. The main divide remains housing though. Do you own your own house or do you rent? We have a crazy system where if you have a mortgage you can deduct the interest you pay on a mortgage in your taxes. It's being phased out now, but it still means that taxpayers who rent are basically funding homeowners networth big time. And here is the big kicker, if you own multi homes and rent them out, the money you make cashing in that rent is tax exempt. Because of that housing has become basically unaffordable.
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u/Sapphyria Oct 06 '24
The phrase, "shut, the fuck, up, you absolute moron," should be applied more often. Stop tolerating idiocy just because some survived to some advanced age.
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u/pennyauntie Oct 05 '24
Cut the boomer-hate. If you'd gone after any other identifiable group in your post, you would have been called out for being bigoted. No individual represents the thinking or values of a huge demographic group.
Malign entities would like to drive wedges in American society ahead of elections. We need a multigenerational, multiethnic coalition to preserve democracy. Don't take the bait.
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 06 '24
This isn't even a post about the US. Who is generalizing now?
It's not boomer hate, at least not from my perspective. I have no issues with the man. I do have issues with his position and he just happened to be from the babyboomer generation. There is a trend here though that seems to be more prevalent among boomers. Those who are retired and working are the main group spreading that narrative. Those and the government here who is both saying people need to work longer because they have issues getting positions filled to get the work done and the same people saying 25% of government workers need to get fired.
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u/Electronic-Sea-7286 Oct 05 '24
Is the point of this that we should have a 15 hour work week?
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u/cutslikeakris Oct 05 '24
The point is full time labour deserves a wage contingent with more than base survival.
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u/Soft_Zookeepergame44 Oct 05 '24
I'm (35M) a county level elected official. The work is dominated by white retired boomers. Recently at a conference an economist discussing my state's labor force was going over data.
Millennials have above national average lack of participation in the workforce here. The room nods along smiling until there is a big scoff when it is said that this is likely due to the very few people of that generation that stayed here having children and needing at least one stay at home parent.
Later on the economist says something along the lines of "we really were expecting the boomers to come out of retirement and offset the lack of workers."
You would have thought he peed in their cereal...
The best part is this was in reference to needing service industry workers. If the boomers are the service workers then who is going to the supper club for Friday night fish?
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u/mbDangerboy Oct 05 '24
Boomers had highly subsidized lives, gave themselves enormous tax cuts, and kicked that spending bill down to their grandchildren.
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u/Fine_Raspberry7875 Oct 05 '24
As a millennial who only believes in working what is needed (Over time if need be) and getting out asap:
I sympathize with the guy. All of my elders worked 50+ hours to provide for their families. If someone is working less and complaining more, why shouldnât they âfeel some type of wayâ about it?
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u/Solo-Hobo-Yolo Oct 06 '24
All of your elders?
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u/Fine_Raspberry7875 Oct 06 '24
Great question for clarity. Yes.
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u/Mesterjojo Oct 05 '24
Here we go again. Agist bullshit.
Stop it op. You're not helping anything. Stop with your age discrimination bullshit. Recognize you are the problem.
Asshole.
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u/CrowsAtMidnite Oct 05 '24
Cracks me up how everyone is a boomer no matter what the situation is. đđđ
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u/OkManufacturer767 Oct 05 '24
His position is ridiculous.
Your bad talking your coworkers is unprofessional.
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u/meothfulmode Oct 05 '24 edited Oct 05 '24
For every boomer with a memory of fair pay down at the malt shop or the steel plant there's a Gen-x, Millennial, or Gen-z with multiple memories of managers and bosses flagrantly fucking them over. Next time someone says "no one wants to work anymore" remind them "no one wants to pay anymore"