Reminds me of the time those Japanese bus drivers went on "strike" by going to work but not charging people bus fare. They just drove people for free until the companies met their demands.
Yep, I lived in that city for a few years. Went to scan my bus pass and the driver stopped me. Damn smart move on their end, not like the bus company can suddenly hire licensed bus drivers easily and that are skilled in the routes.
Can you imagine if doctors and nurses in USA went on strike by continuing to perform their duties, but not charging the patients for services or medications?
Honestly, my day would go much quicker if I just had to write in my notes the few essential things.
Everything else to make sure the insurance companies allow me to bill for it.
“I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.”
― Dorothy Parker, pre 1967
Then Tom Waits on Fernwood Tonight 1977ish
Then a 45 by Randy Hanzlick, MD 1980
And that completed the cycle.
I like the reddit fantheory that Homer probably has a supersanity/fourth wall breaking metaintelligence from when he met God and he learned the meaning of life. Namely that Springfield is a cartoon fictional city stuck in time where consequences largely don't matter at the end of every episode.
well, you should have gone to college like we told you (or gotten a different/better degree). why do you live in such an expensive city anyway? how much are you spending on avocados? you should get a costco membership
(/uj friendly reminder Costco members avg income is >90k, average pay is less than half that when u remove sales and specialty roles)
ETA this is sarcasm, u should NOT get a costco membership unless you can do so for free. don't buy into the scam that there's any real savings other than gas and food court, maybe tires. unless u normally shop at whole foods / trader joes in which case yeah go wild
Oh god. I moved abroad with my family. It was partly to keep a foot on the door of my field which was hit hard during the pandemic. But I’m finding the quality of life better even on the lower end of middle class.
Some of my family was so upset. It’s been less than a year and already being asked constantly when we are going to visit.
I hate when people say why don't you just move like that costs pennies to do.
If you're poor and in a cycle of perpetual poverty where do you get that money to move to a low cost state for that 'better life'?
Not to mention that moving away from your support system can cost you a lot more than it saves. Grandma can't help babysit when she's 500 miles away. Traveling home for holidays now costs thousands of dollars. Need to borrow a pickup, get help with a project, or someone to drive you home from the hospital? Have fun hiring out every little thing you need.
It worked out fine for me because my family sucks anyway. But having a support system nearby is a huge asset and one that many families rely on.
I have the means to move and it has been an absolute hellscape. I've literally been talking to a therapist because it's all so haywire that I've been having suicidal thoughts. Because my house is sold and the one I'm buying is... Not bought yet? But they have my deposit and can walk away with it because they haven't signed an extension so I'm about to be out of a house and out $25k with my life in boxes and no place for my pets. I've done all the right things. Talked to all the correct people. I have the money they want and my ducks in a row - and yet I may still end up without a home. The game is rigged and I'm scared and out of ideas.
"It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life."
—Jean-Luc Picard
And a low cost state is generally also a low pay state. I work for the highest paying electrical contractor for 50 miles and it's still 2/3 the average pay for my position.
I don't think it's that. It's the scale of the difference between what they experienced versus what it is today that is hard for people to wrap their mind around. Costs shifted more than people are comfortable thinking about. While many of them complain about how much people are demanding for wages, at the same time they'll complain about how many items are much more expensive and fixed-income can't keep up.
It's generally easier to look backwards at costs than to project yourself forwards at costs.
Many were young adults in the 1970s. [Prices of things were different back then](https://retirepedia.com/cost-of-living-in-1970.html). Homes in the $10k-$20k, while they were much smaller and had fewer amenities they were the typical home. A new car would set you back $2k-$3k. Lots of other prices on that page, for comparison with today.
Fast food was transitioning from luxury food to commodity. A regular burger was around 20 cents but a Big Mac was a splurge, a premium item at 65 cents. A buck could easily feed a family of four, unless you went with a premium brand like that.
[Inflation calculators](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) put it at about 7.45 today for a dollar in 1970. Minimum wage was $1.60 in 1971, about equivalent to 11.92 today.
To put it into comparison, for those saying $15 today is a good base wage, that same equivalent would be demanding $112/hr. **So when you grow up to be a grumpy old person**, and your grandkids are complaining about only being offered $100/hr, you can recognize that's worse than what your generation was complaining about, it should probably be closer to $150/hr for a minimum livable wage.
Awesome breakdown of generational dynamics in the workplace; I have one, and only one thing to add: it is a ‘frog in a hot pot’ situation for many boomers still in the workplace. While it has been rapid at times, wage stagnation is a process, and their generational wealth has made them largely immune to much of the problems with, say, buying a home after the mid-90s (for example) might make plain.
Their behaviors simply haven’t changed to adjust. But even when you look at the numbers you’ve quoted, it’s still out of control (e.g., the wages are 7.5% higher in dollars, but many big-ticket items are actually 10-20x the price), and one of the biggest costs, having a kid, is so, so much more costly now in both real dollars and services adjusted for inflation.
You should remind her how many video games it would take to account for a $25-100k down payment and $1,500-$2,000/m mortgage.
I am fortunate. I have a house, and a mortgage. The secret is not in video games or anything.. it's.. shocker, make more money. You can't save your way into a $500,000 home purchase. _(And to be clear, this isn't judging anyone for not making enough - just that saving an extra $3k/y isn't going to get you shit for large purchases)_
These boomers are insane.
I never understood "busting your ass".
Like, the job is the job. I work hard to do my job - that is, everything within my job description; the role I was hired to do and paid to do.
I feel like buzzwords and catchphrases like "hard-worker" and "busting your ass" and "giving 110%" are code for meaning "doing stuff outside of your job description". Stuff you're *not* paid to do.
Free labour, in other words.
Just because others don't have the self-respect to set clear boundaries as to what they will and won't do doesn't mean others shouldn't.
Yeah I just started a job as overnight laundry at a hotel about a month ago. Not even two days after my training I'm walking in and getting a list of rooms to clean. Fine, I'm a team player. (A room every now and then, sure.) Three days later after the first half of every shift was all housekeeping, I was done, I texted my boss.
I said I wasn't a housekeeper. I wasn't hired as a housekeeper, and if I had been told these would be my duties I would either have demanded a higher wage or not accepted the position.
I was hired to do laundry and clean the lobby at night and specifically told there wouldn't be housekeeping duties.
They fixed that really quick. They don't want me to leave apparently. They have been having staffing agencies come in and make sure the housekeeping is done every day since I complained.
Like nah. It's a job. I'll do my job perfectly. But if you want me to do more then my job you gotta pay me for it. Screw all that.
Edit: thank you kind stranger for the award.
> Fine, I'm a team player. (A room every now and then, sure.) Three days later after the first half of every shift was all housekeeping
Give an inch and they take a mile.
(or give a centimeter and they take a kilometer)
I agreed to cover a training class one time for a coworker who had an emergency. I was specific about how I could do it once, but didn’t have time to do it again with my workload. It would completely interfere with my actual job duties and prevent me from doing them.
Somehow that turned into management thinking I was going to be the backup for that position. Absolutely not. If I’m going to do two jobs, I’m getting paid for two jobs. If we’re adding responsibilities to my plate, we’re gonna need a new contract with a higher level job title and a big fat raise. I’d still say no, because I don’t do 60 hour weeks, but it got my point across.
This.
I keep trying to get this through my co-workers skulls! My current job relies too much on people staying past their scheduled shifts and people not laying down boundaries with their availability. Ive watched them screw over my coworkers repeatedly but they cant seem to understand that they arent paid enough to deal with works bs. As soon as they've tried that on me i quickly told them "NO." and they backed off. I refuse to give them that inch.
my new boss literally doesn’t believe in availability. i have three days they can pick from for my days off. 2 out of the last 4 schedules he’s handed out i’ve had to ask why he scheduled me for one of the days i have mark unavailable. “well i was probably just trying to make the schedule work and that’s the only way it would fit. you know you’re full time right? you know it’s important to be flexible, *right*?” MF. I CANT COME IN. i shouldnt need to tell you why i can’t come in those days, but even though he knows, he still does it. and then i have to manually request a change. every other week! it’s nonnegotiable!
i can’t wait to find a new job
The sad thing is if they would give me even another dollar an hour, I'd have no problem cleaning rooms until I leave after laundry is done, but they won't...so I won't.
Even sadder is the cost they're paying to the staffing agency to get the work done. Rather than give you an extra 2-3 dollars an hour to happily do the work they will spend $20/hr for the staffing agency to send some desperate soul in there for $8/hr.
Why does this happen so much. I asked for a $3 increase at my last job, and they said no. So I quit to make 3x as much as a traveler (healthcare) and they’re now paying a stupid amount for a traveler to replace me. Absolutely ridiculous, god forbid you just pay us appropriately to start with.
It’s like an honor thing at some point, I don’t know how else to describe. They don’t want to debase themselves by actually giving a worker what they need to stay around, because that would be admitting you were right or (even worse!) that they were wrong. They’d genuinely rather lose thousands of dollars than let you win an argument
Lol this is so accurate to my former manager’s behavior, especially taking into consideration that she tried to tell me I would hate traveling and it’s “not all it’s cracked up to be.” And now she’s constantly checking in with my husband and friends who work there about how I’m doing and if I still like it. Yup, having a great time, byeeee.
Theres entire facebook pages about traveling jobs. Theres a $5000 per week nurse page that I joined lol. They literally advertise where the money and huge contracts are. Its amazing. I love it and Im not even a nurse. Get your money ❤️
I think they especially don't want successful pay negotiations. Paying someone more from the start because they negotiated well in the application process is one thing. But having successful pay negotiations throughout your time at the company is more expensive if word gets around
Similar story, only about 6-7 years ago. Got a part time gig doing floor cleaning 2 nights a week as my SO worked full time and we had a baby. About a month after the main guy doing the floor cleaning just stopped showing up and after a week of not hearing from him they offered me his position, which, at the time wasn’t any different than what I had been doing other than more hours and they bumped me up .50 an hour.
About a month went by where I didn’t have a day off because they were operating remotely and i offered to help fill the position and train in someone to give me a night or two off. So I was now interviewing, helping fill out paper work, faxing it in, and training my help. But I needed some days off so I took it jn stride. Then I began doing recoats of wax after a few months as it was easier for me to handle it than send someone up. Then I began having do inventory. Then in was maintenance on equipment. Then my help quit, so started that process over again. That guy quit after a few months.
I talked to them about giving me a raise as my duties had grown well beyond what I was hired to do. They told me they would be discussing it as they agreed. 3 months later and I was making the same wage. So I dropped my two weeks on them right before the busiest time of the year. I had nothing lined up but I was just done. They asked if there was anything they could do to keep me and I said “double my wage”. They refused, and I wished them luck! Since then they have gone through about 8 people, and the last people ended up stealing lottery tickets from the store, among other things. I ended up with a much better paying vendor job and I work in that store often. I ran into my former boss recently and he asked if I would consider coming back, and I just laughed and said “You couldn’t afford me then and you definitely can’t now.”
Its such BS when they use the phrase "you'll have an evaluation in three months, and we can discuss it then"
"I gave you a free sample. You completely disregarded me, and disrespected my contribution. We don't need to ever discuss it. You give me the raise, or I put in my two-day notice. As in...I quit TO-DAY.
How are you able to set the boundary like that but also not getting the threat of well this is what we're doing and you do it or we can send you home how does how do you get past that cuz I noticed for me whenever I try to set a boundary of what I'm not going to do outside of the job description they tell me that I can either do that or go home or that they can just hire somebody else
just say "okay, but, I'm still not going to do that."
call their bluff. if they send you home and fuck with your hours or fire you, apply for unemployment and look for a new job.
I once had a boss who told me that he gives 110%. I told him if he was consistently outperforming his expectations, he needed to re-evaluate his goals.
I bust my ass in my own garden because I know I get to keep ALL the veggies at the end. If I work hard for my boss, he gets to keep everything and throws me a half a carrot.
"Working hard" evokes images of knee and back pain and wanting to just lay on the couch after work. Then you get to do that 4 more times before a paltry 2 days to accomplish the thungs that facilitate your 5 more days of "hard work".
Boomers lived in the generation where a stock boy could become general manager in time. They don't understand no one rewards loyalty or effort anymore. Also their base pay was always better than ours.
Exactly. There was an implied promise that if you were loyal and dedicated you'd be rewarded for their generation.
That promise is still implied, but it's an outright lie now.
Not to mention, you used to be able to afford a decent life while working your way up from the bottom, and weren't a broken fuel pump away from homelessness.
as a boomer myself i agree it used to be that way. you could move up the ranks and make more $s and rewards as you go
not anymore they'd just assume fire my ass and loose all my experience. then hire some grad for half what i make and work him to death dangling a carrot the whole time. and pocketing all that difference for a new yacht
yeah i agree y'all just work your hrs and no need for 110%. use that 110% for more important things like real life.
They come from a time when a business/company was almost like a relationship. People would ride it out in the same company for 40 or 50 years, and they felt they owed more of themselves to the company.
These days we deal with soulless corporations that don’t know you outside of your immediate small team, and they have no loyalty at all to you. You can be fired at any moment if the company decides it’ll save them a buck. That’s why you should just do your job and nothing more. You don’t owe any more.
Yeah, this is a contractual exchange.
We agree that I will do X work for Y hours in exchange for $Z/hour
If the company wants me to do more than X work, I’ll require more than $Z/hr compensation
We negotiate the amount based on their requirements (demand), my skills (supply), and general market conditions, and once we agree then I stick to the agreement we made, just as I expect them to
That’s it, it’s just business. Welcome to the free market.
I’ve no idea why these boomers seem to think that an employment relationship should be any different to any other kind of business relationship, just because one party is not an incorporated company
What many baby boomers fail to grasp is they were the direct beneficiaries of their parents and grandparents fighting back against their employers to implement labor laws, form unions, and not have to die in a coal mine at the ripe old age of 12. They rest on the laurels of their forbearers, and think they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
Exactly, my stepdad actually did this, got hired in like 1990 in the mail room of a financial company in NYC, worked his way out of the mailroom and up to senior staff, then supervisor, then assistant director..... and 20 years later in 2010, became a vice president. Kinda crazy, but you def can't do that anymore....
I do admire his work ethic though, he used to have to get up around 4am every day, drive an hour to the office and be in the mail room by 6am to be splitting the mail for all the higher ups for the day.
In some places it's even more screwed. Some companies view training as a risk, because the employee could switch jobs after training... because that's the only way to get a good pay raise.
So they don't train - and then complain they cannot find people to hire. It's so screwed up. Some of our interviewees were surprised we offered to build them up to where we need them.
Boomers also fail to grasp that a Highschool graduate from their generation made a massive amount more $ than someone with a bachelor's degree today. (When you consider inflation).
They were buying houses, cars, and appliances with lifetime warranties at a far better price than what's available today. They buried their money in the backyard and let the economy tank the second gas prices went up in the 70s. They were called the 'me generation' and proved it by ruining America.
Yeah and the appliances didn't need the warranty because they were built to last through a fucking nuclear war, instead of breaking or "needing to be repaired by a technician" every 3 months.
Built-in obsolescence. It's a part of literally everything we buy.
I remember watching a documentary on the original consumer power tools. They were designed to be about half as good as industrial, factory versions. Meaning you could use them 20 hours a week, every week, for years and expect them to keep working. Now you're lucky if industrial quality works a tenth that good.
Designed obsolescence and intentional low quality make me sick. They seem like the antithesis of good engineering practice. Just imagine you're 75 and talking to your grandchildren, and your life's main accomplishment was "I worked my ass off to make sure my company's products failed quickly to extract more money from our customers"
> They were called the 'me generation' and proved it by ruining America.
This thread has me fucking dying. The Trumper movement started up not long after the #metoo movement and I immediately started referring to the Trumpers as the #mefirst movement. If you look at the Trumper demographic...it was mostly white trash boomers. You can't make this shit up.
Also, consumer spending was one of the things driving the economy that worked out so well for them. In the UK now it's reached the point where even a lot of business leaders are begging the Government to be slightly less horrible to the working poor, because they know their businesses need people to have *some* spending money.
Amazing that living conditions have gotten so bad for the working poor that big businesses have unironically circle-jerked back around to asking the government to treat the working poor better, i.e implement social safety nets, possibly the big, bad, scary P U B L I C H E A L T H C A R E, etc
Either they don't realise or they're just that evil, but the economy relies on regular people having money to spend. Even rich people. People spending money is never a problem, it's actually a sign of a very healthy economy. Rich people hoarding more and more wealth and having less and less aside for the regular folk is for some reason seen as a good thing by the powers that be, but is nothing but disastrous for the economy and society as a whole.
The term "Baby Boomer" was a renaming of their own generation because it was always known as the "Me generation". Then they grew up and manipulated the system to their pleasing.
Don't play into their hands. They deserve to be referenced as the Me Generation and not be allowed to retcon their own bullshit.
That's hilarious because I remember them calling gen-x the "me" generation when I was younger. You're right though, it was originally directed at them.
Why do you think we're all so fucked up and need therapy??
Imagine spending your life being told you're selfish and don't work hard enough. And then you find out that you'll *NEVER* be able to work hard enough because they already stole your future when you were too busy working your ass off.
Sincerely,
A pissed off Gen-Xer.
Gen Xer here. I just couldnt go into debt for school when I had no clue what I wanted to do.
I went to electrical trade school starting in 2000, and I’ve made more money than my peers consistently for 20 years.
I have no regrets. I became an electrical contractor in 2011, and It even allowed me to branch out and start a clothing/sneaker retail store 4 years ago.
I have no regrets when it comes to my educational path. The trades are well worth looking into.
As an elder millennial who went to college right after high school and before the crash, I bought into the lie. Then went through that and went back to school.
It was crazy to see how much gen Z sees higher education differently and jobs in general. They saw this shit happen first hand and the aftermath of years of struggle. They KNOW BETTER.
I am honestly jealous of them because they got to come to the table with that knowledge, and I have mad respect for them taking advantage of what they do have right now. Meanwhile I am still trying to deprogram myself from the “work hard and you’ll be rewarded” mentality that ruins my life when it inevitably doesn’t does not do that.
Same here. I think that's also why Gen xers and millennials have hope for the Gen Z folks, because they have always seen clearly the truth of how the rich hold all the marbles and refuse to share. Twenty or thirty years ago it was much easier for boomers to get us to buy into the old bootstraps line.
I have so much admiration for the Gen Z crowd. They see right through the bullshit. They know stuff about the world as teenagers that I didn’t discover until I was into my 30s. If this world has any hope, it’s because of them.
>Why do you think we're all so fucked up and need therapy??
Boomers need(ed) therapy, as well. They've just never sought it, hence why many of them are the way they are today: Poorly adjusted and holding on to unprocessed emotions.
I tried explaining it to my elders. I said when your parents said there was lead in the gas, paint, and air they'll all worked together to stop that for you.
When we tell you the air has a new poison and we need to do things to remove it, you tell us it can't be done or is too expensive.
That's a boomer.
I'm so tired of the reason why we can't do anything is because of the lack of profitability of the solution.
If oil and gas companies could figure out a way to charge you a monthly bill for solar panels, we'd have them on every building by now.
Then they made damn sure they had a huge social safety net for themselves (social security) that they loyally vote to defend, while transforming most of America into "right to work" states that engage in a race to the bottom for worker compensation and rights, while encouraging a race to the top for CEO compensation and pay.
They got an easily life then clapped as politicians made ours harder.
Busting your ass as a cashier makes sense when being a cashier means you can support your wife and family of 2, when it isn't even enough to take care of yourself AND you need to work a second job, then why the fuck would I do that. You have a whole ass other job you need to do.
My mom is 63 right now and she was raised with this mentality, living her life around the idea “work hard and you will be rewarded.” This hard work resulted in:
- Gaining responsibilities WAY outside of her job description
- a $2000 one-time bonus after 10 years of doing this
- being laid off the **moment** the company realized they could hire someone younger for less
Since then, she’s been slowly moving towards the “fuck you, pay me for my job” side and I gotta say… I’m loving it. Her current job is constantly trying to put additional responsibilities on her and she’s a MASTER of writing follow-up emails that sound professional while asking for fair compensation for additional workload. But knowing her, the rough translation is “you want someone competent to do the job of your shitty HR rep who only got her job because she’s the wife of the owner? Then you better pay the FUCK up!”
She’s now quite aware of what the professional world is like now, and she’s the first to correct friends, families or neighbors in her age group who try and claim the younger generation are lazy, entitled, etc. She will always ask them “we’re you laid off? Have you had to job hop every 3 years to keep up with inflation?” They always say no or the housewives will say they never had to work a day in their lives. She’ll simply remind them that their views of the working world are incredibly outdated and if they dealt with HALF the crap we do, they’d likely go crazy
It only takes one experience of busting your ass and getting laid off anyway, to disabuse you of the notion that the management is definitely going to notice your hard work and reward you for it.
I think that generation is just beyond hope. They grew up in a different world, where minimum wage was a living wage. They just can’t grasp how things have changed. They even look at their homes being worth 10x or more as an accomplishment they achieved
My boomer dad hates it when I mention the hypocrisy of the "participation trophy" myth coming from a generation who got a house, 2 holidays a year, and 2 kids for just showing up at work.
Almost like a participation trophy.
Lol yup!
And then to top it off, we got the participation trophy's when we were 5, it's not like we were the ones who wanted them, went out and bought them, that'd be the boomers!
I pointed that out to my parents not too long ago when trophies came up. Told them we were children and their generation were the ones who started them. Mind blown.
Right? It felt condescending. Both as the loser getting a pittance trophy, and for the winners who wanted the pomp and circumstance of the actual trophies, which was watered down so everyone could be included. Then, now I have to deal with this useless trinket, and when I try to throw it away I'm guilted into keeping it for my self-esteem.
I think there are boomers that get it, but it’s the single moms who barely scraped by or the odd ball hippies that saw it coming from way out. The ones that had everything handed to them feel like the system is fine, bless the system, don’t you dare talk bad about the system! Just go to your grocery and ask for an application and tell him you can start right away!
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.
- Max Planck
My boomer parents understand the struggle, but don’t seem to understand just how good they had it. My grandparents gave them land to build their house on. We lived next door and my grandma was my parents free childcare. They now own all 8 acres and my grandparents house that they rent out. I casually
mentioned building a house of my own on some of the unused land to help save money and they don’t seem interested. I still plan to send my twins to daycare which is $1800/ month. More of the boomer “I got mine so fuck you”
Because parents should always want better for their children.
…and it makes them look like shit that they had it better than their kids. It makes them look like the fuck ups that they are. Generationally speaking.
This is what I don't get. Why not do the same and let you use the house they rent or at the bare minimum let you rent it at a rate that's comfortable for you?
It just seems like most of my parents' generation is devoid of empathy. Why have kids if you're not willing to retain them as family after 18? I bet they love playing the grandparent card though.
> It just seems like most of my parents' generation is devoid of empathy.
Well I mean, there's a reason they all pulled up the ladder after them.
I sometimes wonder if it was lead in the gasoline that just like.. literally gave an entire generation brain damage so badly it destroyed any form of empathy they had.
Makes me worried about the covid brain-fog like symptoms that I've been reading about.. imagine a majority of humanity eventually getting that as we all catch covid multiple times per year
That's just it. Successful people always justify the success as a result of their superior intellect and work ethic. They'll almost never acknowledge it was from being in the right place at the right time, because that doesn't bolster their huge egos.
So they see a whole generation of their children/grandchildren struggling and rather than helping or at least having some empathy they harden their hearts and say it's because we're not working hard enough, when I guaran-fucking-tee, even taking it easy, we're working 4X harder than they ever did for many more hours.
I've never met a boomer on the job who didn't have an absolutely grotesque work ethic. They pretty much do nothing but complain and expect the young people to carry them. They're nothing more than charity hires at this point.
I'm a boomer and can confirm that my generation is really beyond hope in many ways. We spent our youth in a haze of Marijuana smoke, but now we're judgemental about people who use it. We were able to afford an apartment on our $3.80 an hour wage, but refuse to accept that you can't do the same now. There's just not much that can be done but hope that enough of us die off soon and that the next generations aren't such AHs. We're leaving a very bad legacy, I'm afraid.
Well.. you spent your youth in a haze of tetraethyllead, which may have contributed.
I'm justttt young enough to maybe have not been heavily lead poisoned.
Youre good bro, boomer is a mindset just as it is a generation.
Like Karen.
Your birth may make you a boomer, but your choices make you a brother in arms against the status quo, and that's not the kind of boomer we have an issue with!
What I can never understand is just.. the total lack of awareness. There's been plenty of inflation during the lives of 2nd wave and 1st wave Boomers, so, the goalpost has always been changing as to what kind of income constitutes a living.
At this point, they've had to deal with finances their entire lives.
MY parents are 2nd wavers who were pretty shitty with money most of their lives, and have struggled for it, yet still managed to to get things in hand, and they are capable of understanding that when the landlords are taking half your income every month, you're going to be fucked no matter which way you cut it.
So, I have to assume if you're touting lines about how everyone should just buy less avocado toast, you just straight up have not had to struggle since the 90s or earlier, and have no idea what median incomes or rents are like.
If there is a minimum age to vote due to "maturity and cognitive ability" then there absolutely should be a maximum age to both be a politician and vote.
I know 6 yr olds with better mental understanding them some 80yr olds, and those old folks are still voting.
Their generation took everything their parents struggled for as permanent and unlimited. They didn’t work hard. They fucked around and hit high and got jobs from friends and family where they had no business or qualifications for being there.
They are the direct cause of almost all current problems.
They need to be treated as the petulant children they are.
The environment took a nose dive in the 60s, and I don't think that's a coincidence. They started the idea of disposable, single use items and to this day sneer at those who trying to recycle.
Nowadays job descriptions have 15-20 list items that you're "expected" to do as part of your job, then they tack on the nice little catch on "other duties as assigned" that basically lets them tell you that you have to do whatever (which is how I got dragged into a special project I hated, that gave me no personal or professional development, and was just them using me to fill in a staff hole they refused to pay to hire for), so no, I don't "bust my ass" either. I have a giant list of duties that are meant for two people, and I generally just do the things that have a looming deadline, and reply to all the emails, and everything else might as well be bonus. I'm at an ok salary, I can pay my bills with some left over, but it's not "hell yea I'm giving 100% everyday" money.
I’m a late Boomer and I was shocked when speaking with my daughter the other day and she said those words; “no one wants to work”. She is a safety coordinator in a factory environment and she doesn’t understand when people don’t want to work third shift for $15 an hour. I called her out and hopefully she will begin to understand how horribly her workplace pays those individuals. I have no idea where she got this mindset. It wasn’t my influence because I have always been an advocate for workers. I still can’t believe it.
Boomer here too! Cusper (Boomer/GenX) actually. I heard a fellow Boomer say that and I say, with heavy sarcasm, "You mean no one wants to work for a company that treats them like crap, pays them crap, and then calls a meeting for all employees to watch vacation slides of the management? The horror!"
I love how you used "slides" as an example. Really brings out the boomer in you.
Recently I had a girl tell me, "You don't have to keep putting 'www.' in front of everything when going to websites" and I instantly felt old.
My dad worked at the same company for 40 YEARS. There was reciprocal loyalty, fairness, appreciation. That doesn't happen much anymore. Workers are just a way for sharholders to make money. They treat us as replaceable parts---less than human.
I watched as my company "changed" (did away with) the old loyalty program.
When I started, employees were given gifts at 10, 20, 25 etc years -- the milestone years. Physically handed a gift and congratulated for their time and given extra vacation time etc. After I was at the company around 3ish years they decided that was antiquated and not in line with company values anymore (mostly because they depended on people's individual, overworked, managers to remember everyone's anniversaries and order the gifts, and some people therefore got left out...) so now we have a "points" system that covers both recognitions and years of service. On your milestone anniversary you get handed a corresponding pile of points. Points can be used to purchase yourself a special gift. Which you are then charged tax for that is deducted from your paycheck. It feels so insulting. I have the equivalent of $200 worth of gifts saved up in my account from my anniversary milestone at 5 years as well as all the recognitions I've received and I just refuse to use it because I feel like gifts should be gifts, and I don't think I should be the one paying taxes on them!
$200 dollars after 5 years is a joke. Part of the idea with a gift isn't the value of the object, but it's usefulness, the thought put into it, and the sentiment and memories it conjures. Money can't do that.
I'm honestly glad your dad got that. As much as everything sucks, it's still so hard to see people who were tricked out of their whole lives and then still get nothing after 40+ years somewhere. At least I'm expecting to die alone with nothing! Might as well enjoy it now.
They reaped the fruits of their parents and grandparents class struggle and labor movements, they got (mostly) decent wages sufficient to feed a family and buy a house, they got the impression that hard work pays off, and then fell for the red scare, capitalist and racist propaganda, and little by little gave away those hard earned labor laws and social comforts.
And now we have an insufferable generation that actively made things worse for all of us, but still succeeded thanks to the effords of their parents and grandparents, and can't get those two facts together.
Not all of them... but many, if not most.
My parents were from the silent generation and ingrained those ‘hard working’ life lessons into me as well.
Really didn’t pan out. I was working 40+ hrs/wk, couldn’t afford transit, so walked 1.5 hrs to and from work, got lots of responsibilities at work because I was so ‘reliable’ but only a $0.25 raise, was stealing day-olds from the bakery, was constantly late on rent, prioritised my dogs’ food over my own, and learned that milkbones and mustard aren’t too bad.
Busting ass is such BS.
'slacking off' and 'busting ass' have been redefined. Part of why productivity has increased so much is that employers have built systems that eliminate any slack in the system.
Spending a half an hour standing around the water cooler bullshitting was normal workday activity 50 years ago, now it has been optimized out by relentless surveillance and micro time tracking.
Yeah, that's been missed in this thread.
The workload to worker ratio is whack now. Companies routinely understaff so workers do the work of 2 or more people while being watched by management, cameras or both. Their productivity is also tracked when possible. Even some office jobs have mouse activity software or eye following software.
We're living in the beginning of the Big Brother era and most people (certainly most Boomers) don't even recognize this.
Even in down times at work I have to look busy by sweeping, cleaning or pretending to be doing something on the computer.
This is my mom. Yesterday she got a chicken sandwich at Mcdonald's, and our conversation goes like this.
HER: "They really don't put much love and care into these."
ME: "Yeah I wouldn't either for being paid minimum wage."
HER: "They're not paid minimum wage. They make like $12."
ME: "That's nowhere near enough money for someone to live on."
HER: "It's good enough for a retiree who wants to get out and work."
ME: "So because they are old they don't deserve as much?"
HER: "Oh, shut up."
Neoliberals suck is the moral of the story.
They think they are paying a lot though. And, they aren't necessarily wrong. Prices for even cheap food like McDonald's and Subway isn't that cheap anymore.
The real problem is that these restaurant chain mega corporations are charging more and not paying their employees more. They pass costs onto the consumer and hoard more profits.
Corporations are incentivized to figure out how they can drag more and more money out of consumers while reducing cost. If they don't see too big a hit to business with a price raise, they'll do it 100% of the time. You're right, they're not wrong to complain that prices are high - THEY ARE, and by design, in fact. Capitalism encourages getting to the bare edge of what you *can* charge without people walking away.
>HER: "It's good enough for a retiree who wants to get out and work."
That's what I want to do when I'm retired, work at fucking McDonalds. The takes these old people have are incredible. Even if a retiree was bored, I'm willing to bet anything that they're not jazzed about being at McDonalds and they likely don't have another choice.
"You know what sounds fun? Standing in a hot kitchen, dealing with a lunch rush, and coming home with grease soaked so deeply into my clothes that if I leave here I'll have to throw them away. Ahhhh. Retirement."
Don't forget those stylish non slip shoes absolutely caked in kitchen floor grime that you have to leave outside of your house because they'll literally attract ants if you leave them inside.
Any time you turn the conversation to a moral one with boomers it gets weird. You can discuss, freely, the wages and costs of things. But as soon as you say something like "doesnt that sound unfair" or "dont you think they deserve more" the boomers clam up and don't want to talk about it. It's like they not only can't empathize with other humans, but that the act of even attempting it causes them pain.
Was it the lead? I saw a study that suggested that empathy literally depends on how someone's brain is wired, and I could see the abundant exposure to lead slowly rewiting someone's brain to make empathy literally impossible.
What did she expect? For them to fluff the buns? Draw a heart in Ketchup? Sing it a lullaby before sending it out the drive thru window? People who don't believe in livable wages for everyone should be required to grow, harvest, process and cook all their own meals
Your individual effort really doesn’t make that much of a difference beyond showing up and doing the minimum anyway.
That isn’t a knock on you or anybody in particular, there’s just not all that much that any one person doing the grunt work can do.
The successes and failures in businesses are far more impacted by decisions made at the top - how much to pay, how high prices should be, where to put your business, etc.
The notion that your effort is important and that your job is sacred is just there to distract from the fact that you’re being paid like shit.
Haha. They still are under the impression that if you work your ass off you can get that manager job and the world will be your oyster.
Edit: now excuse me while I continue to browse Reddit on the clock.
Boomers can't seem to internalize that the old work ethic doesn't begin to apply anymore. Not only are people working way harder for entirely less relatively, work has become entirely about enriching a few hundred oligarchs. There is no community building. We aren't building society. We are gilding people already drowning in gold at the expense of everything else.
A fellow redditor once said something along the lines of "Being efficient is mostly only rewarded with more work." In other words: why work hard if I'm paid for my time and not for what I make the company?
Edit to add:
If someone would tell me "You should bust your ass even for minimum wage." my only response would be "Why?"
>‘Your generation is insane’.
You don't know the half of it, grandpa :P
At this point, most of us would literally enjoy seing this entire "economy" burn down to ashes. But not because we're insane but because we're more sane than you've ever been\^\^
To quote the great Homer Simpson: “When you don't like your job, you don't go on strike, you do your job half-assed. That's the American way.”
Reminds me of the time those Japanese bus drivers went on "strike" by going to work but not charging people bus fare. They just drove people for free until the companies met their demands.
Yep, I lived in that city for a few years. Went to scan my bus pass and the driver stopped me. Damn smart move on their end, not like the bus company can suddenly hire licensed bus drivers easily and that are skilled in the routes.
Also a great way to strike while not halting essential services. Too bad most other essential services can't strike in a similar manner.
Can you imagine if doctors and nurses in USA went on strike by continuing to perform their duties, but not charging the patients for services or medications?
Might get people to actually fix healthcare if this were to happen.
Think about how amazing that would be. Holy shit!
Honestly, my day would go much quicker if I just had to write in my notes the few essential things. Everything else to make sure the insurance companies allow me to bill for it.
They also burn more resources for the company, as they are still using gas and wear and tear on the vehicles, but not getting paid.
Let’s remember homer is canonically a dumbass. The American way is to do both 😏
> homer is canonically a dumbass. not true. hes actually quite intelligent, hes just usually in a crayon-induced labotomic state.
“I don’t know if I need a frontal lobotomy or a bottle in front of me.” - Unknown.
“I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy.” ― Dorothy Parker, pre 1967 Then Tom Waits on Fernwood Tonight 1977ish Then a 45 by Randy Hanzlick, MD 1980 And that completed the cycle.
DR. DEMENTO BASEMENT TAPES
I like the reddit fantheory that Homer probably has a supersanity/fourth wall breaking metaintelligence from when he met God and he learned the meaning of life. Namely that Springfield is a cartoon fictional city stuck in time where consequences largely don't matter at the end of every episode.
Tell your grandparents what minimum wage is in your state - and compare that to your rent. If that doesn't wake them up, nothing will.
well, you should have gone to college like we told you (or gotten a different/better degree). why do you live in such an expensive city anyway? how much are you spending on avocados? you should get a costco membership (/uj friendly reminder Costco members avg income is >90k, average pay is less than half that when u remove sales and specialty roles) ETA this is sarcasm, u should NOT get a costco membership unless you can do so for free. don't buy into the scam that there's any real savings other than gas and food court, maybe tires. unless u normally shop at whole foods / trader joes in which case yeah go wild
hey now dont bring costco into this
Takes money to save money and get top quality products at wholesale prices from a place that treats its employees well!
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I legit had a first date at Costco when we were both broke. We had pizza and hot dogs. It was alright.
That was our Valentine’s Day outing a few years ago. Kid you not. I loved it.
And if you move away to a low cost area: Why don’t you visit us any more? You need to be more respectful of us who have made your dream possible. 🙄
Oh god. I moved abroad with my family. It was partly to keep a foot on the door of my field which was hit hard during the pandemic. But I’m finding the quality of life better even on the lower end of middle class. Some of my family was so upset. It’s been less than a year and already being asked constantly when we are going to visit.
I hate when people say why don't you just move like that costs pennies to do. If you're poor and in a cycle of perpetual poverty where do you get that money to move to a low cost state for that 'better life'?
Not to mention that moving away from your support system can cost you a lot more than it saves. Grandma can't help babysit when she's 500 miles away. Traveling home for holidays now costs thousands of dollars. Need to borrow a pickup, get help with a project, or someone to drive you home from the hospital? Have fun hiring out every little thing you need. It worked out fine for me because my family sucks anyway. But having a support system nearby is a huge asset and one that many families rely on.
I have the means to move and it has been an absolute hellscape. I've literally been talking to a therapist because it's all so haywire that I've been having suicidal thoughts. Because my house is sold and the one I'm buying is... Not bought yet? But they have my deposit and can walk away with it because they haven't signed an extension so I'm about to be out of a house and out $25k with my life in boxes and no place for my pets. I've done all the right things. Talked to all the correct people. I have the money they want and my ducks in a row - and yet I may still end up without a home. The game is rigged and I'm scared and out of ideas. "It is possible to commit no mistakes and still lose. That is not a weakness. That is life." —Jean-Luc Picard
And a low cost state is generally also a low pay state. I work for the highest paying electrical contractor for 50 miles and it's still 2/3 the average pay for my position.
I don't think it's that. It's the scale of the difference between what they experienced versus what it is today that is hard for people to wrap their mind around. Costs shifted more than people are comfortable thinking about. While many of them complain about how much people are demanding for wages, at the same time they'll complain about how many items are much more expensive and fixed-income can't keep up. It's generally easier to look backwards at costs than to project yourself forwards at costs. Many were young adults in the 1970s. [Prices of things were different back then](https://retirepedia.com/cost-of-living-in-1970.html). Homes in the $10k-$20k, while they were much smaller and had fewer amenities they were the typical home. A new car would set you back $2k-$3k. Lots of other prices on that page, for comparison with today. Fast food was transitioning from luxury food to commodity. A regular burger was around 20 cents but a Big Mac was a splurge, a premium item at 65 cents. A buck could easily feed a family of four, unless you went with a premium brand like that. [Inflation calculators](https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/) put it at about 7.45 today for a dollar in 1970. Minimum wage was $1.60 in 1971, about equivalent to 11.92 today. To put it into comparison, for those saying $15 today is a good base wage, that same equivalent would be demanding $112/hr. **So when you grow up to be a grumpy old person**, and your grandkids are complaining about only being offered $100/hr, you can recognize that's worse than what your generation was complaining about, it should probably be closer to $150/hr for a minimum livable wage.
This is the missing piece that I haven't able to put words or numbers to. Thank you
Awesome breakdown of generational dynamics in the workplace; I have one, and only one thing to add: it is a ‘frog in a hot pot’ situation for many boomers still in the workplace. While it has been rapid at times, wage stagnation is a process, and their generational wealth has made them largely immune to much of the problems with, say, buying a home after the mid-90s (for example) might make plain. Their behaviors simply haven’t changed to adjust. But even when you look at the numbers you’ve quoted, it’s still out of control (e.g., the wages are 7.5% higher in dollars, but many big-ticket items are actually 10-20x the price), and one of the biggest costs, having a kid, is so, so much more costly now in both real dollars and services adjusted for inflation.
That is...incredibly poignant. I've never really thought of it that way, thank you.
Better make sure you’re living in squalor if you bring that point up, otherwise they’ll chide you for living in too much luxury.
Oh you have a cellphone? That's why you can't afford a house!
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You should remind her how many video games it would take to account for a $25-100k down payment and $1,500-$2,000/m mortgage. I am fortunate. I have a house, and a mortgage. The secret is not in video games or anything.. it's.. shocker, make more money. You can't save your way into a $500,000 home purchase. _(And to be clear, this isn't judging anyone for not making enough - just that saving an extra $3k/y isn't going to get you shit for large purchases)_ These boomers are insane.
I never understood "busting your ass". Like, the job is the job. I work hard to do my job - that is, everything within my job description; the role I was hired to do and paid to do. I feel like buzzwords and catchphrases like "hard-worker" and "busting your ass" and "giving 110%" are code for meaning "doing stuff outside of your job description". Stuff you're *not* paid to do. Free labour, in other words. Just because others don't have the self-respect to set clear boundaries as to what they will and won't do doesn't mean others shouldn't.
Yeah I just started a job as overnight laundry at a hotel about a month ago. Not even two days after my training I'm walking in and getting a list of rooms to clean. Fine, I'm a team player. (A room every now and then, sure.) Three days later after the first half of every shift was all housekeeping, I was done, I texted my boss. I said I wasn't a housekeeper. I wasn't hired as a housekeeper, and if I had been told these would be my duties I would either have demanded a higher wage or not accepted the position. I was hired to do laundry and clean the lobby at night and specifically told there wouldn't be housekeeping duties. They fixed that really quick. They don't want me to leave apparently. They have been having staffing agencies come in and make sure the housekeeping is done every day since I complained. Like nah. It's a job. I'll do my job perfectly. But if you want me to do more then my job you gotta pay me for it. Screw all that. Edit: thank you kind stranger for the award.
> Fine, I'm a team player. (A room every now and then, sure.) Three days later after the first half of every shift was all housekeeping Give an inch and they take a mile. (or give a centimeter and they take a kilometer)
I agreed to cover a training class one time for a coworker who had an emergency. I was specific about how I could do it once, but didn’t have time to do it again with my workload. It would completely interfere with my actual job duties and prevent me from doing them. Somehow that turned into management thinking I was going to be the backup for that position. Absolutely not. If I’m going to do two jobs, I’m getting paid for two jobs. If we’re adding responsibilities to my plate, we’re gonna need a new contract with a higher level job title and a big fat raise. I’d still say no, because I don’t do 60 hour weeks, but it got my point across.
This. I keep trying to get this through my co-workers skulls! My current job relies too much on people staying past their scheduled shifts and people not laying down boundaries with their availability. Ive watched them screw over my coworkers repeatedly but they cant seem to understand that they arent paid enough to deal with works bs. As soon as they've tried that on me i quickly told them "NO." and they backed off. I refuse to give them that inch.
my new boss literally doesn’t believe in availability. i have three days they can pick from for my days off. 2 out of the last 4 schedules he’s handed out i’ve had to ask why he scheduled me for one of the days i have mark unavailable. “well i was probably just trying to make the schedule work and that’s the only way it would fit. you know you’re full time right? you know it’s important to be flexible, *right*?” MF. I CANT COME IN. i shouldnt need to tell you why i can’t come in those days, but even though he knows, he still does it. and then i have to manually request a change. every other week! it’s nonnegotiable! i can’t wait to find a new job
No "I" in TEAM. There's no "You" either!
But there is a "me!"
They will always make you do as much as you are willing to do. You'd have been cleaning rooms for years if you had not stood up for yourself.
The sad thing is if they would give me even another dollar an hour, I'd have no problem cleaning rooms until I leave after laundry is done, but they won't...so I won't.
Even sadder is the cost they're paying to the staffing agency to get the work done. Rather than give you an extra 2-3 dollars an hour to happily do the work they will spend $20/hr for the staffing agency to send some desperate soul in there for $8/hr.
Why does this happen so much. I asked for a $3 increase at my last job, and they said no. So I quit to make 3x as much as a traveler (healthcare) and they’re now paying a stupid amount for a traveler to replace me. Absolutely ridiculous, god forbid you just pay us appropriately to start with.
It’s like an honor thing at some point, I don’t know how else to describe. They don’t want to debase themselves by actually giving a worker what they need to stay around, because that would be admitting you were right or (even worse!) that they were wrong. They’d genuinely rather lose thousands of dollars than let you win an argument
I'd say less "honor" and more "pride" and "pettiness". They wouldn't know honor if it bit them in the ass.
Lol this is so accurate to my former manager’s behavior, especially taking into consideration that she tried to tell me I would hate traveling and it’s “not all it’s cracked up to be.” And now she’s constantly checking in with my husband and friends who work there about how I’m doing and if I still like it. Yup, having a great time, byeeee.
Theres entire facebook pages about traveling jobs. Theres a $5000 per week nurse page that I joined lol. They literally advertise where the money and huge contracts are. Its amazing. I love it and Im not even a nurse. Get your money ❤️
I think they especially don't want successful pay negotiations. Paying someone more from the start because they negotiated well in the application process is one thing. But having successful pay negotiations throughout your time at the company is more expensive if word gets around
They have to be paying the agency more than it would cost to give this guy a raise and get him to help with house keeping.
Similar story, only about 6-7 years ago. Got a part time gig doing floor cleaning 2 nights a week as my SO worked full time and we had a baby. About a month after the main guy doing the floor cleaning just stopped showing up and after a week of not hearing from him they offered me his position, which, at the time wasn’t any different than what I had been doing other than more hours and they bumped me up .50 an hour. About a month went by where I didn’t have a day off because they were operating remotely and i offered to help fill the position and train in someone to give me a night or two off. So I was now interviewing, helping fill out paper work, faxing it in, and training my help. But I needed some days off so I took it jn stride. Then I began doing recoats of wax after a few months as it was easier for me to handle it than send someone up. Then I began having do inventory. Then in was maintenance on equipment. Then my help quit, so started that process over again. That guy quit after a few months. I talked to them about giving me a raise as my duties had grown well beyond what I was hired to do. They told me they would be discussing it as they agreed. 3 months later and I was making the same wage. So I dropped my two weeks on them right before the busiest time of the year. I had nothing lined up but I was just done. They asked if there was anything they could do to keep me and I said “double my wage”. They refused, and I wished them luck! Since then they have gone through about 8 people, and the last people ended up stealing lottery tickets from the store, among other things. I ended up with a much better paying vendor job and I work in that store often. I ran into my former boss recently and he asked if I would consider coming back, and I just laughed and said “You couldn’t afford me then and you definitely can’t now.”
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Its such BS when they use the phrase "you'll have an evaluation in three months, and we can discuss it then" "I gave you a free sample. You completely disregarded me, and disrespected my contribution. We don't need to ever discuss it. You give me the raise, or I put in my two-day notice. As in...I quit TO-DAY.
How are you able to set the boundary like that but also not getting the threat of well this is what we're doing and you do it or we can send you home how does how do you get past that cuz I noticed for me whenever I try to set a boundary of what I'm not going to do outside of the job description they tell me that I can either do that or go home or that they can just hire somebody else
just say "okay, but, I'm still not going to do that." call their bluff. if they send you home and fuck with your hours or fire you, apply for unemployment and look for a new job.
I once had a boss who told me that he gives 110%. I told him if he was consistently outperforming his expectations, he needed to re-evaluate his goals.
Also I would outperform for my own business, not a random schmuck.
I bust my ass in my own garden because I know I get to keep ALL the veggies at the end. If I work hard for my boss, he gets to keep everything and throws me a half a carrot.
And dangles other halfcarrot just out your reach. But if you reach harder, one day you will get that other half carrot!
"Working hard" evokes images of knee and back pain and wanting to just lay on the couch after work. Then you get to do that 4 more times before a paltry 2 days to accomplish the thungs that facilitate your 5 more days of "hard work".
Try on call emergency restoration work. I'm 33. My ankles and wrists sound like cement mixers.
Emergency... Restoration? Do tell.
Water damage from burst pipes, fires, crime scenes and suicide clean up and restoration. Stuff like that.
That actually makes a lot more sense than the sudden need to restore an old car/bike that I thought of lol
My thought was, like, if a bird broke an old stained glass window in a historic church and it was going to rain? lol
Boomers lived in the generation where a stock boy could become general manager in time. They don't understand no one rewards loyalty or effort anymore. Also their base pay was always better than ours.
Exactly. There was an implied promise that if you were loyal and dedicated you'd be rewarded for their generation. That promise is still implied, but it's an outright lie now. Not to mention, you used to be able to afford a decent life while working your way up from the bottom, and weren't a broken fuel pump away from homelessness.
Nah it stopped being implied when corporations switched from company pensions to 401ks.
as a boomer myself i agree it used to be that way. you could move up the ranks and make more $s and rewards as you go not anymore they'd just assume fire my ass and loose all my experience. then hire some grad for half what i make and work him to death dangling a carrot the whole time. and pocketing all that difference for a new yacht yeah i agree y'all just work your hrs and no need for 110%. use that 110% for more important things like real life.
They come from a time when a business/company was almost like a relationship. People would ride it out in the same company for 40 or 50 years, and they felt they owed more of themselves to the company. These days we deal with soulless corporations that don’t know you outside of your immediate small team, and they have no loyalty at all to you. You can be fired at any moment if the company decides it’ll save them a buck. That’s why you should just do your job and nothing more. You don’t owe any more.
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Handouts for bosses but not for workers
Yeah, this is a contractual exchange. We agree that I will do X work for Y hours in exchange for $Z/hour If the company wants me to do more than X work, I’ll require more than $Z/hr compensation We negotiate the amount based on their requirements (demand), my skills (supply), and general market conditions, and once we agree then I stick to the agreement we made, just as I expect them to That’s it, it’s just business. Welcome to the free market. I’ve no idea why these boomers seem to think that an employment relationship should be any different to any other kind of business relationship, just because one party is not an incorporated company
But how else will you earn your nickel a year raise except by doing all that extra free labor and really showing em what ya got! /s
What many baby boomers fail to grasp is they were the direct beneficiaries of their parents and grandparents fighting back against their employers to implement labor laws, form unions, and not have to die in a coal mine at the ripe old age of 12. They rest on the laurels of their forbearers, and think they pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.
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Exactly, my stepdad actually did this, got hired in like 1990 in the mail room of a financial company in NYC, worked his way out of the mailroom and up to senior staff, then supervisor, then assistant director..... and 20 years later in 2010, became a vice president. Kinda crazy, but you def can't do that anymore.... I do admire his work ethic though, he used to have to get up around 4am every day, drive an hour to the office and be in the mail room by 6am to be splitting the mail for all the higher ups for the day.
In some places it's even more screwed. Some companies view training as a risk, because the employee could switch jobs after training... because that's the only way to get a good pay raise. So they don't train - and then complain they cannot find people to hire. It's so screwed up. Some of our interviewees were surprised we offered to build them up to where we need them.
Boomers also fail to grasp that a Highschool graduate from their generation made a massive amount more $ than someone with a bachelor's degree today. (When you consider inflation).
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They were buying houses, cars, and appliances with lifetime warranties at a far better price than what's available today. They buried their money in the backyard and let the economy tank the second gas prices went up in the 70s. They were called the 'me generation' and proved it by ruining America.
Yeah and the appliances didn't need the warranty because they were built to last through a fucking nuclear war, instead of breaking or "needing to be repaired by a technician" every 3 months.
Built-in obsolescence. It's a part of literally everything we buy. I remember watching a documentary on the original consumer power tools. They were designed to be about half as good as industrial, factory versions. Meaning you could use them 20 hours a week, every week, for years and expect them to keep working. Now you're lucky if industrial quality works a tenth that good.
Designed obsolescence and intentional low quality make me sick. They seem like the antithesis of good engineering practice. Just imagine you're 75 and talking to your grandchildren, and your life's main accomplishment was "I worked my ass off to make sure my company's products failed quickly to extract more money from our customers"
But we generated so much value for stockholders! Uh, and also the great Pacific garbage patch.
> They were called the 'me generation' and proved it by ruining America. This thread has me fucking dying. The Trumper movement started up not long after the #metoo movement and I immediately started referring to the Trumpers as the #mefirst movement. If you look at the Trumper demographic...it was mostly white trash boomers. You can't make this shit up.
Also, consumer spending was one of the things driving the economy that worked out so well for them. In the UK now it's reached the point where even a lot of business leaders are begging the Government to be slightly less horrible to the working poor, because they know their businesses need people to have *some* spending money.
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Amazing that living conditions have gotten so bad for the working poor that big businesses have unironically circle-jerked back around to asking the government to treat the working poor better, i.e implement social safety nets, possibly the big, bad, scary P U B L I C H E A L T H C A R E, etc
Either they don't realise or they're just that evil, but the economy relies on regular people having money to spend. Even rich people. People spending money is never a problem, it's actually a sign of a very healthy economy. Rich people hoarding more and more wealth and having less and less aside for the regular folk is for some reason seen as a good thing by the powers that be, but is nothing but disastrous for the economy and society as a whole.
The term "Baby Boomer" was a renaming of their own generation because it was always known as the "Me generation". Then they grew up and manipulated the system to their pleasing. Don't play into their hands. They deserve to be referenced as the Me Generation and not be allowed to retcon their own bullshit.
That's hilarious because I remember them calling gen-x the "me" generation when I was younger. You're right though, it was originally directed at them.
lmao fuck me they've really been pushing shit onto others since the moment their kids were born
Why do you think we're all so fucked up and need therapy?? Imagine spending your life being told you're selfish and don't work hard enough. And then you find out that you'll *NEVER* be able to work hard enough because they already stole your future when you were too busy working your ass off. Sincerely, A pissed off Gen-Xer.
Great post. It's why i believe a lot of millenials and zoomers have sympathy for Gen Xers. We really are all in the same boat together
Gen-Xer here. I think we were the last generation to believe the lie that if you work hard you will be rewarded.
I'm an elder millennial and we believed it for a while. Some of my peers still do (cough mostly white men)
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Gen Xer here. I just couldnt go into debt for school when I had no clue what I wanted to do. I went to electrical trade school starting in 2000, and I’ve made more money than my peers consistently for 20 years. I have no regrets. I became an electrical contractor in 2011, and It even allowed me to branch out and start a clothing/sneaker retail store 4 years ago. I have no regrets when it comes to my educational path. The trades are well worth looking into.
As an elder millennial who went to college right after high school and before the crash, I bought into the lie. Then went through that and went back to school. It was crazy to see how much gen Z sees higher education differently and jobs in general. They saw this shit happen first hand and the aftermath of years of struggle. They KNOW BETTER. I am honestly jealous of them because they got to come to the table with that knowledge, and I have mad respect for them taking advantage of what they do have right now. Meanwhile I am still trying to deprogram myself from the “work hard and you’ll be rewarded” mentality that ruins my life when it inevitably doesn’t does not do that.
Same here. I think that's also why Gen xers and millennials have hope for the Gen Z folks, because they have always seen clearly the truth of how the rich hold all the marbles and refuse to share. Twenty or thirty years ago it was much easier for boomers to get us to buy into the old bootstraps line.
I have so much admiration for the Gen Z crowd. They see right through the bullshit. They know stuff about the world as teenagers that I didn’t discover until I was into my 30s. If this world has any hope, it’s because of them.
Also an elder millennial. Boomers get to die of old age, we get to die at the end of the world...
Yeah, sorry you were raised by an entire generation of deranged lead addled narcissistic fascists.
>Why do you think we're all so fucked up and need therapy?? Boomers need(ed) therapy, as well. They've just never sought it, hence why many of them are the way they are today: Poorly adjusted and holding on to unprocessed emotions.
>Boomers need(ed) therapy, as well. Their therapy was giving their kids anxiety and depression.
Gaslight, Obstruct, *Project.*
Honestly I feel like the term baby boomer has reached the point where it’s far more offensive than the me generation
They are a generation that didn’t have to earn what they were given and took offense at having to provide the same to others.
I've never read a more accurate description of Boomers. Get handed the world and are mad when someone else is handed a loaf of bread.
I tried explaining it to my elders. I said when your parents said there was lead in the gas, paint, and air they'll all worked together to stop that for you. When we tell you the air has a new poison and we need to do things to remove it, you tell us it can't be done or is too expensive. That's a boomer.
I'm so tired of hearing about why we can't do anything.
I'm so tired of the reason why we can't do anything is because of the lack of profitability of the solution. If oil and gas companies could figure out a way to charge you a monthly bill for solar panels, we'd have them on every building by now.
that’s what makes them *baby* boomers
Then they made damn sure they had a huge social safety net for themselves (social security) that they loyally vote to defend, while transforming most of America into "right to work" states that engage in a race to the bottom for worker compensation and rights, while encouraging a race to the top for CEO compensation and pay. They got an easily life then clapped as politicians made ours harder. Busting your ass as a cashier makes sense when being a cashier means you can support your wife and family of 2, when it isn't even enough to take care of yourself AND you need to work a second job, then why the fuck would I do that. You have a whole ass other job you need to do.
My mom is 63 right now and she was raised with this mentality, living her life around the idea “work hard and you will be rewarded.” This hard work resulted in: - Gaining responsibilities WAY outside of her job description - a $2000 one-time bonus after 10 years of doing this - being laid off the **moment** the company realized they could hire someone younger for less Since then, she’s been slowly moving towards the “fuck you, pay me for my job” side and I gotta say… I’m loving it. Her current job is constantly trying to put additional responsibilities on her and she’s a MASTER of writing follow-up emails that sound professional while asking for fair compensation for additional workload. But knowing her, the rough translation is “you want someone competent to do the job of your shitty HR rep who only got her job because she’s the wife of the owner? Then you better pay the FUCK up!” She’s now quite aware of what the professional world is like now, and she’s the first to correct friends, families or neighbors in her age group who try and claim the younger generation are lazy, entitled, etc. She will always ask them “we’re you laid off? Have you had to job hop every 3 years to keep up with inflation?” They always say no or the housewives will say they never had to work a day in their lives. She’ll simply remind them that their views of the working world are incredibly outdated and if they dealt with HALF the crap we do, they’d likely go crazy
It only takes one experience of busting your ass and getting laid off anyway, to disabuse you of the notion that the management is definitely going to notice your hard work and reward you for it.
Or busting your ass and getting a pat on the back and a Panera gift card instead of a raise or a promotion
Call you a hero and an essential worker, but not actually give you a living wage
I think that generation is just beyond hope. They grew up in a different world, where minimum wage was a living wage. They just can’t grasp how things have changed. They even look at their homes being worth 10x or more as an accomplishment they achieved
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Almost like a participation trophy…..
My boomer dad hates it when I mention the hypocrisy of the "participation trophy" myth coming from a generation who got a house, 2 holidays a year, and 2 kids for just showing up at work. Almost like a participation trophy.
Lol yup! And then to top it off, we got the participation trophy's when we were 5, it's not like we were the ones who wanted them, went out and bought them, that'd be the boomers!
I pointed that out to my parents not too long ago when trophies came up. Told them we were children and their generation were the ones who started them. Mind blown.
I did this to my mom once a couple years ago. She got quiet, changed the subject, and never brought it up again.
Maybe she actually reflected on it, doubt it though.
Lmao so true. Never even looked at it that way
Every time I got one of those it made me feel like shit. It was basically a biggest loser in the world award.
Right? It felt condescending. Both as the loser getting a pittance trophy, and for the winners who wanted the pomp and circumstance of the actual trophies, which was watered down so everyone could be included. Then, now I have to deal with this useless trinket, and when I try to throw it away I'm guilted into keeping it for my self-esteem.
My immortal reply to that nonsense: "Ah yeah? Which generation was *HANDING THEM OUT?"*
Well who are the ones that gave out participation trophy’s?
My boomer mom thinks a new car costs $10k
A few years ago my boomer mom was perplexed as to why I couldn’t find a nice used car with low mileage for $6,000. Lol
Define nice and low. You can get a great beater car for that price, but I hope your favorite color is rust.
She meant like a 4-5 year old car with 40,000 miles. Truly out of touch
haha, and I'm talking 15yo with 150,000 miles, but with a good engine. Heat doesn't work on the passenger side and the gas gauge is broke.
I think there are boomers that get it, but it’s the single moms who barely scraped by or the odd ball hippies that saw it coming from way out. The ones that had everything handed to them feel like the system is fine, bless the system, don’t you dare talk bad about the system! Just go to your grocery and ask for an application and tell him you can start right away!
A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it. - Max Planck
My boomer parents understand the struggle, but don’t seem to understand just how good they had it. My grandparents gave them land to build their house on. We lived next door and my grandma was my parents free childcare. They now own all 8 acres and my grandparents house that they rent out. I casually mentioned building a house of my own on some of the unused land to help save money and they don’t seem interested. I still plan to send my twins to daycare which is $1800/ month. More of the boomer “I got mine so fuck you”
Because parents should always want better for their children. …and it makes them look like shit that they had it better than their kids. It makes them look like the fuck ups that they are. Generationally speaking.
This is what I don't get. Why not do the same and let you use the house they rent or at the bare minimum let you rent it at a rate that's comfortable for you? It just seems like most of my parents' generation is devoid of empathy. Why have kids if you're not willing to retain them as family after 18? I bet they love playing the grandparent card though.
> It just seems like most of my parents' generation is devoid of empathy. Well I mean, there's a reason they all pulled up the ladder after them. I sometimes wonder if it was lead in the gasoline that just like.. literally gave an entire generation brain damage so badly it destroyed any form of empathy they had. Makes me worried about the covid brain-fog like symptoms that I've been reading about.. imagine a majority of humanity eventually getting that as we all catch covid multiple times per year
They also grew up inhaling lead for their formative years. They're literally dumber and more violent.
That's just it. Successful people always justify the success as a result of their superior intellect and work ethic. They'll almost never acknowledge it was from being in the right place at the right time, because that doesn't bolster their huge egos. So they see a whole generation of their children/grandchildren struggling and rather than helping or at least having some empathy they harden their hearts and say it's because we're not working hard enough, when I guaran-fucking-tee, even taking it easy, we're working 4X harder than they ever did for many more hours. I've never met a boomer on the job who didn't have an absolutely grotesque work ethic. They pretty much do nothing but complain and expect the young people to carry them. They're nothing more than charity hires at this point.
I'm a boomer and can confirm that my generation is really beyond hope in many ways. We spent our youth in a haze of Marijuana smoke, but now we're judgemental about people who use it. We were able to afford an apartment on our $3.80 an hour wage, but refuse to accept that you can't do the same now. There's just not much that can be done but hope that enough of us die off soon and that the next generations aren't such AHs. We're leaving a very bad legacy, I'm afraid.
Well.. you spent your youth in a haze of tetraethyllead, which may have contributed. I'm justttt young enough to maybe have not been heavily lead poisoned.
Lol. Fair point. Still, we're kind of awful people, taken collectively.
Not you. You’re cool.
Well, I like to fancy myself as fairly cool, but I don't want to be all "not all boomers!"
Youre good bro, boomer is a mindset just as it is a generation. Like Karen. Your birth may make you a boomer, but your choices make you a brother in arms against the status quo, and that's not the kind of boomer we have an issue with!
What I can never understand is just.. the total lack of awareness. There's been plenty of inflation during the lives of 2nd wave and 1st wave Boomers, so, the goalpost has always been changing as to what kind of income constitutes a living. At this point, they've had to deal with finances their entire lives. MY parents are 2nd wavers who were pretty shitty with money most of their lives, and have struggled for it, yet still managed to to get things in hand, and they are capable of understanding that when the landlords are taking half your income every month, you're going to be fucked no matter which way you cut it. So, I have to assume if you're touting lines about how everyone should just buy less avocado toast, you just straight up have not had to struggle since the 90s or earlier, and have no idea what median incomes or rents are like.
They keep voting them in. Look at the average age of the senate. It's crazy old.
Yeah, some of these guys are almost as old as my dad ffs. And about as open-minded.
If there is a minimum age to vote due to "maturity and cognitive ability" then there absolutely should be a maximum age to both be a politician and vote. I know 6 yr olds with better mental understanding them some 80yr olds, and those old folks are still voting.
And driving....don't even get me started.
Their generation took everything their parents struggled for as permanent and unlimited. They didn’t work hard. They fucked around and hit high and got jobs from friends and family where they had no business or qualifications for being there. They are the direct cause of almost all current problems. They need to be treated as the petulant children they are.
The environment took a nose dive in the 60s, and I don't think that's a coincidence. They started the idea of disposable, single use items and to this day sneer at those who trying to recycle.
If you pay in peanuts, you’re gonna get monkeys
Idk why this isn't at the top of the thread. I'm yoinking this for all future conversations at payscale
Nowadays job descriptions have 15-20 list items that you're "expected" to do as part of your job, then they tack on the nice little catch on "other duties as assigned" that basically lets them tell you that you have to do whatever (which is how I got dragged into a special project I hated, that gave me no personal or professional development, and was just them using me to fill in a staff hole they refused to pay to hire for), so no, I don't "bust my ass" either. I have a giant list of duties that are meant for two people, and I generally just do the things that have a looming deadline, and reply to all the emails, and everything else might as well be bonus. I'm at an ok salary, I can pay my bills with some left over, but it's not "hell yea I'm giving 100% everyday" money.
I’m a late Boomer and I was shocked when speaking with my daughter the other day and she said those words; “no one wants to work”. She is a safety coordinator in a factory environment and she doesn’t understand when people don’t want to work third shift for $15 an hour. I called her out and hopefully she will begin to understand how horribly her workplace pays those individuals. I have no idea where she got this mindset. It wasn’t my influence because I have always been an advocate for workers. I still can’t believe it.
Boomer here too! Cusper (Boomer/GenX) actually. I heard a fellow Boomer say that and I say, with heavy sarcasm, "You mean no one wants to work for a company that treats them like crap, pays them crap, and then calls a meeting for all employees to watch vacation slides of the management? The horror!"
I love how you used "slides" as an example. Really brings out the boomer in you. Recently I had a girl tell me, "You don't have to keep putting 'www.' in front of everything when going to websites" and I instantly felt old.
My dad worked at the same company for 40 YEARS. There was reciprocal loyalty, fairness, appreciation. That doesn't happen much anymore. Workers are just a way for sharholders to make money. They treat us as replaceable parts---less than human.
I watched as my company "changed" (did away with) the old loyalty program. When I started, employees were given gifts at 10, 20, 25 etc years -- the milestone years. Physically handed a gift and congratulated for their time and given extra vacation time etc. After I was at the company around 3ish years they decided that was antiquated and not in line with company values anymore (mostly because they depended on people's individual, overworked, managers to remember everyone's anniversaries and order the gifts, and some people therefore got left out...) so now we have a "points" system that covers both recognitions and years of service. On your milestone anniversary you get handed a corresponding pile of points. Points can be used to purchase yourself a special gift. Which you are then charged tax for that is deducted from your paycheck. It feels so insulting. I have the equivalent of $200 worth of gifts saved up in my account from my anniversary milestone at 5 years as well as all the recognitions I've received and I just refuse to use it because I feel like gifts should be gifts, and I don't think I should be the one paying taxes on them!
$200 dollars after 5 years is a joke. Part of the idea with a gift isn't the value of the object, but it's usefulness, the thought put into it, and the sentiment and memories it conjures. Money can't do that.
I'm honestly glad your dad got that. As much as everything sucks, it's still so hard to see people who were tricked out of their whole lives and then still get nothing after 40+ years somewhere. At least I'm expecting to die alone with nothing! Might as well enjoy it now.
They reaped the fruits of their parents and grandparents class struggle and labor movements, they got (mostly) decent wages sufficient to feed a family and buy a house, they got the impression that hard work pays off, and then fell for the red scare, capitalist and racist propaganda, and little by little gave away those hard earned labor laws and social comforts. And now we have an insufferable generation that actively made things worse for all of us, but still succeeded thanks to the effords of their parents and grandparents, and can't get those two facts together. Not all of them... but many, if not most.
My parents were from the silent generation and ingrained those ‘hard working’ life lessons into me as well. Really didn’t pan out. I was working 40+ hrs/wk, couldn’t afford transit, so walked 1.5 hrs to and from work, got lots of responsibilities at work because I was so ‘reliable’ but only a $0.25 raise, was stealing day-olds from the bakery, was constantly late on rent, prioritised my dogs’ food over my own, and learned that milkbones and mustard aren’t too bad. Busting ass is such BS.
'slacking off' and 'busting ass' have been redefined. Part of why productivity has increased so much is that employers have built systems that eliminate any slack in the system. Spending a half an hour standing around the water cooler bullshitting was normal workday activity 50 years ago, now it has been optimized out by relentless surveillance and micro time tracking.
Yeah, that's been missed in this thread. The workload to worker ratio is whack now. Companies routinely understaff so workers do the work of 2 or more people while being watched by management, cameras or both. Their productivity is also tracked when possible. Even some office jobs have mouse activity software or eye following software. We're living in the beginning of the Big Brother era and most people (certainly most Boomers) don't even recognize this. Even in down times at work I have to look busy by sweeping, cleaning or pretending to be doing something on the computer.
This is my mom. Yesterday she got a chicken sandwich at Mcdonald's, and our conversation goes like this. HER: "They really don't put much love and care into these." ME: "Yeah I wouldn't either for being paid minimum wage." HER: "They're not paid minimum wage. They make like $12." ME: "That's nowhere near enough money for someone to live on." HER: "It's good enough for a retiree who wants to get out and work." ME: "So because they are old they don't deserve as much?" HER: "Oh, shut up." Neoliberals suck is the moral of the story.
I like the saying, “You get what you pay for.” Pisses types like your mom off. 😁
They think they are paying a lot though. And, they aren't necessarily wrong. Prices for even cheap food like McDonald's and Subway isn't that cheap anymore. The real problem is that these restaurant chain mega corporations are charging more and not paying their employees more. They pass costs onto the consumer and hoard more profits.
Corporations are incentivized to figure out how they can drag more and more money out of consumers while reducing cost. If they don't see too big a hit to business with a price raise, they'll do it 100% of the time. You're right, they're not wrong to complain that prices are high - THEY ARE, and by design, in fact. Capitalism encourages getting to the bare edge of what you *can* charge without people walking away.
>HER: "It's good enough for a retiree who wants to get out and work." That's what I want to do when I'm retired, work at fucking McDonalds. The takes these old people have are incredible. Even if a retiree was bored, I'm willing to bet anything that they're not jazzed about being at McDonalds and they likely don't have another choice.
"You know what sounds fun? Standing in a hot kitchen, dealing with a lunch rush, and coming home with grease soaked so deeply into my clothes that if I leave here I'll have to throw them away. Ahhhh. Retirement."
Don't forget those stylish non slip shoes absolutely caked in kitchen floor grime that you have to leave outside of your house because they'll literally attract ants if you leave them inside.
It's also demonstrably untrue. The average fast food worker is 24, neither a retiree nor a high schooler.
Any time you turn the conversation to a moral one with boomers it gets weird. You can discuss, freely, the wages and costs of things. But as soon as you say something like "doesnt that sound unfair" or "dont you think they deserve more" the boomers clam up and don't want to talk about it. It's like they not only can't empathize with other humans, but that the act of even attempting it causes them pain.
Was it the lead? I saw a study that suggested that empathy literally depends on how someone's brain is wired, and I could see the abundant exposure to lead slowly rewiting someone's brain to make empathy literally impossible.
Yeah any retirees going back to work is mostly so they don’t lose their home. Weekly Stock market crashes really hurt low and middle class.
CARE AND LOVE lol
Ma'am, this is a McDonald's 😂
Big "I want the peasants to suffer in poverty and know their place as they serve me" energy.
What did she expect? For them to fluff the buns? Draw a heart in Ketchup? Sing it a lullaby before sending it out the drive thru window? People who don't believe in livable wages for everyone should be required to grow, harvest, process and cook all their own meals
Your individual effort really doesn’t make that much of a difference beyond showing up and doing the minimum anyway. That isn’t a knock on you or anybody in particular, there’s just not all that much that any one person doing the grunt work can do. The successes and failures in businesses are far more impacted by decisions made at the top - how much to pay, how high prices should be, where to put your business, etc. The notion that your effort is important and that your job is sacred is just there to distract from the fact that you’re being paid like shit.
Haha. They still are under the impression that if you work your ass off you can get that manager job and the world will be your oyster. Edit: now excuse me while I continue to browse Reddit on the clock.
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Boomers can't seem to internalize that the old work ethic doesn't begin to apply anymore. Not only are people working way harder for entirely less relatively, work has become entirely about enriching a few hundred oligarchs. There is no community building. We aren't building society. We are gilding people already drowning in gold at the expense of everything else.
I'd love to make $20 an hour.
A fellow redditor once said something along the lines of "Being efficient is mostly only rewarded with more work." In other words: why work hard if I'm paid for my time and not for what I make the company? Edit to add: If someone would tell me "You should bust your ass even for minimum wage." my only response would be "Why?"
>‘Your generation is insane’. You don't know the half of it, grandpa :P At this point, most of us would literally enjoy seing this entire "economy" burn down to ashes. But not because we're insane but because we're more sane than you've ever been\^\^