Someone in a position of authority over me (not my parents or children) said to me and a bunch of other people who do the same job that I do, that Americans (northern Americans, I presume) don't want to do jobs that are difficult or inconvenient, that for that you have to find foreign labor.
She mentioned a manual labor job that involved cleaning porcelin and superior foreign labor for this particular vocation. Now if I were an American porcelin cleaner, I would have really taken offense at that, but I am not, and I still took offense because I'm just an American. To my credit I told this person (no details because I like my job) that I did not agree with this presumption but that did not slow this person down a bit. This person said these things ironically enough because she didn't want people like me getting mad at this person. This same person was conversely very complimentary to me and my ilk (employees) about the job that we do, so I guess I'm just being contrary by hanging onto this one little negative comment. But...
This person should come to OS and read Notes From Joblessville's blog (or any other person in the same boat and there are plenty) about how she is doing unskilled labor with tendinitis and is barely able to afford treatment for it. I'm not going to go into all the injustices American workers have endured for the past 3 decades, too numerous actually. But I have read in Garrison Keillor's column about how Americans don't want to do the really hard labor that needs to be done. I've heard the rhetorical question on the news too many times to count: "Do Americans really want to do hard work anymore?" Well since Americans sometimes die doing their jobs, dangerous, exhausting work, my answer to that would be yes, we do. We just want to do it for decent pay and decent working conditions. For that matter, that's probaby what foreign labor would like to but if they're undocumented, the employer has them by the balls and for that reason, they're preferable to American workers.
So the next time someone says to me that Americans don't want to work hard anymore, I'll say what I've been thinking all along which is: #1. Please don't break your back while you're thinking so hard. #2. Americans want to work hard but not for the shit we've been getting for the past 30 years. #3. What difference does it make; you'll send the good jobs out of the country anyway.
Now for the antidepressants and on with my day.
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I got a letter back from a potential employer a few weeks ago. They said I was over qualified for the position I applied for.
I keep submitting applications and I keep getting turned down. I think you may be right about mindset here.
If you take away welfare, you'll see Americans doing the jobs nobody wants to do - so they don't starve. As long as we pay people to not work, we'll have this dilemma. Maybe this is off-topic. Rated.
Beth, I am sorry to hear that, really. People who work in the service industry or with the public all say that, you don't want to do this. Want has nothing to do with it--it's a matter of survival. I have a skilled job but am thinking of moving from Portland to some BFE town where I can get more for my money. I'll have no life, but you know I can't enjoy the city on what I make anyway, so it's six of one half a dozen of the other. Either way we're screwed.
It's not like the CEOs, corporations, and politicians, paid servants of the American people, have gold-plated health care plans and jobs for life that pay big bucks for absolutely no-services rendered and sheer incompetence, and that politicians are using tax money to visit their girlfriends in Argentina. The problem is the poor people whose manufacturing jobs have all gone overseas and they can't afford to live without welfare. If you have any insight at all, hopefully you can tell I'm being sarcastic which is better than my first reaction to your comment. You're point of view is off topic, and if that's your opinion I have no idea why you rated this post.
Thanks for the Everclear!
Also, you can tell that someone in position of authority that every single person who works in a starbucks with a toilet has cleaned that toilet. At least at all the starbuckses I worked at, everyone, from the manager on down had a turn once a week at least. And many of my coworkers were people who got laid off from IBM when they sent their jobs overseas. One woman I worked with said that the pay at Starbucks was crap, but the benefits were better than anything she got after 20 years of working at IBM. Last I saw, she was working at a Whole Foods, where legal Americans clean the toilet.
I don't have a "job job" right now. But it is in my blood to have the same passion of my ancestors, and to apply to any and every job - despite my high level of education. I am willing to do hard labor precisely because this is the American I was raised to be. And I think that anyone who does not understand American history does not appreciate someone like me, or you, or anyone else who has built their family on something called the American dream.
I, too, get sick of hearing what Americans won't do. I know people who have families in Mexico and when they send money home, it goes much further than that same amount of money here. Obviously. So three kids and a wife can live in Mexico on what they couldn't here. This is not hard to grasp. The upperclasses just use us.
My sister has rheumatoid arthritis and a host of other age-appropriate health problems and she has no safety net. The doctors won't treat her without cash up front and the property taxes the rich don't pay might have gone to the services for the working poor that scrub their F_g toilets.
Sorry, I just lost my sense of humor.
LHL-I think that sucks. The fact that you were outsourced twice is bad enough, but then to be told that it's your fault because you don't like hard work, well that's an outright lie. When companies like Nike who have millions to spend on advertising outsource their products, it's obvious it's not about the work but cheap labor. And I love Everclear, saw them in DC, the new one, not this one, but still.
Thanks Marcelleqb. I didn't know that but I have no trouble believing it. There are tons of Starbucks out here, and people look pretty happy to be working there. But then our UE rate is so high.
Belle Joffe--Divisiveness is working to the corporations' benefit, and the American dream I guess is now just having a roof over your head and food on the table. It used to be a lot different. Labor used to really pay. You only need to see the old hubs of industry in the northeast and midwest to see how they've been decimated since the 1970s.
Delia, you're so right. It's not hard to grasp, so much so it sounds like a straw-man argument: Has the government given American workers the shaft for decades or are they all just lazy? Let's pretend it's the latter then we (politicians) don't look so bad.
OE: The person who said this had no problem speaking its mind and insulting American workers in a public forum. I don't dare say who said it or exactly what they said in an anonymous blog for fear of reprisals.
And Ardee: I am so sorry for your sister. RA, like most chronic conditions, is very expensive to treat and almost impossible to get insurance for, not to mention painful. It's a terrible injustice what insurance companies are doing to workers and we definitely need single payer. If we get it, (and I"m beginning to think we might) I'm dropping BC/BS just on principal. That educated well-to-do people could watch your sister do their housework while going without medical treatment for a condition like RA is testimony to their heartlessness and apathy. Interestingly, about 15 years ago I knew a man and his wife who cleaned office buildings for a living. They did just great monetarily, and I don't think they could do so now. Thanks for commenting, everybody.
DP - You have a nerve! I don't know how to change it. About your South American friend, maybe to her we are lazy because we expect a better way of life than she is used to in her country. I don't think you should ever feel like a loser for doing menial jobs. Others probaby won't respect you, but you can respect yourself.
Caricatures of the idle rich are no more objectively valid than caricutures of the idle poor. The only difference is that it feels more ok to be unfair to the rich since they have money to console them after our attacks.
Many wealthy people are sensible, responsible, and modest. I am not such a person, regrettably; I don't have enough money to qualify. Still, I can see that this is true.
All those qualities are also enjoyed by the poor, of course.
The problem is that people can all acknowledge the positive about themselves, but impute negatives to "others."