this post was submitted on 08 Sep 2023
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This is normal in the United States and has been for a long time. When i was a homeless LGBT teenager trying to survive, i went to a temp agency trying to make a living some other way than SW. They sent me to this warehouse where a bunch of felons and ESL people were working in some of the most inhumane conditions i had ever seen before. 12 hour days in a 110 degree warehouse working with toxic industrial chemicals that we had no information on, with a bare minimum of PPE, intense physical labor moving large stacks of equipment, and one break at the 6 hour mark to drink water. Most of the people there had been there a while. They just had this quiet resignation and determination to survive.
I didn't even last a single day. I started to feel heat stroke coming on around the 8 hour mark. Shivering, no more sweat, everything started to feel distant and confusing. I tried to go get water and they wouldn't let me, so i threw all my equipment on the ground and stumbled outside to find water, and never went back. I'm white, trans, and feminine enough to survive other ways, but most of those people didn't have any other options.
Fuck this monstrous place. I've been radicalized ever since seeing things like that.
one of the most fucked things about america is that it seems like whenever you have a shitty work environment, it's actually fine because
a) it builds character. complaining is weakness.
b) the company has to make a profit
like zero cognizance of human rights or quality of life. just, it is what it is, deal with it or you're a sNoWFlAkE.
from grade school to now peers have looked at me weird for simply complaining when something is shitty, which i've never understood. like oh we can't use headphones while we work 8 hrs washing dishes? you just take that? ok i'm going to stare at a wall because a guy said so? wtf?
That's the thing that has always driven me crazy about our way of speaking about these things. Politicians say "we created x jobs" like it's something to optimize for. People fear automation because it takes away their livelihoods. But, automating work and eliminating jobs should make people's lives... better? Why doesn't it actually? Where did the wires get crossed?
Why did we incentivize making humans suffer, at a grand societal level? Are we insane?
Sure, but not yours or mine, it seems.
That's why I'm fully pro-automation. Automation makes everyone's lives easier, it removes the burdens from the backs of people. For every job that someone doesn't have to toil at we have the chance for them to find something they actually enjoy and excel at it, maybe even push the boundaries in some way.
People think they fear automation, but that's not the enemy. The enemy is the politicians who are so far behind the times, and in many cases corrupt to the point they're actively working against the people they were elected to serve, that our system simply will not adapt to these boons we've developed. There's just no reason we can't feed every mouth in America if the will was there in the people pulling the strings, but that doesn't line their pockets personally and the people in positions of power don't give a rat's ass about you or your family.
Honestly it feels like all the pieces are there to build something wonderful, but it wont happen unless we're willing to knock down the shitty "it's what we've got" house of cards narrative.
It might be somewhat normal in the US, but it's frightening to see in the UK, a country that supposedly actually has employee rights.
There are, but apparently Amazon chose to ignore them because they see their employees as subhuman.
Hopefully this particular warehouse gets its arse handed to it but I very much doubt it will unfortunately.
Is this supposed to imply prostitution?
Not implying, just saying it. What do you think SW means?
That makes sense. I didn't attempt to decipher what sw meant because it didn't seem relevant to the story.
I think it's supposed to imply none of your business...
Honestly I call bullshit that they would not let you drink water. Or maybe more correct, some individual for maybe unfair reasons, took a dislike to you and made your situation so unbearable you would quit.
You in 1911: "I call bullshit that a factory would lock it's fire exits, the workers at the Triangle Shirtwaist factory are to blame!"
You in 1919: "I call bullshit that a distillery would not employ engineers to maintain its molasses storage at a reasonable temperature, the Boston Purity Distilling Company did nothing wrong!"
You in 1936: "Theres no way the people who oversaw the building of the Hoover Dam would let their workers just suffocate to death underground due to lack of ventilation! They probably just forgot to breathe!"
You in 1991: "I call bullshit that a factory would lock it's fire exits, the workers at the Imperial Foods Chicken Factory workers are to blame!"
You in 2005: "It is impossible that BP would simply ignore safety procedures and not repair broken safety equipment at their gas plant in Texas, those people probably set themselves on fire!"
You in 2021: "There is no chance in hell that the Foundation Food Group of GA USA would not train employees, get permits, provide PPE, or install safety devices when working with liquid nitrogen, those workers probably were probably enjoying autoerotic asphyxiation on company time!"
You have no idea what you're talking about. It's easy to say "things could never possibly be that bad" when you haven't experienced it. I hope you never do. I'm guessing you're a white man between 20-40, and while life hasn't always been easy, the social contract has mostly held for you.
I worked jobs from pounding in by hand railway secondary lines to installing solar panels. If I couldn't get along on the crew, I left. I seen many people get more or less ran off a crew but coworkers because they were being shits. That is the reality of working with people and getting along with those you work for.
This applies to Western countries. Three is definately a greater level of desperation in developing nations where there is far less functional businesses to create jobs. Then yes you can be treated pretty bad.
Clearly you have never suffered real difficulty or studied any history in your life if you can't imagine workers being treated inhumanly. It is the norm without oversight, laws and reguations. You must live in a protected bubble.