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dragonlady7via http://ift.tt/2F46VlN
sl-walker:
apersnicketylemon:
howprolifeofyou:
purest-rain:
bogleech:
mysharona1987:
Like, you want janitors and McDonald fast food workers and cleaners.
You just don’t want them to make a liveable wage and have healthcare and be treated like proper human beings.
People who work in an air conditioned office all day sincerely do believe that those jobs are both less important and not as exhausting.
a job being ‘exhausting’ doesn’t make it important, janitors and fast food workers are paid less bc their job doesn’t take any real skill - like basically anyone can do it
not everyone can be a lawyer or a doctor or run a successful business, those people worked hard and learned new skills and gained useful knowledge so their end job would pay more and not be physically exhausting
stop shitting on people who earned a good life because you aren’t being given one for free
ugh
I work in a hospital. It’s also the worst flu season in recent years in my hospital. You know whose job is one of the most crucial for EVERYONE, doctors and medical staff included? Janitors. Go ahead and try to have a safe working environment, ESPECIALLY in the medical field, without them.
Tell me, do you know how to best create a medically safe work environment? Because I sure as fuck don’t, but the janitors do, and they know this while being on their feet and performing manually exhausting tasks for 8+ hours straight surrounded by caustic chemicals.
Same goes for fast food workers. Do you have any idea how much knowledge and physical work goes into working in a kitchen? Wanna tell me you put out grease fires, what temperatures different foods are stored in, and how to keep a safe working environment for both customers and workers in a job surrounded by hot oil, ovens and chemicals? Not to mention, again, being on your feet for 8+ hours in a hot kitchen being yelled at by customers constantly.
I promise you that these people do a more difficult and oftentimes more important job than a large portion of office jobs I’ve been in.
Fun fact: In my neck of the woods, hospital janitorial staff union wanted a pay raise. Their workers were struggling. The hospitals laughed at them, so they went on full strike.
The hospitals were in crisis mode within an HOUR.
Surgical rooms were not being cleaned, toilets and patient rooms were not cleaned, garbage was not picked up, instruments that get reused were not being cleaned (i.e. scalpels, patient beds), laundry wasn’t done, floors were not clean, biohazard waste wasn’t collected.
The hospitals folded the next day and the union got EVERYTHING they asked for.
Now, you may not work in a hospital @purest-rain but wherever you do work, just imagine what might happen if… suddenly no one cleaned. No one picks up the trash in that fancy office. No one vacuums or sweeps, or cleans anything. Nothing. Not the toilets, not the offices. It might take a little longer, but pretty soon, those fancy law-offices look pretty gross, don’t they? Especially the bathrooms. I’ve cleaned bathrooms, I know exactly how disgusting people are when they use a toilet they don’t have to clean.
Stop shitting on low-wage workers just because you don’t understand how important their job actually is. You cannot simultaneously demand a service, while dehumanizing the person who provides you with it, and demanding they not be compensated fairly.
Pfft. Office folk who’ve never had to do a custodian’s job have no fucking clue how much goes into it. We not only have to clean and know how to clean, from mixing chemicals to different types of floor care (of which there are many), to sanitation protocol, but in addition, those of us who work around people have to be good at customer service, time management, assertiveness and discipline.
So, while the office person is sitting in a cubical trying not to get caught surfing the internet and having x-amount of access to a building, I have the master keys to an entire steel mill, all of the offices, everything. I interact with everyone from the plant manager to the new hire. I have to coordinate around heavy machinery, tons of overhead hazards, tons of ground hazards, coordinate around three shifts of blue-collar folk, keep the white collar folk happy and gosh, that’s not even counting the actual, physical labor of my job. (And it is very hard work, too.)
No, I don’t have a degree. What I have is experience. Confidence. The ability to clean a sanded-floored lockerroom regularly trooped through by dudes in greasy boots in about an hour and a half on a bad night. The ability to take one look at a steelworker and have them freeze in the door before they’ll even consider walking on a newly mopped floor. (Don’t worry, I don’t beat them up. It’s a loving threat.) The respect and trust of not only the owner of the business I work for, but the respect and trust of the company I’m subcontracted to, in its entirety, from the top on down.
Like gosh, person above, when was the last time anyone ever trusted you to that degree? I don’t see my boss for months at a time. I train new people who come in. I know the operation I work for from the coil truck to the truck’s weigh out, enough that they’ve actively headhunted me to get hired in. No one breathes down my neck, schedules meetings about productivity, questions my skills, abilities or education; at least, among the people I work for and with, I’m considered every bit as important as the people who have degrees framed on the wall, and I– am pretty sure most office workers can’t actually say the same.
Admittedly, I really love where I work and this experience isn’t universal, but man, don’t make assumptions about how much a custodian has to know and do in a shift. Some things go well beyond classical schooling. And really, if there was a zombie outbreak, I’d rather have ten people who work my job beside me than a thousand office staff. XD
My father worked for New York State’s Office of General Services. He was a higher-up muckety-muck facilities management type in the Capitol Building itself, and had to constantly deal with Important Political People saying things like “no one is to have a key to this office! No one! Important security!” and then complaining when their wastebaskets hadn’t been emptied. “Is the janitor supposed to teleport into the room?” Dad asked. “When you said no one was to have a key, I assumed you meant no one.” Grumble grumble grumble. But anytime anything went missing, you bet they remembered that the janitor had keys. “Your staff is criminal!” “… My staff is scheduled down to the second, how would they have had the time to discover that the third drawer on the left in the secretary’s desk had the collection you took up for Jimmy’s card? Ask someone who knew that, first.” [He also recounts with great glee when some high-up Secret Service types came in and “secured the building” ahead of an important meeting but never 1) asked him for a floor plan or 2) noticed there was a drop ceiling, so he climbed up in there, walked on the support beams back to one of the secure rooms, popped a tile out, and asked, “Did you want me to make sure nobody came through here?” scaring the shit out of some dude in a suit with a wire in his ear. “He pulled a gun on me,” Dad scoffed. “A gun! Really. But he had no idea where to aim it. Like I was going to stand there and let him.”]
When the regime changed and a new governor took over, he fired Dad so he could give his salary to a crony. Rather than collect unemployment, Dad took the first available job in the same department– as a night janitor. At one point while cleaning a bathroom, a man came in and said something offhanded about the then-ongoing crisis in the Balkans. Dad leaned on his mop and briefly sketched out the underlying issues. The man, astonished, demanded to know how Dad knew all that. “Well,” Dad said truthfully, “at my other job I’m a major in the National Guard, specializing in Intelligence, so I’m actually working directly on this; I redacted the classified stuff just now, but that’s the gist of it.”
The man was actively angry about this, like Dad had somehow deceived him by pretending to be “just” a janitor.
(Your picture was not posted)
sl-walker:
apersnicketylemon:
howprolifeofyou:
purest-rain:
bogleech:
mysharona1987:
Like, you want janitors and McDonald fast food workers and cleaners.
You just don’t want them to make a liveable wage and have healthcare and be treated like proper human beings.
People who work in an air conditioned office all day sincerely do believe that those jobs are both less important and not as exhausting.
a job being ‘exhausting’ doesn’t make it important, janitors and fast food workers are paid less bc their job doesn’t take any real skill - like basically anyone can do it
not everyone can be a lawyer or a doctor or run a successful business, those people worked hard and learned new skills and gained useful knowledge so their end job would pay more and not be physically exhausting
stop shitting on people who earned a good life because you aren’t being given one for free
ugh
I work in a hospital. It’s also the worst flu season in recent years in my hospital. You know whose job is one of the most crucial for EVERYONE, doctors and medical staff included? Janitors. Go ahead and try to have a safe working environment, ESPECIALLY in the medical field, without them.
Tell me, do you know how to best create a medically safe work environment? Because I sure as fuck don’t, but the janitors do, and they know this while being on their feet and performing manually exhausting tasks for 8+ hours straight surrounded by caustic chemicals.
Same goes for fast food workers. Do you have any idea how much knowledge and physical work goes into working in a kitchen? Wanna tell me you put out grease fires, what temperatures different foods are stored in, and how to keep a safe working environment for both customers and workers in a job surrounded by hot oil, ovens and chemicals? Not to mention, again, being on your feet for 8+ hours in a hot kitchen being yelled at by customers constantly.
I promise you that these people do a more difficult and oftentimes more important job than a large portion of office jobs I’ve been in.
Fun fact: In my neck of the woods, hospital janitorial staff union wanted a pay raise. Their workers were struggling. The hospitals laughed at them, so they went on full strike.
The hospitals were in crisis mode within an HOUR.
Surgical rooms were not being cleaned, toilets and patient rooms were not cleaned, garbage was not picked up, instruments that get reused were not being cleaned (i.e. scalpels, patient beds), laundry wasn’t done, floors were not clean, biohazard waste wasn’t collected.
The hospitals folded the next day and the union got EVERYTHING they asked for.
Now, you may not work in a hospital @purest-rain but wherever you do work, just imagine what might happen if… suddenly no one cleaned. No one picks up the trash in that fancy office. No one vacuums or sweeps, or cleans anything. Nothing. Not the toilets, not the offices. It might take a little longer, but pretty soon, those fancy law-offices look pretty gross, don’t they? Especially the bathrooms. I’ve cleaned bathrooms, I know exactly how disgusting people are when they use a toilet they don’t have to clean.
Stop shitting on low-wage workers just because you don’t understand how important their job actually is. You cannot simultaneously demand a service, while dehumanizing the person who provides you with it, and demanding they not be compensated fairly.
Pfft. Office folk who’ve never had to do a custodian’s job have no fucking clue how much goes into it. We not only have to clean and know how to clean, from mixing chemicals to different types of floor care (of which there are many), to sanitation protocol, but in addition, those of us who work around people have to be good at customer service, time management, assertiveness and discipline.
So, while the office person is sitting in a cubical trying not to get caught surfing the internet and having x-amount of access to a building, I have the master keys to an entire steel mill, all of the offices, everything. I interact with everyone from the plant manager to the new hire. I have to coordinate around heavy machinery, tons of overhead hazards, tons of ground hazards, coordinate around three shifts of blue-collar folk, keep the white collar folk happy and gosh, that’s not even counting the actual, physical labor of my job. (And it is very hard work, too.)
No, I don’t have a degree. What I have is experience. Confidence. The ability to clean a sanded-floored lockerroom regularly trooped through by dudes in greasy boots in about an hour and a half on a bad night. The ability to take one look at a steelworker and have them freeze in the door before they’ll even consider walking on a newly mopped floor. (Don’t worry, I don’t beat them up. It’s a loving threat.) The respect and trust of not only the owner of the business I work for, but the respect and trust of the company I’m subcontracted to, in its entirety, from the top on down.
Like gosh, person above, when was the last time anyone ever trusted you to that degree? I don’t see my boss for months at a time. I train new people who come in. I know the operation I work for from the coil truck to the truck’s weigh out, enough that they’ve actively headhunted me to get hired in. No one breathes down my neck, schedules meetings about productivity, questions my skills, abilities or education; at least, among the people I work for and with, I’m considered every bit as important as the people who have degrees framed on the wall, and I– am pretty sure most office workers can’t actually say the same.
Admittedly, I really love where I work and this experience isn’t universal, but man, don’t make assumptions about how much a custodian has to know and do in a shift. Some things go well beyond classical schooling. And really, if there was a zombie outbreak, I’d rather have ten people who work my job beside me than a thousand office staff. XD
My father worked for New York State’s Office of General Services. He was a higher-up muckety-muck facilities management type in the Capitol Building itself, and had to constantly deal with Important Political People saying things like “no one is to have a key to this office! No one! Important security!” and then complaining when their wastebaskets hadn’t been emptied. “Is the janitor supposed to teleport into the room?” Dad asked. “When you said no one was to have a key, I assumed you meant no one.” Grumble grumble grumble. But anytime anything went missing, you bet they remembered that the janitor had keys. “Your staff is criminal!” “… My staff is scheduled down to the second, how would they have had the time to discover that the third drawer on the left in the secretary’s desk had the collection you took up for Jimmy’s card? Ask someone who knew that, first.” [He also recounts with great glee when some high-up Secret Service types came in and “secured the building” ahead of an important meeting but never 1) asked him for a floor plan or 2) noticed there was a drop ceiling, so he climbed up in there, walked on the support beams back to one of the secure rooms, popped a tile out, and asked, “Did you want me to make sure nobody came through here?” scaring the shit out of some dude in a suit with a wire in his ear. “He pulled a gun on me,” Dad scoffed. “A gun! Really. But he had no idea where to aim it. Like I was going to stand there and let him.”]
When the regime changed and a new governor took over, he fired Dad so he could give his salary to a crony. Rather than collect unemployment, Dad took the first available job in the same department– as a night janitor. At one point while cleaning a bathroom, a man came in and said something offhanded about the then-ongoing crisis in the Balkans. Dad leaned on his mop and briefly sketched out the underlying issues. The man, astonished, demanded to know how Dad knew all that. “Well,” Dad said truthfully, “at my other job I’m a major in the National Guard, specializing in Intelligence, so I’m actually working directly on this; I redacted the classified stuff just now, but that’s the gist of it.”
The man was actively angry about this, like Dad had somehow deceived him by pretending to be “just” a janitor.
(Your picture was not posted)
