16 Reply by lyra (edited by lyra 2006-07-28 06:10:36)

  • lyra
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Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Sounds.....educational, Hildegarde!   big_smile   Well hey, at least you have the experience, right? 

This thread made me think back on the jobs I've had that were total doozies.  Waitressing and hotels always lead the top of the list, for obvious reasons  wink  but there was one that was so ridiculous that I walked out in the middle of my shift.  I had this part time side job maybe in 1997 or so as a waitress in the restaurant of a Holiday Inn in SoCal...so, combining both the hotel and restaurant thing.  And this one night they had the main restaurant closed due to some company using it for their company Christmas party or something.  I remember people at that party doing really bad drunken karaoke - Gloria whats her name's disco tune, "I Will Survive"....but sung by a drunk guy.  roll   So the restaurant was closed, and everything was funneled into the bar area.  Which was about AS far away from the kitchen as you could get.  To get to the kitchen from the bar required going down this loooooooong corridor, which is not convenient when you're running around carrying big trays.

But the kicker was.......I was the only one scheduled to work that night.   Just me, and the bartender, and a room service guy.  I was expected to seat all my people, take their order, serve them, ring them up for payment and bus all my own tables.   While running back and forth and back and forth the looooooooooong way to the kitchen.....carrying big trays on my shoulder.

yeah.

I was getting more and more pissed as the night wore on, all the while there's the steady background noise of karoake off in the distance in the restaurant and the sounds of drunken reverie.  My popping moment came when I saw the manager in the kitchen, standing next to the cook's line, chatting casually with the line cooks.  Garnishing dishes as they came out and just loafing around, chatting, while I did EVERYTHING.   He was this nice, dopey guy who had NO clue, and it just never occurred to him to pitch in and help out in any way.   He'd never been a server himself as far as I knew, and came from a privelaged background, so yeah, it just didn't occur to him.  That whole "out of touch with reality" thing I mentioned earlier.    Nice, but out of touch.   I was grumbling to the room service waiter about how I was going to just quit and walk out, because this was stupid and getting worse as the night wore on.  So, he knew what the situation was.   And then I made my decision to do it, just quit.  But there was this one nice corporate dude at one of the tables who'd ordered a steak and a baked potato, so I waited until after his food came out to walk out.  Served him his steak, got him the extra sides that he needed and a refill too, told him to enjoy his meal as we exchanged sincere smiles, then off I went.  I marched back to the kitchen and the room service dude saw my expression and he just knew....uh oh, she's going to do it......and he dropped what he was doing and chased after me, hot on my heels.  I burst through the double doors of the kitchen, saw the manager still standing at the cook's line, chatting, saw the room service guy shoot him a look like, "Oh shit, you better do something!"  and I just....continued through the kitchen, out the rear exit, into the parking lot and to my car.   It was SUCH a weird contrast too getting out to the parking lot on the quiet warm night.  It's like I could feel the "realm change."  Inside it was like being caught up in an escalating nightmare while outside it was a totally different - calm, peaceful, quiet - world.   It was a jolt.

Anyway, I've had quite a few other crazy jobs and other instances of unplanned quittitng, and even one tale of getting a little revenge on a company who was the worst place I've ever worked for probably to this day.  But this one was a more benign example worth sharing.  wink  What big lessons I learned from this, I don't know, but hey, the experience was cool.   um, I think.

"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "Holy shit ... what a ride!"  - Anonymous
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"I get by with a little help from my (higher density) friends."
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lyra's Website

  • Lono
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Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Hee hee, Lyra.  I'm sure the manager got the "experience" of working that night!   I wonder if it gave him a clue about what it's like to wait tables.  Who knows-- your actions may have created a more well-staffed, better working environment for waitstaff to come.  Maybe you're even immortalized in myth.  "Yeah, I heard things used to be pretty bad, with only one waitress on the floor duing busy times.  Of course, that was before the Walker came."

Has anyone read the blog site this guy's article was on?  This guy is really interesting.  I agree with many of his ideas and philosophies, but then other times I think he's a self-righteous prick.   The "Bear-bombing" article really irritated me, for example.

18 Reply by lyra (edited by lyra 2006-07-28 08:32:07)

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Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Lono wrote:

Hee hee, Lyra.  I'm sure the manager got the "experience" of working that night!   I wonder if it gave him a clue about what it's like to wait tables.  Who knows-- your actions may have created a more well-staffed, better working environment for waitstaff to come.  Maybe you're even immortalized in myth.  "Yeah, I heard things used to be pretty bad, with only one waitress on the floor duing busy times.  Of course, that was before the Walker came."

Ah, I seriously doubt it.  These places never learn and never change.  Somebody leaves, disgruntled, they just hire somebody else.....and keep going through the revolving door of employees until they get one that sticks and tolerates all the b.s.    Restaurant managers, especially in hotels, can be a pretty transient lot as well, just there to have something managerial on their resume for a few years so they can climb up to something higher.  But they (usually) don't care, and have no personal investment in it either.  It's not a career for them.  It's all about the resume and moving on to climb higher, ASAP.


Lono wrote:

Has anyone read the blog site this guy's article was on?  This guy is really interesting.  I agree with many of his ideas and philosophies, but then other times I think he's a self-righteous prick.   The "Bear-bombing" article really irritated me, for example.

He does come across as being a bit..."full of himself", yes.   big_smile  And yet there are valuable ideas to be found, and he is giving it away for free, donation only.   But yet there's that whole "money making scheme" element to it all that doesn't jive with me personally.  "How to make $10,000 in an hour", "How to make money off your blog" and so on.

"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "Holy shit ... what a ride!"  - Anonymous
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"I get by with a little help from my (higher density) friends."
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  • WizardT
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  • Registered: 2006-04-04

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Boss is double SOB spelled backward, which is two of them, so the next time your boss annoys you, call him/her "Boss", and smile to yourself.

Seriously though, I think this guy, who is so very full of himself, may be on to something. His web site reminded me that Radio and TV make money from their advertisers, so we can listen and watch for free. This might  be a way to use the system to aid our quest to be financially free. It sure beats the you know what out of waiting tables or working on an assembly line.
WizardT

20 Reply by titmouse_ (edited by titmouse_ 2006-07-28 19:44:38)

  • From: Shores of Lake Titikaka
  • Registered: 2006-05-25

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Money can be a bi-product of a healthy passion. I would highly advise you seek those avenues which may be the spark, or a lead in serving a passion. This has been a source of fulfillment in my life. Many times very successful people have told me they wish they had my passion.  I wonder where they went wrong--did I fall for the illusion that success had a certain image?  I surely hope no one would measure success as a steady flow of money with no deeper meaning to life than that.

I have met many servers and assembly line workers who had more spirit and imagination that the so-called elite.  Serving others is a joy once you learn to appreciate the small pleasures in life. Stress is the biggest killer of spirit and life span. The more baggage you carry the more you have to lose. Spirit is hard to fake, and any feined attempt is weak, shallow, and obvious when secured by false values.


"Protect your spirit with your life"
~~carefulcarpenter

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~~carefulcarpenter

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  • Registered: 2006-07-28

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

titmouse_ wrote:

Serving others is a joy once you learn to appreciate the small pleasures in life.

So true!

"Whenever you find yourself on the side of the majority, it is time to pause and reflect." - Mark Twain

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22 Reply by heandras (edited by heandras 2006-08-04 04:12:37)

  • From: Germany
  • Registered: 2004-12-06

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Having worked as an employee for about one and a half years after having got my degree at the university I couldn’t stand that kind of lifestyle anymore and did cancel the contract. I’m working freelance for about the same length of time now. The reasons for that decision are these:

1. As an employee you spend most of your life in a mindset of waiting, which felt to me like watching the time of my life running out on hour-glass passively. Being at work you wait for knocking-off time. From Monday on you wait for weekend. If you need money you have to wait for your salary that comes at a certain day of the month. You can’t change anything through taking action, but only through waiting. Much elder people I know ultimately wait for retirement to finally be able to start doing things they ever wanted to do, like doing extensive travels. But… they are 65+ then. (Another point is: they keep thinking that when they are in a state of employment, but when retirement is there, oftentimes they do nothing of what they had fantasized about.)
As an employee, time is your enemy in a sense that you wish it will be gone as fast as possible. Working self-employed, time is also a kind of “enemy� , but exactly the other way around: You want to use it as efficient as possible. So, not the passage of time is your “enemy�  but your own lack of efficiency, which leads to the necessity to grow awareness – awareness about how you spend your time, energy and money. I know lots of employed people who have lost their healthy attitude towards money. If they earn quite less, they have a mindset of poverty and become stingy, if they earn (too) much, they become decadent, buying useless crap all the time to fill some emptiness inside.

2. The unnaturalness of rigid rhythms. Working 9 to 5 at 5 days a week and getting a salary at the exact same height at a defined day of month is extremely unnatural to me. Have you ever noticed rain falling down at the exact amount at a certain day a week or month regularly? Of course, nature has rhythms, but they are embedded into a grander scale of rhythms that are of a fractal manifestation. Nature always has ups and downs that are quite unpredictable while machines always work at the same rhythm. If you align with insecurity you align with the flow of nature on another level, while getting pushed yourself into rigid rhythms you become aligned to the forces of mechanization.

3. You submit your will to the will of a being that is spiritually less evolved than you, letting it determine the path of your life – or, at least how you spend a large amount of precious time of it. That is a bit of an assumption, but that was the case in my employment and I think it matches the circumstances of the majority of people out there.
Of course, there are some bosses out there who are on a positive spiritual path. I met one some months ago, who is a client of me now. This person is on a positive spiritual path AND has employees. I never observed such a productive, cooperative and harmonious working-circumstances. So it is possible indeed.

These are the things I learned from my employment wink I think the greatest danger is the creeping in passivity because you always have some authority that tells you what to do. It’s not your creativity, instincts and higher spiritual impulses that determine what you do, but a boss. I’m still in the process of recovery from that…
I had short temp jobs during the holidays of my study-time but that felt completely different than having a fixed contract as an employee.

A man is born gentle and weak. At his death he is hard and stiff.
Green plants are tender and filled with sap. At their death they are withered and dry.
Therefore the stiff and unbending is the disciple of death. The gentle and yielding is the disciple of life.

23 Reply by lyra (edited by lyra 2006-08-04 08:05:28)

  • lyra
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Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Those are all good points, heandreas.  Especially about the unnatural rhythm of a typical fixed work day schedule, and how people always seem to be waiting for 5:00, then waiting for the weekend, then waiting for retirement.  What a shame!   It's not the way life is supposed to be.  We're not supposed to try to plow through half our lives as quickly as possible, always pushing for some future time/date, while ignoring the now.

That's why I aim for mindless temp jobs now.  My current job I sit here and answer phones.....which means I have all this spare time to fill however I want.  I can get reading and writing done, and thus be "productive" on a personal level even while at work.  smile  It's awesome!

Your point about lack of creativity and always having to answer to somebody else is so true as well.  I've had jobs where practically every little thing I wanted to do had to be "approved" by somebody else first.   It's like being a little kid.  It's like grade school never really ended.  Even worse when the supervisors would say no to every thing I ran by them.  wink   "Let's not change the way things are being done, even though it's impractical and you see ways it can be improved.  Don't rock the boat.  Just sit down and keep doing things exactly the way they've always been done."  It was so tiresome always getting the "no" "no" "nos" from them.  I avoid jobs like that now as well.    When I temped at that Baptist church from December - April earlier this year, what I liked about it was that the pastor was out on medical leave for my first 6 weeks...so I was on my own, for the most part.   I was in the office by myself, and had full creative power over creating the monthly newsletter and weekly worship bulletins on the computer.  smile  It was cool.  They trusted me and had the attitude of, "if you see something that could be improved, go for it!"  I was also in charge of all accounts payables and cutting employee paychecks, so had the responsiblity of making sure all bills were getting paid, cutting the checks, and taking care of the past due invoices leftover from before I started working there.  And I LOVED that I didn't have to keep running to some silly supervisor, being like a little kid going, "Can I do this??  Can I do this??  Can I do that??  What about this??"  They were like, "Pay what needs to be paid, change what needs to be changed, improve whatever you think needs to be improved."   They wanted ME to take care of THEM.  big_smile  The total complete opposite of most jobs, where THEY want to micromanage the EMPLOYEE.   So yeah, it REALLY woke me up to the fact that I'd been working at these "grade school level" jobs for so long.   I will never do it again now.   The church gig set the standard for what I will and won't tolerate now.   Having all that responsibility and being given all that freedom and elbow room and rarely if never having to "ask for permission" to do what I already knew needed to be done...and then performing well and being successful at it, was amazing.   There's no going back.  Now I only want either easy mindless jobs where I can do personal meaningful stuff while at work, so my life isn't wasting away and I'm not being a "Clockwatcher," or, a job where I have very little supervision and am treated like an adult.

"Life's journey is not to arrive at the grave safely in a well preserved body, but rather to skid in sideways, totally worn out, shouting "Holy shit ... what a ride!"  - Anonymous
-----
"I get by with a little help from my (higher density) friends."
-----

lyra's Website

  • From: Melbourne, Australia
  • Registered: 2005-07-11

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Steve Pavlina is the man!
Below leads to a podcast about 'How to Make Money without having a job'!!
http://www.stevepavlina.com/blog/2005/1 … out-a-job/

Receiving money is about exchanging your value for other people. Not trading your time for money!!

"The universe is on fire with wonder, beauty, and ecstasy." - From the Undines to Humanity
  • Registered: 2006-09-28

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

lyra wrote:

On a related sidenote, there's nothing worse than people who've never had to work in the service industry.  They (ususally) make the biggest jerk customers and people to be waited on in restaurants.  Usually a lot of rich kids never have to work a day in their lives until after they graduate from their prestigious universities, then go off to their white collar corporate jobs dished to them on a silver platter, and as a result become completely detached from the every day real world.  They're just way off in left field with their heads up their butt and no concept of the working world's reality.   It should be mandatory for everybody to work in the service industry.  !!  wink  Because we all have to interact with it in our own lives, whether it be hotels, restaurants, or what have you and it would make for more understanding, empathetic customers.    As someone who's dealt with corporate guys throwing temper tantrums on par with a 3 year old, and cold, snotty, bitchy women restaurant patrons who run you ragged and expect everything NOW, and then only tip 5-8%, I can definitely attest to the wonders of having worked in "the real world," and the experience and empathy that being on the other side of the fence can give a person.  I think people who haven't worked are just typically out of touch with things and have unrealistic expectations when they're out and about...because they haven't been on the other side, and so have NO clue how it is.

I definitely agree with you here, Lyra. Most jerk customers are people who never had to work in the service industry. They're the ones who leave a mess and don't realize that you're the one who's going to have to clean up after them, or just don’t care. They don't see you as a person, but as a machine. They're the people who give you a hard time over an honest mistake and all other petty things.

"There cannot be progress without expression. There cannot be expression without separation. There cannot be separation without progress."-Ouroboros
  • From: Connecitcut
  • Registered: 2007-10-08

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

I find it hard to find honest sources of income.  Even the ways suggested on that website seem off to me.  When I come across a website with ads all over the place, I get turned off.  If someone is getting paid to do something, you never know if their intentions are pure or not.  If someone has to pay me to do something, it must not be worth doing.  Sometimes I feel like I not only never want to get a job, but I never want to make money.  The word business makes me cringe.  In today's world it seems that self-sustainment with as little money as you can get away with is the only honest way of living.

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Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

When I was 5 years old I wondered why I didn't know my father very well, seemed like he was a fleeting image in my life, so I asked him why he was always away from home. He explained to me he was at work making money so we could live in a house and eat decent food. I realized the man was a wage slave, it was sad to me, I felt very bad for him.

Years later I watched the miniseries roots and I couldn't help wondering to myself why the hell would someone procreate when they know their children will be enslaved. I think this is why I've always tried to work as little as I possibly can and have never had any children. It's often said that the children are the future, this is a half truth, the TPTB children are the future our children are the fodder.

Anyhow, I haven't worked for anyone for over a year now and its been great. You'd be surprised how little you need when you don't have to go to work every day.

I like to consider myself semiretired, and when I'm working always remembering to pace myself for my full retirement. Most men in my demographic have left the best of themselves in the mine or mill or trenches. Thats not happening to me. Thats not what I signed on for.

28 Reply by Skyalmian (edited by Skyalmian 2007-12-19 12:13:14)

  • Registered: 2007-03-08

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

Hermit Brad wrote:

Most jerk customers are people who never had to work in the service industry. They're the ones who leave a mess and don't realize that you're the one who's going to have to clean up after them, or just don’t care. They don't see you as a person, but as a machine. They're the people who give you a hard time over an honest mistake and all other petty things.

I work in retail currently, specifically a TJMaxx/HomeGoods duo store, and that analysis is spot-on... neutral

It's a lesson in both anger management and forgiveness to spend 9.5 hours each Saturday and Sunday (it's the Stupid Season so weekends are outright insane) doing clean-up after people. I'm sure this current way to have forgiveness is skewed, but I'm able to because I know they don't know any better (lack of awareness I guess, just like forgiving a dog that attacks out of fear because it doesn't know any better). They haven't worked in the service industry before, they don't respect the store / work we do, and they were raised by the MCS to just not give a damn. (The answer everyone gives when asked why they don't put stuff back where they found it is, "I don't work here.") Then I remind myself that I used to not care either and would put stuff in the completely wrong spot when I didn't want it. When I sometimes did want to put something back exactly where I found it, my parents would intervene and tell me to not bother, to just put it wherever (programming). I'm starting to see working in retail as some sort of lesson from seeing people at some of their worst... It's watching STS consumerism in all its dark glory.

The manager who hired me had this one question he was very insistent on, and that was, "Where do you see yourself in 3 years?" I had instantly thought of "Living in Croatia smile", "Not working here big_smile", "Living in a world without oil and retail lol", but that's not what him or any other employer wants to hear. They want to hear that you'll stay there forever, an obedient servant they can mold, use, and abuse. I told him "I honestly don't know", but that didn't satisfy him and even though he wanted a concrete answer I didn't give him one. tongue

I want to put some of these on the corkboard in the break room but I bet they'd try damn hard to catch the one who does. lol

  • From: Melbourne, Australia
  • Registered: 2005-07-11

Re: 10 reasons you should never get a job

It doesn't matter if you work in a job, if you have your own business or live off your financial investments. If it's money you want then you need to know to answer "How does one make money?"

The answer can be generalised. You are paid for the effort to:
help others
serve others
love others
bring happiness to others
make others' lives' more secure
make others' lives' easier

Think in terms of how you can add value/solve problems for an AUDIENCE WHO VALUES YOUR CONTRIBUTION. If you don't have an audience then you have no exchanges of value.

"The universe is on fire with wonder, beauty, and ecstasy." - From the Undines to Humanity