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[AugustWest]

More "a job where almost no one, customer or co-worker, treats you with simple human dignity ever".

Bullshit. Bullshit. Bullshit. 

Quit projecting.

Lots of people treat everyone with human dignity.  Most everybody who has ever had a fast food job, or a retail job treats such workers well.  And I'm willing to bet most of his co-workers treated him just fine.  Sure, there are assholes everywhere.  There are also saints everywhere.  All of us deal with them everyday. 

It is not a sad thing to have done a job (even an unpleasant job) well for a long time.  It is very easy for me to imagine that this was a challenging and rewarding job for this man.  It would have been much sadder if the guy never found a place he could make a legitimate contribution for 50 years of his life.  He found a workplace where he is happy.  Who the fuck are you to tell him it's not good enough?

[dejavroom]

Quit projecting.

Usually telling someone to give up on his/her entire goddam vocation would be rude, but in this case it is just the raddest thing.

[littlefallsmets]

Look, I understand being non-judgemental and I understand the joy of playing the devil's advocate to a person's point of view, especially mine, but...

Certainly, you've BEEN in a MacDonalds. Certainly, you've SEEN how the employees are generally treated by the customers and by each other in a MacDonalds.

As much as it would probably make me sleep better at night to believe that there are people in the world who could find that life fulfilling and, hence, I didn't have to feel completely guilty when interacting with people stuck in humiliating positions like that just to get by... no. Like, no.

All being spat upon by obese children for not having the right Happy Meal toy that week. Humans weren't designed for that. Sure, we can rationalize that, we can tolerate that, we can adapt to it while we die a little inside as the equal and opposite reaction to that adaptation but, like, no. No.

It sounds like prison. It sounds like hell. Especially that tiny detail of "oh, someone remembered he went to a baseball game once, let's get him a team jacket and pretend that means we know him in a meaningful way, somehow". Oh man, I wanna jump in a time machine and give him his life back.

And, yeah, of course I'm projecting. The totality of being a human amoungst other humans is an act of projection. That doesn't invalidate my feelings for the guy.

[Choop]

lfm, have you ever worked at a mcdonald's or any other fast-food-type establishment?

[dejavroom]

The totality of being a human amoungst other humans is an act of projection.

(someone legendary for projecting says everybody is projecting oh the gall of it)

[pmcd9]

I try to treat everyone with dignity.

Who's up for some Mickey D's y'all?

[AugustWest]

My wife's sister has a son with Down's Syndrome.  He's about 32 - 33 now.  He's worked for Target for 10 years now, cleaning up shelves and bringing in carts from the parking lot.  He loves his job and is proud to do it.  Would I feel the same way about that job?  No, but everybody is not me.

I've worked fast food and lots of other "shitty" jobs.  Know where I was treated the absolute worst?  In my first job as a lawyer.

Dignity is where you find it.  If this guy really felt degraded by his work, he wouldn't have stayed there 50 years.  

[AugustWest]

I try to treat everyone with dignity.

Who's up for some Mickey D's y'all?

Not me.  I hate McDonald's food.

[pmcd9]

Not me.  I hate McDonald's food.

I've been eating some really good burgers lately (not from McDonald's), but they do make a good french fry.

[dejavroom]

God dam you guys, all this talk is making me crave McD's for lunch, shit.

[Arachno-capitalist]

sMets, people who work at mcd's do so because they either want to or have to. Either way its their best available option and you should appreciate mcd's for providing those jobs so that otherwise unemployable people are able to feed their families. It is unclear what your best alternative is.
One time at mcd's I handed the cashier my money by putting it on the table and she threw a fit because I didn't hand it to her hand-to-hand, because she took that as some kind of insult. She told my friend, the next customer, that I didn't respect her and that people like me didn't realize that people working at mcd's do so because its the best they can do and they have families to support. Working at mcd's was the only job that allowed her to work hours that complimented her childrens' school schedules.
Its not hell. Hell would be a situation where she wasn't able to get a job at all.

[Liz]

For some people all they want is a humble, steady job without a lot of pain and pressure. For some people the quality of the life they lead outside their job is more important than what they do to pay the bills.

I mean I don't doubt that there are people out there who do spend their lives bitter and depressed, trapped in jobs they perceive as horrible and beneath them. But that's more about the person than the job. If the dude wanted more in life he would've surely gone after it.

[wombat]

Plenty of the people who are bitter and trapped in jobs they hate are people with a ton of education making a ton of money in jobs they worked all their lives to get. To assume that everyone who works with their hands is miserable and humiliated and wishes they were more like you, or that everyone who has a fancy title is full of joy and satisfaction, is just basically fucked up and totally ignorant.

Speaking as someone who has a PhD and has worked picking up animal shit, LFM, I know which job I would pick if I were offered the choice again, and it would NOT be being a college professor again. And basically, fuck you if you would look down on it, you know? 

[Bobby Isosceles]

Plenty of the people who are bitter and trapped in jobs they hate are people with a ton of education making a ton of money in jobs they worked all their lives to get. To assume that everyone who works with their hands is miserable and humiliated and wishes they were more like you, or that everyone who has a fancy title is full of joy and satisfaction, is just basically fucked up and totally ignorant.

Speaking as someone who has a PhD and has worked picking up animal shit, LFM, I know which job I would pick if I were offered the choice again, and it would NOT be being a college professor again. And basically, fuck you if you would look down on it, you know? 

Did... did WOMBAT just drop two F-bombs in anger?

Dude, LFM, you fucked up big time.

[wombat]

Do I really not cuss all the time here? I must edit myself more than I realize. One of the things I like the most about the picking-up-shit jobs is that we can say "fuck" as often as we want. Fuckity fucky fuck.

But in the old days before that, I had a button one of my students gave me that said "I only yell because I care." Let me put that button on for a moment. I would like to be clear that I am really very fond of my imaginary friend LFM.  But he really needs to get off his ass and accomplish something he is proud of, because I think that would go a long way to curing his Problem.

OK, now I am getting down off my telling-the-younguns-how-to-run-their-lives high hoss.

It seriously pushes my buttons to make assumptions about people based on their jobs. Some of the most miserable bastards I know are tenured PhDs. Some of the best, most skillful, hardest working people I know pick up shit for a living. What's more, some of the latter people feel sort of bad about themselves because they didn't go to college, or enough college, or do whatever is supposed to make you a more valuable person - like a miserable bastard college professor. And that fuck*ng pisses me off, so don't you dare add to it by assuming they are pathetic creatures who were incapable of making anything of themselves.

OK, I'm done.  I think.