chapotraphouse

Washing dishes at a restaurant was my jam. Cranking music, making the other staff happy since I could clear that place like nobody else. all the dishes were the same and fit in the machine that was made for them, so I could focus on making the most efficient system to get everything done fast. I was wet and standing on slippery concrete all day, but it's rewarding being the best at something.

But it payed 7.00, and the managers treated me like shit. Only job I ever walked out of when the owner started scolding me for washing a bin that was brought to me that still had too many frozen peas in it in her opinion. Final straw after constantly being short staffed, changing shifts last minute, firing good managers to give their shitty kids the positions, and forcing everyone to fill in other jobs without training.

Fuck you, pie company. I could have been happy.

Honestly I love the idea of just living life hanging out and being helpful at my own pace. Fixing things, growing things. Helping people without the stress of quotas or productivity over my head.

Being useful vs being productive, the struggle of capitalism.

I don't love love plumbing but I'll do it 30 hrs a week if it needs doing and I dont have to worry about my basic needs not getting met (especially when I get too old or injured to keep plumbing)

most shitty jobs aren't that shitty if you take away the profit motive and treat people with a little dignity.

i like cooking people food but jesus fucking christ is it a lot of fucking work

"Who fucks my wife under communism?"

Same, my favorite job was working as a (non-certified) machinist and welder that designed and made in-house jigs and equipment for a factory. I loved designing the parts and then turning a pile of stock into a useful piece of equipment. I ended up becoming a PhD scientist and still miss that job. The worse part is that I totally could have made a decent career out of welding. My cousin is making more than me as a welder without any degree.

You could just do what you do now, but after removing all the bullshit PR, Banking, Marketing and PMC jobs, there's double the workforce so the plumbers work 50% and are happy because they have more time to work out and hang out with friends and family.

Alternatively: we repurpose "self-driving" Tesla busses, put in a bunch of sleep pods and turn them into mobile automated gulags on wheels. They just drive up and unload a crew of former PMCs/CEOs led in at gunpoint by AI robodog, restrained by shock-collar, that amazon gadget registering if you're moving or not and geo-fencing as they are forced to scrub that bowl, fix that leak, paint that wall and so on. They get re-educated in VR (that detects if your eye-lids are closed or not) as they are transported between worksites and sustain themselves on a steady diet of soylent meal-replacement. The busses are parked on a repurposed luxury liner just circling the globe picking them up and unloading them to disaster sites as needed. Trapped in a high-tech torment nexus of their own creation until they repent, after which they get a small apartment and a bicycle in some really small town where they can never hurt anyone again. Fully automated so no camp guards are needed or hurt.

Turns out I like helping people. If I could do that and not have to worry about affording food or a place to live then I wouldn't really give a shit about pay.

There's days I miss catering, as brutal as it got. But the pay was really bad, especially considering how fast you burn through dress pants and how the money barely covers the laundry and parking that you inevitably find yourself paying for at some locations. But goddamn, I even get a smile thinking about the time I put in 30 hours in 2 days. Absolute hell; I lusted for it.

Nobody. We all just poop on our balls at that point.

I would love to cook food for other people if it was under proper conditions and valued fairly.

I worked a summer where I maintained shrubbery at retirement homes and it was incredibly rewarding, would love to do it, but not for minimum wage and not without breaks in the hot summer sun for 9 hours a day.

I would love to work on a ship transporting essential goods, but I'm neurodivergent, so I'm not allowed

I'd love to work with children, I used to and it was rewarding as fuck. However I don't wanna be the sole person responsible for 25 minors (including a few with special needs) especially when I have no formal education in the field. Even less when my wage gets cut. Even less when the field got less and less financial support.

I'd love to teach the elderly how to speak another language or develop other skills. I volunteered for this once and enjoyed it. Just didn't have time to volunteer, and there's no paid gigs.

I've loved working in the service industry as a waiter, a tour guide, a chef and a lot more and it was all so rewarding. Work conditions sucked the life out of me however.
I worked in demolition and loved it, I would love to do that kind of hard labour if I knew safety precautions were taken and I could be sure management didn't screw me out of wages. However I can't, because both things happened often.

I would not like to show up and rubber-stamp public infrastructure plans I know suck shit, but it's the job that pays the best, so I guess this is what society needs. Society is just desperate for me to clock in, take an hour long shit, drink a litre of coffee, steal from the canteen (out of principle) and fuck about on social media for a few hours. I don't see the utility and it is making me depressed, but I guess this is what society needs. Capitalism is the most efficient distributor of resources after all.

probably me, i suppose.

Who fixes toilets under communism? SPONGE-BOB-SQUARE-PANTS!

The material conditions that precede full communism would mean that no job would need doing unless you want to do it. Automation, robots, etc would take care of all the menial labor. Human labor would be absolutely voluntary and recreational.

But I get we’re talking lower stage communism ie socialism. People are willing to do the jobs required by the world around them when treated with respect and dignity, without exploitation and corporate dictatorship. And if sincerely nobody wanted to do it full time, alternative models exist, like dividing basic janitorial work amongst office staff with a chore chart

Let's say the average person poops 0.5 L per day, including toilet paper and sawdust for covering it. A composting toilet tank that's 1 m^3 would be ample year-round capacity for 5 people; a tank that's 2x2x6 meters would be enough for over 130 people. It could comfortably be contained in a 1.5 hectare area (3.75 acres) that gives a standard urban density for those 130 people. It does not draw any freshwater reserves, it does not cause any potential runoff issues, it does not rely on any technology more complicated than saws for sawdust, and it literally cannot break or get clogged.

The only cost is that you might have to walk 50 meters to go to the bathroom instead of 5, and once every 6 months someone shovels out half of it (maybe 3 tons in a day's work) to mulch the trees or the flower garden.

The solutions to "who would do this under communism" usually boil down to "we wouldn't need to do that wasteful bourgeois individualist stuff in the first place". Like having a water tower and a treatment plant so that people can flush their poop through pipes in their house. Or having food cooked and served to order in individual portions. Or using a vehicle made of 2 tons of steel to travel past all the infrastructure required for everyone else's steel behemoth. Or buying a new outfit which gets worn 10 times and then thrown in the trash.

Our baseline needs are really not that hard to meet, and capitalism persists by feeding us the illusion that they are hard, and that capitalism alone can meet them.

One of my favorite jobs was working in a cemetery as the guy who digs the graves in my 20s. I got to be outside 8 hours a day maintaining the grounds (mostly doing gardening work, occasionally picking up trash that blew in, etc) and digging big ass holes.

The pay was the absolute minimum wage the company employeeing me was legally allowed to pay, kept my hours under the threshold to provide me any benefits whatsoever, and constantly tried to exploit my labor, but I liked the work itself. My customers never complained and that was pretty great.

The death industry is fucking despicable though, I am very happy to not be a cog in that machine anymore. Still though, it was pretty nice having a job that kept me in shape and I took my work seriously to be respectful to both the dead and the families that would visit/attend. Met some pretty cool people doing that work.

But seriously, don't pay these fucking vultures the ridiculous rates they charge. They feed off peoples grief and they do not give a single fuck once you leave. I've personally watched funeral directors take sledgehammers to old vaults that shifted to make space for their current clients, toss remains in the trash, mix up peoples ashes and not give a fuck.

Mario

I thought some italian feller mario would

I absolutely loved receiving pallets of stuff at a grocery store, stocking the shelves, got into a "bulk foods buyer/receiver/stocker" slot at a decently sized (but not a chain) grocery store for about a year and it hit all the right buttons in my brain for like 99% of the tasks.

Silly managers decided to make some poor financial decisions, then needed to fire all the experienced staff they couldn't harass into quitting to try to cover their asses. sigh