BF2S Forums First World Problems

uziq wrote:

dilbert is one of those conflicted men who don't know how to comprehend their personal failures and so likes to beat a very worn drum about 'the death of manhood' and 'the pussification of the male species'. because he can grease a gun and replace a flat tire on a subaru he feels better about having to pay women to have sex with him. he likes talking up the value of practical thinking and problem solving because he doesn't understand people.

i am not going to romanticise blue-collar workers. a lot of them are chancers and shirkers and will look to rip off a wealthy customer. there's always been a deeply ingrained culture of 'fadging' the job in the uk: a few missing pallets off the back of a truck, a few conveniently damaged items, a little skimmed off here and there. they're not some noble person taking up a craft like a fucking dutch lens grinder in the high renaissance. they are mostly people who sucked at school and turned their hands to the next best thing that still paid good money.

but cool if macbeth wants to get two undergraduate degrees, more than anyone needs and more than is considered practicable and useful for 99.99% of students, and then sit on a car forecourt all day. he's just like good will hunting.

I like the Matt Damon comparison but I always considered myself more a Ben Affleck type of guy.

i'd rather have a job in the cultural sector and make 1/2 the salary of a top-end technician

Whose the one painting themselves as having taken a noble path now?

i don't look down on trades but i know that i'd rather have a job that uses my cultural knowledge than have to do backbreaking labour. god knows where jay gets his jaded view of white-collar work from. he must work in a very stifling and hierarchical corporate job. i work in an office that has an extremely flat hierarchy and the ethos is collaborative. people love being at work. and not in that masochistic, ur-american sense, where people 'love' that they work 60-hour-weeks and live for the company. my work genuinely doesn't feel like work a lot of the time. but sure, whatever you say springsteen. you're the guy who has spent half a decade of your life in higher education and tens of thousands of dollars. most would want some sort of ROI on that.

Its becoming well understoof that sitting at a desk is typically less healthy than doing 'backbreaking work', which almost no-one does these days, we have tools and machines to do most of it.

uziq wrote:

i never said there isn't history and knowledge involved in manual work. that's obvious. i mean working in the cultural sector, not getting your hands dirty. not even having to dress up for work and get into an 'office' state of mind. that's work which is most amenable to me.

The 'cultural sector'? What definition of cultural are you using? Do you mean the arts? Every aspect of life and work is 'cultural'. Creating artefacts which are used in the world is just as much a cultural endeavour as publishing books written by creative people, maybe more so.

uziq wrote:

dilbert is one of those conflicted men who don't know how to comprehend their personal failures and so likes to beat a very worn drum about 'the death of manhood' and 'the pussification of the male species'. because he can grease a gun and replace a flat tire on a subaru he feels better about having to pay women to have sex with him. he likes talking up the value of practical thinking and problem solving because he doesn't understand people.

Em, OK, I'm fine with the pussification of the world if it means people you despise, like Jay and me, can clean up - despite our manifold personal failures of which I'm well aware. And of course I do outsource some work to professionals

i am not going to romanticise blue-collar workers. a lot of them are chancers and shirkers and will look to rip off a wealthy customer. there's always been a deeply ingrained culture of 'fadging' the job in the uk: a few missing pallets off the back of a truck, a few conveniently damaged items, a little skimmed off here and there. they're not some noble person taking up a craft like a fucking dutch lens grinder in the high renaissance. they are mostly people who sucked at school and turned their hands to the next best thing that still paid good money.

A lot of them just didn't have the aptitude or patience for a narrow schooling and were better off learning something useful. I'm more impressed by someone who has first of all a very wide range of skills and interests, and secondly can learn and develop a new skill off their own bat - compared with someone who takes a decade to learn something very narrow and of limited value or interest.

Compared with how lawyers, financial advisors, merchant bankers, the landed gentry, the ruling classes etc rip off the average person who isn't in their 'club' - there's always been a deeply ingrained culture of outright theft there - I'll take a bit of blue-collar graft any time.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2017-02-21 01:01:25)

you went to a boarding school and imperial, stop pretending you're some salt-of-the-earth type just because you dropped out of the uk establishment and went to kick rusty cans in australia. you're just as conflicted as jay over your dual aspiration and inverse snobbery. you want it the best of both ways.

don't think i'm saying anything controversial here. neither am i being snobby or putting on airs. i said i'd rather earn less and do a job that involves my personal passion. not noble or pretentious – a very common sentiment. i get paid to read and work on books. i'm sure carpenters love getting up every morning at 5am to go and work in all weathers or whatever. if it's their abiding passion like books are mine, more power to them.

i said i'd rather work in an office where i can walk in on a flexible clock in trainers and knitwear than work exposed to the elements in tiring labour. again seems uncontroversial to me. i never said it was 'more healthy'. i'm fine taking the free gym membership and long jogs in my copious spare time. i don't need to be bent over a workbench all day or carrying bricks around a building site to be in shape.

and i said i don't see the point in someone getting two degrees and remaining as a car salesman their whole lives. you're really just cutting off your nose to spite your own face on that one. this is probably the only time in my life i'd say that you could just as well get a library membership and skip the expensive education altogether. normally i'd be the one vouching for formal education and you guys would be calling me a snob.

also a huge amount of inverse snobbery and assumption here. it's cute that jay thinks he can watch some youtube videos and get into gardening for three months and suddenly he has acquired some skill that a well-educated person with an ivy league degree somehow couldn't. those effete snobs!!!

yes it is considered nice when someone's kid becomes a lawyer or professor or journalist. that's how white collar professions work and have done since about the time of ancient rome. sorry that you take some personal chagrin against it but don't take the issue up with me. it's generally considered desirable to avoid dirty and laborious jobs and to make a living doing what you love. i'm sorry that i've made a living out of books and you're having to post in 'i hate my job' threads about how frustrating your corporate engineering job is. remember all those years you spent saying how my degree choice would come home to haunt me in the 'real world'? oops. looks like i'm having a great time and you're still bitter and pissy.

Well its funny that they don't scale back their fees when they've paid off their debts eh?
Or charge less given that the state paid all the costs for many of them, they charge what the market will bear like everyone else.

uziq wrote:

yes it is considered nice when someone's kid becomes a lawyer or professor or journalist. that's how white collar professions work and have done since about the time of ancient rome. sorry that you take some personal chagrin against it but don't take the issue up with me. it's generally considered desirable to avoid dirty and laborious jobs and to make a living doing what you love. i'm sorry that i've made a living out of books and you're having to post in 'i hate my job' threads about how frustrating your corporate engineering job is. remember all those years you spent saying how my degree choice would come home to haunt me in the 'real world'? oops. looks like i'm having a great time and you're still bitter and pissy.

I've had a white collar job for a while now, I haven't got my hands dirty at work for more than 20 years, except if I've chosen to. It wasn't particularly my objective but that's how it panned out.
But then I've probably made more for myself, and certainly far more for my family, doing hands-on stuff at the weekends and holidays, and done legal and accounting work on top which has been invaluable.
I'm not sure which is more rewarding, I enjoy them both. Its been productive to have had a foot in both camps, helpful to have a good understanding of many fields and the people in them.

Good luck to anyone who anyone who chooses to sneer and look down on or underestimate anyone else or their trade or profession, whether its they guy who delivers your heating oil or your accountant. Treat them wrong and you're going to get raped. Display ignorance and they'll fuck you over.

Last edited by Dilbert_X (2017-02-21 04:18:10)

Jay wrote:

Do you research stuff before you buy it? I bet you do. I research plumbers, mechanics etc on Yelp and Google reviews.

By the same token, you should be able to do some research into things like basic maintenance. I think I posted here a while back about the time I went to the dealer to get my A/C repaired and I watched them bully the man in front of me into paying for a cabin air filter change. They charged him $75 for a $10 part that takes less than a minute to install. They took advantage of his ignorance.

Knowing what needs to be fixed before you call in someone to do the work is no different than checking reviews, it's all part of the same process. It usually doesn't take much effort either. Spend $100 and get a code scanner for your truck etc.

I wish I could count the number of times, and seen the look on peoples faces, when someone has tried to rip my mother off and she's gone back the next day and said "My son's an engineer and he says....."
Its thousands and thousands of dollars in the last few years alone.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Good luck to anyone who anyone who chooses to sneer and look down on or underestimate anyone else or their trade or profession, whether its they guy who delivers your heating oil or your accountant. Treat them wrong and you're going to get raped. Display ignorance and they'll fuck you over.

What a particularly gruesome display of excuse-making for these wholesome blue-collar cretins. The rape metaphor in particular just says it all. Bravo.

Why? It's business. Much of the world's commerce is predicated on taking advantage of fools, whether it's selling rebranded items at a higher markup because of name value, or selling fad weight loss stuff, or helping the government design a health care system that protects profits and leads to skyrocketing drug costs, or selling kids degrees they don't need, fools are being taken advantage of. We're simply saying don't play the fool, it's not that hard.

People get pissed off when blue collar workers do it because most of them lack subtlety.

Last edited by Jay (2017-02-21 04:44:29)

Cybargs wrote:

Jay wrote:

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

What a particularly gruesome display of excuse-making for these wholesome blue-collar cretins. The rape metaphor in particular just says it all. Bravo.

Why? It's business. Much of the world's commerce is predicated on taking advantage of fools, whether it's selling rebranded items at a higher markup because of name value, or selling fad weight loss stuff, or helping the government design a health care system that protects profits and leads to skyrocketing drug costs, or selling kids degrees they don't need, fools are being taken advantage of. We're simply saying don't play the fool, it's not that hard.

People get pissed off when blue collar workers do it because most of them lack subtlety.

People aren't smart enough to get quotes from two competing tradies.

that's literally have your problem solved.

Three!

SuperJail Warden wrote:

It is interesting that Jay and Dilbert, the white collar guys don't buy into white collar supremacy meanwhile the blue collar guy Newbie doesn't think too highly of blue collar people.

Then again Newbie's own blue collar workers were stealing from him so I can understand why he would not like them.

Most blue collar guys I know have a complex because they've been told all their lives that they are dumb and inferior. It's a really terrible aspect of our society.

Like I said, I'd rather see more smart people going into the trades. A college degree really doesn't have anything to do with office work - there are very few direct paths between x major and y profession. A college degree is just an educational base from which to start life, no matter the path. If a kid with a history degree wants to become a carpenter, I think that's awesome, and I wish him the best. It's probably better and more fulfilling than being an analyst in some back office. Snobbery is a cancer.

unnamednewbie13 wrote:

Dilbert_X wrote:

Good luck to anyone who anyone who chooses to sneer and look down on or underestimate anyone else or their trade or profession, whether its they guy who delivers your heating oil or your accountant. Treat them wrong and you're going to get raped. Display ignorance and they'll fuck you over.

What a particularly gruesome display of excuse-making for these wholesome blue-collar cretins. The rape metaphor in particular just says it all. Bravo.

Do you think its different in white-collar land?

Is it better to be ripped off by someone with a posh voice, clean fingernails and a row of certificates behind his desk?

Which is nicer to bend over for as you line someone else's pocket with your hard-earned cash? The insurance policy you don't need, the risky medical procedure which will likely take you backward, the buy-in to the already doomed investment fund, the knowingly uselss legal advice? etc etc

White collar graft is at least as prevalent, and instead of taking you for 100, or 1,000s of dollars they relieve you of 10s or 100s of thousands of dolllars in the long run. I guess it just feels worse to be fleeced by someone you perceive as dumber and less knowledgeable than you instead of smarter.

I don't romanticise anything.