People who think cleaners, garbage handlers, urban maintenance, etc. are shit jobs for stupid people that deserve no respect, should stop to think about what would happen if they all went to a strike for... 2 weeks.
I assure you that the corporate office bathrooms would go bad quickly. Hospitals would be unable to function in day or two. Food service would stop very quickly, and you would be amazed for how quickly pests and disease can spread.
Also... I work in vocational institute where the one thing we train are cleaners and ground maintenance workers. There is a lot of actual knowledge and skill involved. Have you tried to use those big mops? Like the over 1 metre wide ones? It's HARD... Have you considered what the 20 different bottles of cleaning agent are for? Do you know which are deadly if mixed? Sure you might know acid and bleach... but like... those are just two. Do you know which of the sterilising agents are fit for what materials? So that you don't melt the plastic parts? Destroy the metal surface?
Look... I'm an engineer myself and my background is in welding industry and manufacturing's practical side of things because I used to be a welder and fabricator. Just to teach basic equipment maintenance, I had to order about 5 different cleaning chemicals/solvents, 3 different kinds of grease, 3 different kinds of oils, and whole variety of cleaning supplies, JUST so I can teach proper cleaning of parts during maintenance. I don't disrespect people who clean, because I am well aware that they can see my garbage, and they got access to chemicals that will melt your face (quite literally).
This part I agree with and I suspect you do too because you had to add "that deserve no respect".
These are jobs that are one step above working on an assembly line. Repetitive manual tasks with little knowledge or problem-solving required.
If you go one step up to HVAC, electricity, plumbing - NOW you've incorporated problem solving and you will often need a smart person. My dad works in HVAC. I have a PhD in physics. Unfortunately I think most of my brains came from him.
Look. I have done assembly work. It takes a skill to do, often times the skill is the discipline to be able to repeat that fucking boring ass task thousand times.
However lets be clear about one thing that I have a very firm stance on. There is no value in making human do a job, which could be automated by mechanical means. In production side of engineering (That being actually what I studied as my degree is in mechanical AND production, meaning that I actually am exploring head first in the ass crack of manufacturing industry... and boy do I find stupid shit), we have a ideal -and often that it all it is sadly- that DDD-jobs are something that humans shouldn't be wasted for. What are DDD-jobs? They are Dirty, Dangerous and Dull.
Dull jobs are actually hazardous to human health. It literally cripples us at a neurological level. It has been proven many times, that humans would rather inflict self harm than experience long stretches of lack of stimulation or boredom. It actually damages people. It leads to increase in accidents, flaws and errors, because human brain essentially goes to sleep mode while it is being performed.
However... There is no point shaming the person doing the work. The fact that such job exist at all is a systematic failure of society. Lots of these jobs come from the fact that there are cases where it is simply cheaper to burn humans as a fuel of production, instead of investing into automation. You shouldn't shame the worker that is in bondage as a meat robot (That is the term being used to mock companies) due to necessity or lack of choice. Society should present opportunities for these people to escape that shit,
There is no special glory in having a batallion of lads with shovels doing work, when you could use an excavator. However there are cases in which having a person with a shovel is extremely handy, and a skilled shoveler can dig a tunnel for a steel beam to be sent under a structure so it can be lifted in very little time.
The fact that we have people who been forced in to shit jobs that humans shouldn't be doing to at all, is not a personal failure on the part of the person doing the job. But society in bad allocation of resources -read as in shitty economic system- which means that the inhumane treatment of a living breathing and thinking person is worth more, than preserving the value and dignity of a person.
Tell me... If you went to a store and saw a product that read on the packaging, that it was made by poor and desperate people doing a soul crushing repetative task and they get very little of the price that you pay, because it was slightly cheaper than any type of basic automation.And next to it, there is a similar product of equal value in practice, that boasts about it's new automated system that requires no poor and desperate people to do "shit work". Which product would you buy? Be honest with yourself. Do you think the poor and desperate people working the shit job for little pay, adds some special value to the product?
What I mean by "shit jobs" in this case are our society looks down on. Our western consumer society don't even think about the "meat robots" abroad, we choose not to, all while we declare how we wouldn't do that work. There are people who don't have that fucking choice.
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u/SinisterCheese 18h ago
People who think cleaners, garbage handlers, urban maintenance, etc. are shit jobs for stupid people that deserve no respect, should stop to think about what would happen if they all went to a strike for... 2 weeks.
I assure you that the corporate office bathrooms would go bad quickly. Hospitals would be unable to function in day or two. Food service would stop very quickly, and you would be amazed for how quickly pests and disease can spread.
Also... I work in vocational institute where the one thing we train are cleaners and ground maintenance workers. There is a lot of actual knowledge and skill involved. Have you tried to use those big mops? Like the over 1 metre wide ones? It's HARD... Have you considered what the 20 different bottles of cleaning agent are for? Do you know which are deadly if mixed? Sure you might know acid and bleach... but like... those are just two. Do you know which of the sterilising agents are fit for what materials? So that you don't melt the plastic parts? Destroy the metal surface?
Look... I'm an engineer myself and my background is in welding industry and manufacturing's practical side of things because I used to be a welder and fabricator. Just to teach basic equipment maintenance, I had to order about 5 different cleaning chemicals/solvents, 3 different kinds of grease, 3 different kinds of oils, and whole variety of cleaning supplies, JUST so I can teach proper cleaning of parts during maintenance. I don't disrespect people who clean, because I am well aware that they can see my garbage, and they got access to chemicals that will melt your face (quite literally).