fuck anyone who complains about "trendies" and what "real workers" are like

[#FF0000]

I was at my factory job last night (3rd shift, fuck the sun) and I was discussing art and photography and color theory with my co workers and they aren't even students on the side or anything.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Trendies talk about art and photography? :D

Yeah this is definitely true and I hate how narrowly working people are defined in this country. I always have and I used to think maybe it just because so many people now have more education than in the past and the modern workforce is just much more diverse in interests and background and levels of education. Then when I became a radical and began reading more history or even literature with a more focused eye, I realized it's always been this way: all the different immigrant workers who brought all different kinds of traditions and mixed them with other workers; all the working people who founded electric blues and rock and roll (not to mention the tenant farmers and so on who synthesized jazz and blues in the delta where black and Anglo and French and Irish and Creole and Spanish cultures combined); car culture; poetry and music of migrant workers.

I was reading "The Big Strike" which is about the San Fransicko general strike and the author worked on boats for a while and talked about how much he resented the stereotypes of maritime workers. The stereotype back then (and now, but less so since these workers are not as numerous now relative to the total working class population) was that workers were drunk and violent and womanizing. His response: take any group of people, keep them at sea for months in cramped quarters where 20 people slept in the same room and 50 shared the same bathroom, then pay them and give them 72 hours of free-time in some port-city they are unfamiliar with and OF COURSE SOME ARE GOING TO DRINK AND SEEK DATES OR PROSTITUTES! He said that far from being the uneducated brutes that they were popularly thought to be, he said that almost every person he worked with was someone who wanted to be a poet or author - they were all romantics who read a lot (well on a boat, what else can you do when you;re not working) and took the work because they wanted out of factory jobs, wanted out of their small town, wanted to get away from racism in their hometowns or away from abusive families.

[Blackscare]

Yea, it just depends on individuals. My current job (also third shift) isn't like that, but I've had those experiences. Mostly they just make dick jokes with the baguettes (I work at a bread factory*). I guess I'd be more along the lines of your coworkers though, I don't go to school either. :P Not that I'm trying to pat myself on the back, plenty of people here make me look like a buffoon, but I kind of like being an "organic intellectual" and I think I do more political good here than if I had remained in school, TBH.




*bread FACTORY, bakeries are where mustachioed men in little poofy hats make a few loaves through the day to sell to the townspeople.

[Blackscare]

To be clear, I'm not working to "do political good", I'm working because I need money :P

[praxis1966]

Come to think of it, I've had similar experiences. Just about every blue collar environment I've worked in was like this... Everywhere I've been was full of people who painted, wrote poetry, some person who was heavy into philosophy or religion (as an intellectual pursuit), took photos, etc. I even knew a bartender once who sculpted in his spare time.

[Blackburn]

Yes this is true. I met some pretty interesting people in my supermarket worker days. One dude who was really into film, used to blow my mind with his discussions. So much that I appreciate film itself as an artform these days.

and then I've had the opposite situation when I entered the world of Insurance. It's like a dumbed down culture of Sports fanaticism, golfing etc... and conformity. The most passionate conversations were about football teams etc. :thumbdown:

[#FF0000]

I even knew a bartender once who sculpted in his spare time.

Ahahaha I work with a former bartender who makes money on the side as an artist.

It's a trope I think

[coda]

not surprising to me! F0000 what kind of factory do you work?

hey Blackfish! back in the day(many years ago circa 80's and one of many jobs I've had) I worked graveyard shift at a small Bread factory owned by an immigrant Italian family. I'd hitch rides home in the morning with the bread delivery truck driver. They'd send me home stuffed full with a bag full of exotic breads I had never heard of or ate before or since!!! oh, I am fucking dying for a tasty piece of bread! Thanks for jogging my memory. I would never have remembered! :)

[Dogs On Acid]

To deem workers as "un-intellectual" is bullshit anyway. I know some smart bourgeois people who know fuck all about Socialism.

[manic expression]

Just to throw this out there...in my experience, the "best students" are usually the most vapid and thoughtless when it comes to anything outside of a classroom.

[black magick hustla]

people are interesting guys. from ex cons to politicians.

i miss palingenesis :((((((((((((((

[#FF0000]

not surprising to me! F0000 what kind of factory do you work?

I'm at a medical supplies/pharmaceutical plant. I'm an Inspector which half the time means I am counting syringes on pallets.

I tell people that I'm a scientist though.

[tracher999]

Yes this is true. I met some pretty interesting people in my supermarket worker days. One dude who was really into film, used to blow my mind with his discussions. So much that I appreciate film itself as an artform these days.

and then I've had the opposite situation when I entered the world of Insurance. It's like a dumbed down culture of Sports fanaticism, golfing etc... and conformity. The most passionate conversations were about football teams etc. :thumbdown:

yeah idd i hate people that allways tallking about football to its fuckt up:confused:

[NoOneIsIllegal]

I was at my factory job last night (3rd shift, fuck the sun)

Yea, it just depends on individuals. My current job (also third shift)
Can we start a "Third Shift Revolutionaries" group? I work the night-shift as well. WORKERS OF THE GRAVEYARD, UNITE.

[AnonymousOne]

I worked as a cashier with a guy who ran a biology lab out of his garage. He was working on trying to breed fast growing edible mushrooms. One of the coolest people I ever met. Taught me never to make assumptions about people just because of their job.

[tracher999]

I worked as a cashier with a guy who ran a biology lab out of his garage. He was working on trying to breed fast growing edible mushrooms. One of the coolest people I ever met.

nice wat fore mushrooms was he breeding drugs ore fore other use:thumbup1:

[praxis1966]

Something I was just musing over... I think the reason for the distinction between how working class v. bourgeois people spend the spare time can be found in their motivations for working in the first place. A lot of the bourgeois people I've encountered, men especially, define themselves by what they do for a living. Most of the working class people I've encountered don't, "It's just a job," as the saying often goes. To put it simply, the bourgeois live to work (hence the term "workaholic"), working class people work to live.

It also reminded me of something my father told me once. Whilst coaching my baseball team when I was a little kid, one of the coaches from another team (who we happened to be sharing the field with that day and whom my father had become amicably acquainted with) who was a stock broker started asking my father if he wanted a job. My father was in education, but this other guy had recognized his intelligence and knew he could make a killing if he applied it to the market. Aside from the dishonesty my father saw in buying and selling stocks, he recalled a story this guy had told him once... Apparently, the stock broker had taken his entire family for a two week vacation in Hawaii. The guy said he was more stressed out about his and his clients' portfolios than when he was actually in the office because he couldn't manage them from where he was... this was back in the 80s so there weren't any of the electronic conveniences we now take for granted.

Can you imagine any working class person actually giving a fuck about what was going on with the assembly line or in the kitchen of the restaurant they worked in if in fact they were lucky enough to get a vacation in Hawaii? Somehow, I just don't see it happening...

[Jimmie Higgins]

Can you imagine any working class person actually giving a fuck about what was going on with the assembly line or in the kitchen of the restaurant they worked in if in fact they were lucky enough to get a vacation in Hawaii? Somehow, I just don't see it happening...I saw Mark Steel perform stand-up recently and he was doing a routine about the Marxist theory of alienation (stay with me here, if you can believe this subject was actually part of a comedy routine). He was talking about some small company he worked for and how there was a guy he worked with on an assembly line and every morning as the first muffins began to come down the conveyor belt, this co-worker would yell: "here, they come, here come those fuckers!" And Mark Steel said, you really have to question a system that causes people to loathe something like muffins with such deep conviction.:lol:


Something I was just musing over... I think the reason for the distinction between how working class v. bourgeois people spend the spare time can be found in their motivations for working in the first place. A lot of the bourgeois people I've encountered, men especially, define themselves by what they do for a living. Most of the working class people I've encountered don't, "It's just a job," as the saying often goes. To put it simply, the bourgeois live to work (hence the term "workaholic"), working class people work to live.Brilliant point.

[Blackburn]

Something I was just musing over... I think the reason for the distinction between how working class v. bourgeois people spend the spare time can be found in their motivations for working in the first place. A lot of the bourgeois people I've encountered, men especially, define themselves by what they do for a living. Most of the working class people I've encountered don't, "It's just a job," as the saying often goes. To put it simply, the bourgeois live to work (hence the term "workaholic"), working class people work to live.

It also reminded me of something my father told me once. Whilst coaching my baseball team when I was a little kid, one of the coaches from another team (who we happened to be sharing the field with that day and whom my father had become amicably acquainted with) who was a stock broker started asking my father if he wanted a job. My father was in education, but this other guy had recognized his intelligence and knew he could make a killing if he applied it to the market. Aside from the dishonesty my father saw in buying and selling stocks, he recalled a story this guy had told him once... Apparently, the stock broker had taken his entire family for a two week vacation in Hawaii. The guy said he was more stressed out about his and his clients' portfolios than when he was actually in the office because he couldn't manage them from where he was... this was back in the 80s so there weren't any of the electronic conveniences we now take for granted.

Can you imagine any working class person actually giving a fuck about what was going on with the assembly line or in the kitchen of the restaurant they worked in if in fact they were lucky enough to get a vacation in Hawaii? Somehow, I just don't see it happening...


Yeah working in Insurance was stressful, but as a worker we used to say to people going on holiday: "Now don't think about insurance". The usual response was like: "Just watch how much of a fuck I don't give about Insurance!"

[#FF0000]

welp i got switched to another building at my job. new schedule and everything

i miss my co-workers.

[The Teacher]

Some of the best art I've ever seen was drawn on the back of a factory production sheet. Some of the most interesting conversations I ever had were in the break room. That being said, the majority of my co-workers were literally addicted to crack and often not much to talk to. One of the guys I worked with was homeless and he had some interesting views on life (not that I necessarily agreed with him).

[Kuppo Shakur]

Y'all are lucky.
Man at my job everyone thinks they're everyone else's boss.
It's like the complete opposite of solidarity.

[#FF0000]

Y'all are lucky.
Man at my job everyone thinks they're everyone else's boss.
It's like the complete opposite of solidarity.

It's like that with some people. Specifically between First Shift workers and Third Shift. They're mostly actually employed by the company while we're mostly temp.

[Jimmie Higgins]

"here, they come, here come those fuckers!"Incidentally, this is what I always thought when I worked a cash register and saw a line of customers forming.

I'm so glad I became a radical because otherwise I think I'd just hate all of humanity after working service jobs. Customer service does actually produce something: misanthropes.


Y'all are lucky.
Man at my job everyone thinks they're everyone else's boss.
It's like the complete opposite of solidarity. Yeah it's mixed - I've worked with a lot of bitter people, I've worked in places with a real bad atmosphere and low morale where everyone always thought they were on the chopping block and so everyone was backstabbing and competitive. It's not like we're all surrounded by a dozen "Good Will Huntings" (Matt Damon's character, not copies of the movie) at work all the time.

But it is MUCH different than the way working people are usually portrayed. We're all either seen as "noble savages" who live simple uncomplicated lives* (yeah right, being working and not having tons of money or free-time gets complicated as fuck) or we are dumbfucks who are stupid apathetic.

*I've been amazed how many times I've worked some shit job and some customer must be thinking, "Wow, I love shopping here, I find it fun" and then they come up and say, "Wow, you must love working here" or "It must be so much fun working here". Yeah, dude, I'd be folding shirts/making overpriced coffee for strangers/stacking books/entering this data on my own anyway, so it's just awesome that this place is willing to pay me barely enough to survive on and let's me do all that here!