I happened to be in an Aldi over the weekend, and made a comment about how the Aldi cashiers are so fast because they aren’t wasting energy by standing up while scanning items.
The cashier commented that being able to sit down at the register was great, it was like their break time, it was something they looked forward to. I had always wondered why Aldi cashiers were always so happy, and now I know.
Also they have great health and retirement benefits and are paid a livable wage.
I worked as a cashier years ago and while I will say, it’s probably better for your health to be standing (I work a desk job now and have definitely put on some lbs since leaving that line of work). It’s still absolutely ridiculous that employers won’t allow cashiers to have a chair. It’s just so they can pull that if you’ve got time to lean you’ve got time to clean bullshit on you. Instead of resting your body during lulls, they want you cleaning your register, stocking shelves, facing product or “fishing” for customers who need to checkout and are too dumb to get in the check stand with no line and head straight for the 4 person long line because of herd mentality. It’s really rough on the feet and back to stand in one place all day without being allowed to sit.
I don’t think standing all day like that is necessarily better, as it can cause other health complications. I did a light google search (i know, not the most extensive research) and the results suggest that standing for long periods can cause joint pain and put folks at a higher risk of problems with vericose veins. I understand that cashiers may do other things around the store, but some stand at the register for hours on end and that’s not much better than sitting.
https://www.webmd.com/fitness-exercise/standing-desks-help-beat-inactivity
You just stood there and watched her die?
Okay so this story is actually a fucking doozie. This was a very good friend of mine. Right on the cusp of retirement age. She was at the age where she could take it anytime, but was continuing to work longer because she wasn’t going to get very much, and had aspirations to live a lot longer. so one of the jobs she took was this really really high intensity like 12 hours a day as many days a week as you can do standing in a factory peak season to make all of those little customizable mugs and blankets and everything that people get for each other around Christmas. She made it like three days I want to say, and and just straight up never physically recovered from that.
Now, the doozy. I took care of her for like the nine months 10 months or so after that until she died. And the week that she died, I was in jail because I had been going around with a warrant for like two years by that point and I finally rolled a one and got pulled over.
so like when I’m having a bad time, it really feels like the police finished the job that capitalism started.
Anyway, I caught my breath at some point and m now fully embracing the doomed revolutionary shtick. It wasn’t a stretch. Ihave a tasteful facial scar from a police beating and everything.
As someone who became disabled later in life, I can say this with first-hand experience. The ADA prevents employers from refusing to meet reasonable accommodations for people with disabilities, provided those accommodations do not interfere with their ability to complete the tasks listed in the job description.
Ah but you see employers will do everything in their power to shoot themselves in the foot if it means employees have a worse time. To them, since they’re broken people, comfort means laziness. So basically anything, no matter how obvious and proven it is, could “interfere”.
See, but employers, especially shitty ones, still bend over backwards to try and explain how even small accomodations are completely impossible.
I hate seeing grocery store cashiers standing and complained to the manager, not that it would do anything. But I just like to make it known how insane and stupid it is for a person to stand there for 6 hours when a stool would be great. But no apparently sitting while checking out items is “unprofessional”
We’re all forced work ourselves into early graves, one way or another. Worse still is the lack of quality of life you’ll have, later on, after the ownership class has worked you into the ground and discarded you as no longer useful.
There are “blue zones” where way, way over the average number of people live past 100. Not only that, they’re really active and fully mentally there at those advanced ages too. We’ve tried to replicate every one of the things they have in common: Mediterranean or Japanese food, more excersise, community etc. but we just can’t get the same results.
Well, every part but one:
They all work far, far less than we do in the west. Like 3 hours a day and light chores afterwards, with the family usually while chatting or singing.
You can’t live better than a king could ever dream, off of other people’s hard work like that though.
I recently watched a Rebecca Watson video where she rips into the “blue zone” concept.
Thats cool thanks. At least i was right to be skeptical, I guess lol and I agree on there being a pattern for living a better life and its wealth.
Not wage or salary, just to be clear.
Specifically: wealth which comprises of things that earn you money, for not working, meaning you don’t have to work or you can work much less. Which, along with diet, is the main reason wealthy people live longer.
Its right there in front of us but we’re not allowed to look at it.
Japanese food works 3 hours a day
Beyond the ownership class, this ain’t happening chief.
Unless you’ve got some kinda source.
The idea that we all have to work the hours that we do, for us all to live comfortably, is the original claim here. One that you seen to back and demand sufficient evidence, to your own personal standard of burden and quality, or it must be 100% true, even if it definitely sounds like a lie rich people would make up to trick you into working for their profit.
Source: WW2. People don’t really take in how much of the world was at war in WW2. Appart from the obvious, the civil war in China and the millions of indians conscripted made the numbers of human men fighting, per percent of the population, huge. Yet, despite this, they had enough bullets, aircraft, ships etc. to literally fight a world war. Something like 3 tonnes of ammo was shot per soldier killed: insane production levels.
More so, outside of of deliberate action, callousness and or incompetence, there was more than enough food produced and no one staved.
If we could do that then, why couldn’t we do that even better now?
Unless you have a source that we do need to work 80% of the hours we’re awake as an adult, just to keep the world from grinding to a hault and us all dying of starvation and you weren’t just going to point at the planet and go “see, were not all dead” you got the source you deserve.