I did retirement home training and used to think it was a sweet job. Then I got in the business and underestimated how demoralizing it was as they give you the easy elders in training while the others make you, or at least me, really think of the fact the job just amounts to an unkarmic freebie.

  • zcd@lemmy.ca
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    Private equity/venture capitalists - they acquire unique brands and then extract all the value and enshitify them into the ground

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      One of the reasons Boeing sucks is this. First reason is McDonnell Douglas bought Boeing with Boeings money, hallowed out the soul that built the world’s greatest aircraft, then sold what was left off to the big investment funds. Then the investment funds were like “look at all this money Boeing is spending on safety and suppliers” so they cut out the safety and bought out the suppliers. The horror stories of quality control at some of the suppliers is just as bad if not worse than some of the horror stories of quality control at Boeing. What if I told you Boeing fought to have ECS (environmental control systems) software that was written by third world “programmers” that didn’t speak English to remain on their aircraft illegally, claiming it didn’t pose a threat to safety, you know those systems that determine if there is enough oxygen to breath at altitude and whether the temperature inside the plane is survivable…

    • SirDerpy@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.

      • OprahsedCreature@lemmy.ml
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        2 months ago

        Do you have any idea how hard it is to sit on your ass until the end of the month and then carry all those checks to the bank and sign them all? Think of the poor landlords and their signing hands! 😢

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        2 months ago

        It did use to be when rent was low and tenants had stronger rights. When things broke, you’d have to fix it yourself or hire someone to do it. When a tenant was making everyone else in the building feel unsafe it was up to you to drag them out.

        When rent went up and tenants rights were thrown out of the window, it became easy street. You hire someone to take care of it all, and sip your coffee in the morning.

        It genuinely used to be a high risk, low reward venture. The shortage of housing skyrocketed it into an occupation for rich dullards to sit on their ass all day.

    • krash@lemmy.ml
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      Well, lobbyists work not only for evil corpos, but also for NGOs and movements… Lobbyism is the process to sway politics to a direction through interpersonal meetings, and is necessarily in a democracy.

      However, one thing that would benefit the US is transparency around lobbyists; who they are, how they are funded, their agenda etc. The EU has a database on registered lobbyists and the transparency helps with parts of the problem.

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    Literally anyone who works in health insurance.

    Currently work in biotech, and have worked in medtech; I have had to integrate systems with insurers (payors is the industry term). I know exactly how fucked it is on a statistical level.

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      2 months ago

      How much do you hate them?

      Name a number!

      How about if I drop that hatred by 22% with a 2.1% financing? And throw in a free coupon to Chili’s if you verify within the next 45 minutes! Hurry act now we’re running low on coupons. And you don’t want to go home empty handed, do you?

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    I’m not sure I do, but one thing I haven’t seen mentioned here yet is consumer psychologists. I once read an argument that they could be improving people’s mental health, instead they are working on manipulating people into buying more.

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      2 months ago

      This. “Marketing” is just a euphemism for “propaganda” – it is inherently manipulative and therefore evil.

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      That shit should be illegal, with, like, a living whitelist so you can still put out a sandwich board in front of your restaurant.

      Yes, I know that will implode entire sectors. They deserve it.

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        There’s a city in France - Toulouse, IIRC EDIT: Correction: it is Grenoble - where the mayor ran on a promise that “if you elect me, I’ll remove all the billboards.” Turns out that was really popular, so now that city does not have any billboards.

        ETA: A video about it. (Dutch, but it has (auto-generated) English subtitles)

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          I cannot for the life of me understand why billboards are legal in general. We’ve gone through the effort of banning distractions like even touching your phone while you’re driving, which makes sense, but yet these massive advertisements who’s literal sole intention and purpose is to get you to look at it instead of the road exist and are everywhere. They’re also complete eyesores. Why?! It surprises me there hasn’t been more campaigns like that, I can’t imagine billboards are exactly a popular idea

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          2 months ago

          Dope.

          There’s a good next pet issue for me once over-restrictive zoning is gone and dead. I guess public transit is a perennial bee to put in my bonnet, too.

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      2 months ago

      Mad Men was hard for me to keep up with because I just hated everyone and it made me angry

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      I once saw a video report on bullshit jobs, where they also interviewed a researcher into how much value is gained or destroyed by various professions.

      They said that for every £1 (the researchers worked in the UK) given to marketing executives, that society suffered £11 in lost value.

      ETA: The video in question (Dutch, with a few local English bits)

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    2 months ago

    Human Cannonball

    Hear me out: Many circus performers are multi disciplined, or put on an incredible display of training and talent. The last big top I went to had a knife throwing couple who also did a fantastic roller skating routine, a few very talented clowns/jugglers, and a bike troupe in a ball of death. Just to name a few. These people have devoted days or years of their lives to their craft. Do you know how hard it is to ride a bicycle across a tight rope with someone on your shoulders?

    The Human Cannonball? He got launched out of the cannon and did one flip before getting caught by the net. That’s all he did that night, yet he came out and bowed with the rest of the performers like he was an equal contributor.

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      The Human Cannonball? He got launched out of the cannon and did one flip before getting caught by the net.

      That’s what it looks like to the untrained eye. But they’re not really going to fire a person out of a cannon. That’s not safe. So he just huddles in the cannon, they light a decoy fuse, it makes a bang (with no projectile), and he spring out and jumps that distance by himself. Requires a lot of core and leg strength.

    • WhatYouNeed@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      And vulture hedge funds.

      Read up on the shit people like Eric Hermann has done buying up debt from distressed countries, then siphoning off their aid money to cover those debts. Zero humanity.

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      HR only contributes to the good of the business, which is owned by the capitalist class. It’s a class war, and HR is not on the side of the working class. Which makes HR employees—witting or not—class traitors, something they have in common with cops.

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        Since when are HR working class?

        And you don’t even need to bring class into it, their role is the same even when the employees aren’t working class either.

        • davel [he/him]@lemmy.ml
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          HR employees must sell their labor for wages to survive, because they don’t own the means of production; therefore they are working class. The capitalist class makes money by owning the means of production, and exploiting the labor of the working class.

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      Somewhat agree. The good ones you’d never know exist until you need help. They are a god send. Fuck the rest of them

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      That’s because you only ever dealt with them from the employee’s side. They contribute to the good of the company/organization. Sometimes that also means good for the employee, but that’s just coincidence.

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        I think it’s because they use their position to professionalise a bullshit job, presenting it as a field (HR Management), when their skills are rather ordinary. Really, they should be doing payroll and employment admin, not setting the tone for the organisation or being seen as specialists in any meaningful way. Also, job competencies and profiles disproportionality reward the “skills” found in HR, which i think reflects their input in designing these tools and templates.

        Further, i find people who work in this field to have quite a high opinion of themselves and their usefulness.

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      Company stooges seems a more appropriate department title than human resources, also who the fuck wants to be called a resource I’m a human being not a number.

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    Guidance counselors. One of them tried to convince my parents that I was on drugs…in 4th grade. Turned out that I had an undiagnosed mental disorder.

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      I had similar experiences. It’s like there’s a small but noticeable subset of the population that wants to pin “drug user” on any person they meet and think is weird. Meanwhile, actual drug users are everywhere and mostly act normal.

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        2 months ago

        The number of times I’ve been told I’m high just because I have a schizospectrum disorder is too damn high.

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    Gas-filler. There’s a couple states in the US where you aren’t allowed to pump your own gas, someone else has to do it for you, and you’re expected to then tip them.

    The job is essentially getting me to pay to be inconvenienced. I’d prefer to pay to let me pump my own gas.

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        The first time I crossed the border into Oregon years ago and started pumping my own gas, the attendant came out shouting “Hey! What are you doing?” As someone that had never heard of this law in either state, I was about as confused as you could possibly be, because this obviously seemed like a trick question.

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          Just reinforces my belief that America is a bunch of weird different countries smashed together under a bastard flag.

          • MeetInPotatoes@lemmy.ml
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            2 months ago

            Oh, that is absolutely correct. Texas is so different from California, which is so different from New York, which is so different from Florida which is so different than Massachusetts, etc. forever.

            California would be the sixth largest economy in the world if it was its own country.

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      Those people deserve a tip, alright. The tip of my middle finger. Pouring fossil fuels into people’s cars is evil.