I thought of this question because someone joked about double-dipping their hands in the chocolate fountain at Golden Corral and boy did that invoke one of my least favorite paying-for-college memories.
Yes, someone did dip his hands into the chocolate fountain at the Golden Corral. Worse, he was a repeat offender, a man that was at least in his 30s if not older slurping it off of his fingers and all, sometimes while making eye contact with me or my coworkers. Worse, there was no enforced rule against doing so, at least at my location, so my manager just told me to let him do it, don’t make a big deal out of it, and hope he doesn’t bother anyone else.
That same manager once insisted on me making the place extra clean a little before Christmas, so they insisted that I use double the amount of cleaning bleach in the same bucket. I explained that’s not how cleaning works or how OSHA compliance works. I got a write-up. I said that wasn’t an offense that qualified for a write-up, and what they said was “thanks for the tip, I’ll find something that is. Your word against mine.”
That same manager punched me out early without telling me, because the place wasn’t perfect enough before I left over an hour late, missing my family waiting to pick me up outside by that long to go out to do holiday stuff. I did call that in on the supposedly anonymous tip line later, but you can guess what happens when an anonymous tip about wage theft is called in on a manager that already knows who would call in that tip in a “right to work” situation.
That same manager was fired a week later for embezzlement, and not the cool kind. They were writing up and firing people for months for money missing from the register. I found out when collecting my last check and noticed someone new.
Grocery workers, teachers, nurses, and other “essential workers” got absolutely fucking nothing for their additional illness and long-term health damage except insultingly pithy cards and bags of candy, if that.
I don’t think I became a true leftist until covid taught me the imperial core’s priorities.
I moved on to a new office job at a car dealership which at first was pretty mellow but lately has become almost as stressful as my last job was. We’re all underpaid and so we’re understaffed since they can’t find anyone willing to stay for the workload. Meanwhile, all of my coworkers are just as unhappy as me, if able to handle it better, but I notice nobody’s leaving. The job market is shit around here. Rent is ridiculous. I’m honestly thinking about moving out of state. I’ll never find my own place to live at this rate.
This reminds me of some status quo warrior from the Lemmyverse that claimed that the United States was actually objectively the richest country on the planet by GDP (billionaires drastically tipping the scales, such as The Zucc being the vast majority of total millennial income alone, don’t real) and therefore even the poor were rich, actually and that paying anyone more would objectively do nothing because in Based Epic Germany cost of living is ostensibly 800 dollars equivalent therefore everyone should shut up and praise the status quo.