Punks at work

not you specificly, and good for you, but i have known punks who act like the world owes them something and they shouldn't have to change their appearance for any reason... but it's not a perfect world. Yet.

 

I'm busy at the moment with learning my enemy inside and out, so I'm not employed. I've worked in random labour jobs.

I despise people who are able-bodied, unwilling to work and collecting welfare checks. You are not leeching from the government -- for the government has no money of its own. You are leeching from the working class and those who actually need social assistance.

I haven't agreed with going out of my way to look like an axe-murdering crack-head with a metal stud addiction since I was fifteen, so I don't (circumstances permitted) see it as hard to find a job outside of corporate Canada.

 

Dunno, being unemployed since a few months I have reason to learn something about my enemys insides too, starting with the mess they reduced the unemployment insurance to, going over the reality beyond the official down-played and glossed over situation on the labor market, ending up with the dead end story about HartzIV-welfare in gurmoney, working duty (with 1,25 euro per hour) for welfare-recipients without regard to the individual situation (my favorite these days: single parent mothers forced to work in public service but without any chance to get a place in a kindergarten).
Instead of using the working duty for retraining programms or further job qualification you end up with collecting waste and cigarette-butts in the public parks, with unemployment rates around 20% in the greater urban areas you have the chance to do it for years, while you get 360 euros per month for the living - anyone surprised that you aren't able to re-integrate in the non-existing work market after you spend two years living this way?
yes, you can become "flexible and mobile", accept low-pay-jobs like the evil clown or some other rip-off-business on the service sector - and for this you better look like a manager, at least for the first interview...
I don't sport a too extreme appearance, just leather and boots, uncombed hair and a small earring and I need my morning shower to wake up - but dressing up completely nondescript - for a full time job with barely half of the wage I got for my qualified work as a printer? Maybe I'll do it someday, but right now?
Leeching from the working class? Getting wage means paying health/nursing/unemployment/pension-insurances, dependig on your income and additional to your income-tax, nearly two fifth's of what they take away from you before you even see the money. So you pay for the worse case you get injured/disabled/unemployed and if you are old enough - for your retirement.
Leeching from the government - Subventions for the high finance business, already critisized for the fact that they don't pay taxes and globalize without a second thought just for the money-market, out-of-state military missions and the necessary improvements on high tech weapons, the daily show in the capital/parliament/ministries... it's depressing. This whole system stinks, I think it's a mistake to identify the state as the representant of the working class - ok, the original idea might have been like this - but in reality?
Maybe we should think about a really autonome and independent/free structure with collectives and anti-capitalist businesses as an alternative to the official capitalist mess now, there are some interesting projects developing in gurmoney, but I guess it's not that easy too.

 

The working class take the brunt of the taxes. The rich, well, what the fuck do they care? International stockholders are getting subsidized by the government anyhow. I think you're speaking of 'Employment Insurance' which is a tad different than being an able-bodied person who is just unwilling to break a sweat and leeches off his fellow man. The governments money is our money. Now, I'm not arguing that they spend it properly ANYWAYS, that would be foolish. I'm just saying we each need to pull our own weight and do what little we can to quit ripping off our fellow man. Petition to subsidize local businesses and end subsidy on the international market, work for what you receive and wait for your chance to strike.

 

I build dilatometers,quench spray-heads, and water manifolds, among other parts, for a machine that simulates arc welding [Gleeble]. I love working with my hands, so I love what I do, I just hate some of the rednecks I work with.

 

I work for a plumbing company But eventually i plan on having my own venue within a couple of years down here =D and legitimately not a warehouse or some storage place (not that those arent amazing shows) i just actually want it to last for a very long time not for 3 years. \m/

 

I worked for McDonalds (it was the only job I could get, really), but I was disgusted by myself the whole time, so I decided I should start having some goddamn strength in my conviction and quit. Now if I ever work for a restaurant again it's gotta be vegetarian or vegan, and no big business monsters either, I'm not gonna sell my beliefs out anymore, I still feel awful that I did in the first place. In the mean-time I've got/am getting some money that should last me a while, and in the spring I'll probably busk while looking for a job, but I'm gonna focus more on getting a band together...

 

I'm a Swim Instructor at a indoor lap pool . I teach swim lessons to kids and adults (all levels) and coach Aqua Fit Team. This is me at work: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yyFYy01g_Co
This year I teach swimming to over 100 kids.
And on the weekends I Lifeguard at a different place. However my dream job is working at a Health Food Store. And someday I would like to open up a Vegan Cafe ( this might take about 20 years or never happen).

 

Bad for your job I guess, but our youthbrigade became amphibious before they even started walking, I'll never forget their coolness doing the dead man at the age of 7 months, drifting on the surface while playing happily with some toy.
I'm kinda tree surgeon, a bit special part of landscape gardening, all about keeping old trees alive in times of high air pollution and climate change. Sounds romantic to spend lots of time climbing around on/in trees, but it's mere cosmetics for the richer garden owners and the city authorities who pay for the flogging of a nearly dead - tree. My boss is a liberal post-hippie-business-is-everything asshole, we fought constantly and I was kicked out and called back at least three times per year, now he's seriously ill, hospitalized, I'm the boss now and so I'm my own slave - learning to do the hated paperworks too and still dreaming to find some hidden treasure during work, quit the job a final time and start again on eco-gardening and punk collectivism - but the damned treasure keeps fucking hiding from me, darn thing. Maybe diving for it may help?

 

Been self-employed for three years now. I write humorous science fiction/horror stories, edit a magazine, and run a horror publisher where I get to work with some of my all-time favorite writers.

Sometimes work is awesome

If anyone is interested, my two books are Shatnerquake and Super Giant Monster Time!. You can download on Demonoid (I put them up there) and they pop up on other torrent sites from time to time.

 

Response Punks at Work

@ungovernable

If everyone is a worker then who determines what the workers are working on and in what order? If you want to put up a building with plumbing and electricity you need an architect and engineer. They provide the plans that tell the foreman how to direct the workers to build the building and related utilities. There has to be a hierarchy.

When I was placed in charge of my barracks floor in the Marines I told my Marines to wax the floor and wipe the black marks off of the walls while my squad leaders and I scrubbed the bathroom and gym. When we were done we discovered that the floors were sloppily waxed and the walls were untouched. My Marines were in their rooms playing Halo. I had to sit there and supervise them until they did their job. Keep in mind, if we failed our inspection the next day we would lose our weekend liberty. The next week I had the privates scrub the bathroom and gym, the private first classes scrub the walls, and had the lower ranked lance corporals wax the floors. My squad leaders applied the wax and I made sure everything was within regulations. Anyone caught hiding out in their rooms were given the unnecessary job of removing dirt from the linoleum runners with q-tips. The week after that we had full participation and we were done in under two hours, rather that the six hours of the first week. Keep in mind that the inspection requirements were an evenly waxed floor, clean walls, and a bathroom and gym that is clean and (pubic) hair free.

Every time I was placed in charge of people I would take the worst job and see how the other people handled the better jobs. Sometimes that would work beautifully and we would accomplish our task quickly and efficiently without any direction on my part. Most of the time I had to be constantly watchful in order for some people to do even the simplest task without slacking off and making other people make up for them. Keep in mind that these are people who volunteered for their job, are not required to do anything the rest of us are unwilling or have not had to do, and have a massive incentive not to slack off.

It seems that many people are wired to try to slack off as much as they can. They feed off of the work of others. I don't know if that is the way they were conditioned or if that is just their nature.

From my studies, in an anarcho-syndicalist society, everyone who is capable of working is required to work whatever job is required. Everyone is "paid"/treated the same regardless if they spent 10 years learning how to perform brain surgery or if they spent a month learning how to lay concrete.

From previous conversations I was told that through political education people would learn to appreciate their role in helping society. In more absurd conversations a person told me that the brain surgeon would spend a few months a year digging ditches or cleaning toilets for the good of society.

My question is how do you account for those who refuse to work? How do you entice people to undertake the massive effort to become a doctor or engineer when they will reap the same rewards as someone who doesn't?

Keep in mind, as a "libertarian socialist" our short term objectives are the same: complete equality for every person. I also believe in universal health care, universal education opportunities, and social support for people who can't work or can't find work. I think that we only differ in opinion when it comes to the end game.

 

Re: Response Punks at Work

Simply put, direct democracy. Telling people how to construct a building is not hierarchy that of which we intend to oppose, as say statesmen. It won't be limited to only workers, if that is the case then who will perform surgeries, design buildings, etc. etc.? It won't be restricted to only workers of the manual industry. I will explain more later on in this part concerning the doctor-worker pay/privileges.

That is the same argument as a classroom of kids. They cannot undertake anything at all without slacking off or without the many nuisances. Why is that so? The reason for that is that they had better things to do, that waxing the floor was not by the least important or has any positive effects on their survival as compared to, say producing items of necessity, food, water. The latter form of work would be a necessity, the essentials to everyone's survival. Compare that to waxing floors and toilets. Then there's the threat of "severe" punishment should they not do as they are told, as we have seen it proved to be of no effect to encourage these soldiers to fulfill this order, why? Because it does not seem as a necessity, it is plainly said: stupid. If these were peasant and they were ordered to reap their produce then there would be a totally different result as history has shown us, especially if that order came from the obligation of feeding the many communes and villages and not some over-greedy bourgeois who will sell more than three quarters of their produce to suit his own ends, his profit.

To wax floors and toilets? Do you expect them to actually "like" such a "job"? They will never put their heart into it, and as such will never perform it fully or perfectly.

We (Commies) seek to reach a moneyless society, where work is based on the mutual benefit and the well-being of all rather than producing for the objective of achieving more profit. Currently, most brain surgeons tend to come from families with enough money to allow their son to pass through school and university alike while that concrete layer tends to come from a working-class family where the family may not be able to afford university payment and thus he needs to find a more suiting job such as a concrete layer which requires no degree and a privileged/successful background.

Slackers will be everywhere, just as criminals. The answer is that they will not be abolished, there is no cure, but I can tell you that they could be lessened. Those who refuse to work will be shunned and excluded from the community by the people living there until change is seen, unless of course the person is physically or mentally ill, a child, or an elderly person. The massive effort? People like to become doctors and engineers, look at children for example, they actually say that they want to become a doctor or an engineer. If we can give people to opportunity, without having to pay a very heft sum of much-needed money, we may see an increase in the number of doctors and engineers. A lot of doctors enlist to save lives, same goes for the Red Cross, and voluntary associations. Money is just a bonus. There are sections and topics explaining this in Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread.

Now of course I may be off a point or two, it's late here and my head hurts due to fever.

 

Since we don't live in an anarchist society, anarchy won't feed my kid so I have to willingly work to live as opposed to work to contribute. If you have to do it, it doesn't hurt doing a job that not only nets you a regular paycheck, but also covers your room and board and gives you unlimited time to spend with your kid (not to mention how you look/dress being irrelevent).\m/ \m/

 

They didn't highlight that part of the job in the recruiter's office however popular culture from Full Metal Jacket to Forrest Gump tells you that lower ranking people have to do menial janitorial work. I didn't like doing it nor did I expect my Marines to like it. That is why I always took the worst jobs at first. I would never expect my Marines to do a job that I haven't done or wouldn't do. The fact is that if the Marines, and by extension I, failed at getting whatever we were cleaning acceptably clean we all would be there on the weekend wearing gas masks cleaning random shit using gauge cleaner and q-tips. If you have ever been in a gas mask outside in an Okinawa summer you know how quickly you are being smothered by your own sweat. If the duty Sargent caught someone breaking their mask seal to dump the sweat they would have to run laps around the barracks. If they caught them twice they would stand there while the rest of us ran laps around the barracks with our masks on. That is the motivation I was talking about. Even still, people were willing to put the,selves and their comrades through that hell to play Halo or catch a quick nap.

I'll get to the moneyless society thing in a bit. In my experience at a fortune 500 company most of our engineers were in the US on H1-B visas. They worked their asses off to get the hell out of India, Iran, Saudi Arabia, China, etc. and earn their place in front of Americans graduating from MIT. In the tech industry they care about ability, drive, and creativity. For example, the only reason I was interviewed is because I put down 'decent soldering skills' and they were curious what I meant by that. I was hired because I write programs and build robots for fun. That set me apart and above the people who were more experienced in my trade. My former company has a program where any employee, from janitors on up, can submit ideas. If they are feasible and patentable, they are given a substantial monetary reward and are given royalties from the project. They also reward people that stick with the company and show potential. The director of my division, Engineering Service and Support, was an un-degreed former Ralph's manager that was hired to oversee the test equipment acquisition program. He worked his way up and is now in charge of a department that processes over a billion dollars of equipment a year. He currently owns several houses and drives around in a custom made Ferrari. (I'm not condoning that sort of wasteful spending BTW, I'm just illustrating how well he is compensated.)

As for the moneyless motivation, lets say that I am properly degreed and have a theory about how a checkered pattern effect the feeding habits of male maine coon felines. In the current system I can get a grant to study the matter further. That theory has no utility to an anarcho-syndicalist society. It seems that an anarcho-syndicalist or communist society would be one based on a person's utility to society as a whole. A bigger question is what determines what mutually benefits who? If I am unable to study the reaction of calico kittens to the color purple simultaneously applied with the scent of sulpher then I will feel unserved by the society. Also, what if one society is better served by annihilating another society that controls a needed resource that they are unwilling to trade for?

There needs to be a set currency to trade goods for. It doesn't matter if it is bottle caps, gold bullion, or dollars. If I need a loaf of bread and have a chicken, but the baker needs a hammer, and the blacksmith needs a 1974 sports illustrated, etc. you get into circular trading. This is especially evident if I need a loaf of bread and have a chicken, but the baker needs a hammer, the blacksmith needs a loaf of bread, the tailor needs a loaf of bread, the engineer needs a loaf of bread, and the priest needs an alterboy that is carrying a loaf of bread.

In a proper society I could sacrifice the chicken to Erythnul and wipe the blood on my face. That would give me a +2 circumstance bonus on my intimidate check to persuade the blacksmith to give me a bludgeon. I would then employ the bludgeon to force the alterboy to prostitute himself to the priest for 50g. I would then employ the bludgeon to separate the alterboy from my cut of 49g from his 50g. Since 1g is what a normal tradesman makes in a week (DMG 3.5) I would give the moneylender (gnome) 1g for 90 copper. I would then give 1c to the baker to obtain a loaf of bread. Capitalism in action!

 

Cool story bro, proves nothing though. Same reply as before. If these Marines found a necessity to wax floors and toilets then there wouldn't be much of a problem as being forced to.

Yes, and you are trying to prove what exactly? Please refrain from story-telling and respond with actual arguments.

If you had read Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread then you would have been shown the answer. Here it is, suitablly divided into sections:

http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_ar ... t/toc.html

Or in particular: http://dwardmac.pitzer.edu/anarchist_ar ... t/ch9.html

Read that, I do not have the time to explain right now. If you still have questions, or feel your argument to be not responded then feel free to ask again and I will reply.

No. "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need". You need a loaf of bread? It will be freely given to you everyday for the rest of your life as long you participate in the community by working to ensure mutual survival. The baker needs a hammer? Well, by all means let him have one if this improves his output to feed the starving. And the blacksmith needs a 1974 sports illustrated, now that... That needs to be bargained with the holder of such item of "luxury", a deal or a trade could be struck between the two. It will not kill him or any other person should he not be able to have it, it is not a necessity, but a luxury. People can live without an item of luxury but cannot live without say, bread.

You do love Dungeon & Dragons.

 

i work under the table and almost always have. i try to stay local too. i'm helping my buddies out and they're helping me pay for food and weed. it's pretty sick. 6-18 months at a job then bouncing to the next might not be the most stable thing, but it works.

lame pun.

 

I quit my job

I handed in my two weeks notice yesterday.
It was fucking shit working there.

Just wanted to share that.

 

I've had loads of different jobs, but the best was working in a pub. I could be myself without feeling like i was selling out. Previous jobs i've had i was fairly lucky cos it was warehouse work and such, but still working for 'the man'.
At the minute i work for a posinous(ish) corporation, where i have to wear a tie and look smart (though i do have an ongoing tiny rebellion because i refuse to cut my hair, which annoys them because its not smart enough for company image). Its miniumum wage and i feel like every day i go there a bit of me dies, and its making me seriously depressed, I'm leaving soon to hopefully get some qualifications and get to university so I can become a journalist (not in a government tool for a shit rag kind of way, a proper one like Naomi Kline) I've always been a writer but have no qualifications so find it hard to get anywhere.
I do find that listening to Zounds song Subvert helps me in my daily torture of wage slavery. I'm an agent of revolution, not just tax fodder.
I had to take the job on cos living on job seekers was impossible and it was the only job going. Its hard to have principles when you have no choice in your actions... Its a fucking pain.

 

Dude seriously just leave. My job has fucking taken everything out of me.
It's not worth it in the end. And please do what ever you can to become a journalist
even if it means working for even worse pay just do it for yourself.

What's the point of going to a job that you fucking hate and kills you inside
when, you have to work for pretty much the rest of your life?

(Oh and good job on not cutting the hair, they made me dye my purple hair
brown but I kept the hawk )

 

Next year I'm being forced to get a job, and I'm not very psyched about it. It's not that I'm lazy it's that I know my parents will most likely make me get a job at Mcdonalds or something like that. I DO NOT wanna make money for those bastards haha. Any ideas on what I could do?