When you cut facilities, slash jobs, abuse power, discriminate, drive people into deeper poverty & shoot people dead whilst refusing to provide answers or justice, the people will rise up & express their anger & frustration if you refuse to hear their cries. A riot is the language of the unheard.
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| — | Martin Luther King Jr. |
I’ve done many different kinds of sex work. I’ve been a cam girl, a porn performer, a professional sub, and a performer at a peep show (similar to a stripper). I’ve also been working in retail and food service simultaneously.
I get so frustrated at how I’m treated at work. It really gets to me. I find myself involuntarily crying once I get into my car to drive home. I hate how dehumanizing it is. People don’t acknowledge me as a person. They think I’m less than them because of my job. Maybe they don’t actively think that, but that’s how they treat me. Oh, by the way, I’m talking about the food service job.
When I’m doing sex work I can refuse a customer. I can be rude to them if they are being rude to me. I don’t have to apologize for their mistakes. I don’t have to be sweet when they are being inappropriate. I negotiate my limits, and I only do what I feel comfortable doing. They don’t get to order off the menu, I’m not going to bend over backwards for them.
I find it oppressive to work for minimum wage. I find it oppressive to act like the customer is always right. I find it dehumanizing to apologize for things that aren’t my fault, like how much something costs or if you order something wrong and you want it remade the correct way. I find it dehumanizing to say “Hi! How are you?” and in response get “Yeah I just need a blah blah blah” and then have a customer go back to their cell phone conversation. I hate being reduced to a cash register.
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| — | littlemew, reddit post |
tough times.
God, the absolute worst thing about having a really shitty job is that only your coworkers understand how you feel.
No one else gives a fuck about your stress or the crap you deal with all day.
People on the outside are judgmental about the things you need to do to cope with the shit you go through because they have no idea what you go through.
But my coworkers are like, “God, I don’t know how you deal with it. You take more shit than anyone.” And it’s such a relief to hear someone acknowledge how hard it must be.
For months I’ve been standing up to my super shitty boss all by myself because I can’t stand the shit she pulls and the way she treats us.
And this week it reached a head, and my coworkers have been protecting ME and coming to my defense…
I wasn’t expecting that. I thought everybody hated me because I was rocked the boat too much.
God, so much anxiety.
I just keep thinking this week feels like a good week to take up drinking.
Wages in the fast-food industry have stayed low for two basic reasons. First, many are low-skill service jobs in an efficient assembly where workers are easily replaced and don’t require much education. Second, there is a large supply of people who are willing to make cheap burgers at a low wage. It is easy to look at this scenario and conclude, “well, economics determines prices and wages, and that’s that.” But the full story is more complicated. Cheap fast food and their cheap workers impose a cost on the country in the form of food stamps, welfare through the tax code, and social safety net programs. This is a place for government to intervene — and for corporations to sacrifice some of their profits — by raising wages to a livable level.
The biggest wave of job actions in the history of America’s fast-food industry began at 6:30 a.m. on Thursday at a McDonald’s at Madison Avenue and 40th Street, with several dozen protesters chanting: “Hey, hey, what do you say? We demand fair pay.”
From Walmart to fast-food, workers are demanding a living wage & the right to unionize!
