I work in a gas station kitchen rn. Every job I’ve ever has had deadlines, but now things are really starting to click for me. I work with no one else, I have to cook food, restock food, prep for the next day, clean, document production, food waste, and temperatures, unload items that come on truck, order new food, and probably other things I’m forgetting. I also vape and work eight hours, so good luck getting all that done and finding time to eat something, have a smoke, and socialize with coworkers and customers. Somedays I get it all done when I’m in my routine, but good mf luck when something unexpected happens.
I feel like I’m playing a fucked up video game like my life depends on it, which it does cuz I have to pay rent. If I clock out early cuz I’m tired or if I clock out on time but didnt get something done it fucks my poor coworkers and I feel bad. If I clock out late cuz I didnt get something done my boss chews me out for getting overtime pay… I only work 40 hours a week, I shouldn’t feel this tired or stressed. I’d gladly take an extra hour or two a week, it would make me feel better and make me more money, but that’s not an option and I hear from coworkers that our boss gets a bonus for keeping overtime down.
I know there was a time in human history that we didn’t have to be this stressed. I’m not an agrarian or hunter-gatherer utopian tho, I just despise how little control I have over how it makes me feel. And this urgency, it fucks with your head, it conditions you to do everything faster, Faster, FASTER. We’ve created a new kind of human, homo capitalus and this human is a slave to efficiency and productivity for the sake of the profits of those at the top.
It feels like you don’t even have time to dream, let alone realize those dreams into existence. It brings to mind the lyrics of the song Piazza Fontana by Yu Kung, which is about the mf YEARS OF LEAD.
Perché la banca chiude gli sportelli Dio, come tutto vola così in fretta Risparmi e gente, tutto così in fretta
I don’t speak Italian, so maybe a good comrade could translate it better for us, but it roughly means:
“You have to do everything quickly, the bank is closing soon. God, why does everything go so fast? People and their savings - all so fast!”
Everytime I feel stressed at work, I think “God, why does everything go so fast?”
The chorus of the song continues:
bisogna piangere i sogni per capire che l’unica giustizia borghese si è spenta
Dreams have to be mourned to understand That the last bourgeois justice is dead
It’s amazing to me how music bridges the gap in language and emotional understanding. How can a song in a language I don’t speak make me cry? I know of course, because we are all human, we all have the same emotions in our hearts no matter when and where we are born. And I will never forget that anytime I meet someone different than me.
The song ends on a hopeful note at least. The final verse concludes:
ma non sentite il grido sulla barricata la classe operaia continua la sua lotta!
But can’t you hear the shout at the barricade? The working class continues its fight!
Never surrender what is in your hearts comrades, what brought you to a place like this website. We will win. Thank you for taking the time to read all of this, no worries if you didn’t have the time, everything goes so fast.
Now I need to walk my little furry companion, he’s been so patient and I love him.
Oh, here’s the link to Piazza Fontana, it’s a beautiful song.
Moments are the elements of profit
Marx really opened my eyes to how vitally important time is to capital. Whether it’s squeezing more time out of workers, speeding up production processes, or reducing the time it takes for a capitalist’s money to return to them… arguably time, motion, and speed is what capitalism is all about. And none of this speeding things up really benefits us workers. It’s all done in the service of accumulating more capital and profit for capitalists, that’s all.
Exactly. You cant put a price on something timeless, like looking up at the stars
Maybe you can though if you’re a corporation that pollutes the sky and then invests in and profits off a device that allows you to see through the pollution
I’m running out of hyper specific ways to show people how absurd capitalism is. Yearning for it to finally click (it never will)
I feel every word of this and I say this as someone who’s been to war, been homeless l, gone blind…
Things can get better and I hope they do for you.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. In a way they have brought me comfort of all things.
We all struggle and all struggles are real. ✊
It’s never my struggle, its always OUR struggle. Thank you comrade, I hope me sharing some trivial thoughts brought you some kind of hope for our future. We’re all in this together, no matter how alone we may feel sometimes.
fuck i relate to all of this. i can’t turn it off most of the time.
i like to feel competant at my job and despite it being a fuck i mostly try to do good work so my co-workers don’t get screwed over.
when i was a manager it was my only real standing rule: basically solidarity or else, fuck the company, look out for each other
but even after i switched positions it’s the same. case counts/hr, no time for anything, doing a 50/hr a week job in 40. getting bitched at about OT. it’s been hard but lately if my trucks are too big (say a 4 to 5 hr truck) and i was only able to get started 3 hrs before shift over i just have to walk away.
everything is so intense i can’t even talk to anyone and probably come across as an asshole. there should be reasonable slack in jobs, people should have time to dick around. otherwise when things pick up or something goes wrong there is no give at all. but as well all know the squeeze is here and it’s only going to get tighter and tighter to get every second of wrung out.
it also makes my ADHD go crazy but partly it helps me with insane multitasking sometimes. but yeah humans aren’t meant to work like this. i’d love to have a future socialist utopia job where everything is worked slowly, safely and deliberately because there are no “labor costs” and we are all working large meaningful megaprojects or supporting those projects to save the future. a world of “road crews” as in 3 people watching 1 person work and then taking turns lol or for the workhorses just short 20 hr weeks so we dont burn out
I have a friend who works the lowest level of management at my old Amazon warehouse. I feel for you, don’t let it get to you. You sound like a good person, I’ll send my best wishes. I have a lot of respect for anyone dealing with trucks, it’s hard work with a lot of contradictions. Just remember that those contradictions dont matter as long as you care. Sending all my love comrade
ty so much!
yep. its such an insidious thing too, it even invades non-work activities and everyone’s whole lifestyle. When I finally get a free day I usually dont even know what to do with it or how to relax
Thats why I ask what country to play in Vicky lol
You should stop worrying about OT, for one. Jobs take as long as they take, next time your boss chews you out, just say “Oh okay, so you would prefer I just go home after 8 hours, even if there are a couple things left to do?”. Not as a gotcha, just a legitimate question. Just don’t care about whether you work 8 hours or 8.5, and do whichever he says he wants you to do. Find out which side he prefers, and do that.
She’s not really that bad of a lady tho, she’s just a middle manager. Things have been tight because one of my coworkers suffered a really bad hospitalization and another one is moving with her husband to another state. I like this job more than any other I’ve had in the last year. I just wish people understood how hard things are for everyone, even if theyre trivial. I can be an ass sometimes, I have anger issues, but thats just when I get stressed about little things. All I really want is for people to take a step back, slow down, and take a look at the bigger picture. I wish I had followed my dream of becoming a history teacher so I could help kids learn what this is all about, making the world a better place.
I didn’t say she was a bad lady? I’m not saying to say it as an attack, I’m saying you need to clarify which version of imperfection is preferable to her, and fail on that side. She shouldn’t be getting on you about 8 hours of work taking 8.5 sometimes, that’s how the service industry always is.
You need to handle your stress better. A good way that ive found is to think of yourself like a rock in a stream when you feel stressed out. You are immovable, things just happen around you while you handle whatever work is needed of you. Full on defensive zen. You won’t make forward progress when you’re a rock, but you also won’t lose any. Bring to mind whatever is true, and accept it as true. When you dont need to be a rock, you can work on changing that truth, but until then, it simply IS true.
Also, it’s not that hard to become a teacher, if you have a bachelor’s degree. And if you want to sub, there are zero qualifications afaik. Would be a good place to startits probably a better job than you have now.
I was thinking recently what it would be like if we replaced all aeroplanes with airships instead; like helium-filled zeppelins. If it meant saving the planet, surely everyone could tolerate a slower journey, after all, people used to spend days and weeks on ships travelling across the world.
The only real obstacle to this is the system’s incessant need to extract as much of everyone’s labour power as possible, not just over the course of a work day, but over their entire lives, meaning that any reduction in speed of travel, for instance, is intolerable, as it results in ‘wasted time’ that is not actively being spent on exploitation.Tangentially, I wouldn’t mind a slower journey but I don’t get paid time off and therefore can’t afford to travel slow cause I can’t pay rent so I’d be even more stuck at home.
I have similar thoughts about cars. My poor mother is always telling her kids to “drive safe”. I was in a car accident recently, no one was hurt thank god, but dealing with repairs and the insurance companies has been a hassle. My sibs both live in cities about five hours away, and I always tell my mom how much better her anxiety would be if our family could travel on a well managed commuter train system. A better world is definitely possible, one where we worry less and are safer. But people are so disillusioned, they cant imagine a better world. Fuck, my older bro is a civil engineer and we had an infuriating conversation once about how he thought America was too big for trains to be viable unless we had a hyperloop
He’s a smart guy, so I wonder how such a miserable society beat someone down so much that they need to dream up fantasies to solve problems that can be fixed with what we already know works. I still have hope tho.
This sounds just like the deliverators job description at the beginning of snow crash.
“You have to do everything quickly, the bank is closing soon. God, why does everything go so fast? People and their savings - all so fast!”
accurate translation.
Dreams have to be mourned to understand That the last bourgeois justice is dead
L’unica would mean “the only”, but “the last” is a fitting context-based translation. However, “si è spenta” in the wider context of preceding lines would probably best be translated to “has expired” (literally: turned itself off. Like a lightbulb), as in: has to be discarded. Apparently it’s not “in sogni”, but “insonni” (while suffering from insomnia), so crying while being unable to sleep instead of crying in your sleep. The message is almost the same.
the rest of the translation is accurate.
Thank you comrade, that means alot
We have enough productive power to ensure an ample quality of life for every human being, several times over. It’s the most devilish of paradoxes that expounds how as technology advances, returns get faster and faster, and yields get higher, we all just seem to be more immiserated.
If we were to cut out most of the meat industry, to design things to last so that we wouldn’t need to replace all our clothing, electronics, appliances, and buildings all the time, and to live in a density where we could access everything within a short walk or bike ride from the nearest transit stop, it would take maybe one fifth of our present extraction and also one fifth of our present labor inputs to live well. Granted, rebuilding around density with durable and sustainable materials would be a massive endeavor.
95% of all this could be done with pre-transistor technology. A plurality of it might even be done with late-medieval technology. I don’t think taking this stance makes one an agrarian or hunter-gatherer utopian.
Yeah, I don’t think any of those ideas are utopian, its just going to be a massive collective struggle. Look what was made possible by socialist states in just the last hundred years. While the endeavor would be MASSIVE, it can be done. Fuck, if I’m being real I think it can be done without the need to sacrifice much human (or animal for that matter) life. I used to be a student of history, and while I’m not nearly as literate as I could be or even was before I dropped out to focus on work, it seems that to me most of the death and other hardships suffered in developing socialist states was because a perceived (dare I say a justified perception) that if sacrifices weren’t made to “modernize” at breakneck speeds then the revolution would be crushed on the jackboot of the nations that were still capitalist. I argue this point when defending the excesses of the USSR or the PRC. Think of what could be accomplished if the revolution was a global one, one final victory over the forces of capital.
That song is beautiful. A reason I’ll likely never be able to play in bars is all the longs I listen to and play are depressing like that.
I would listen to it in a bar. I’m a punk at heart, Banda Bassotti has a version that goes HARD AS FUCK.
Good stuff! I suppose it does depend the bar, now that I think of it. Some of the IWW tunes I’ve learned might go over well in some punk joints I’ve been to.
Gotta go fast
