Why Work? > Why Work?
On the Phenomenon of Bullsh-it Jobs
Nation of One:
Seasonal Associate by Heike Geissler (translated from the German)
How the brutalities of working life are transformed into exhaustion, shame, and self-doubt: a writer's account of her experience working in an Amazon fulfillment center.
No longer able to live on the proceeds of her freelance writing and translating income, German novelist Heike Geissler takes a seasonal job at Amazon Order Fulfillment in Leipzig. But the job, intended as a stopgap measure, quickly becomes a descent into humiliation, and Geissler soon begins to internalize the dynamics and nature of the post-capitalist labor market and precarious work. Driven to work at Amazon by financial necessity rather than journalistic ambition, Heike Geissler has nonetheless written the first and only literary account of corporate flex-time employment that offers “freedom” to workers who have become an expendable resource. Shifting between the first and the second person, Seasonal Associate is a nuanced expose of the psychic damage that is an essential working condition with mega-corporations. Geissler has written a twenty-first-century account of how the brutalities of working life are transformed into exhaustion, shame, and self-doubt.
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also: “Smells Like Work”: Examining Employment in Charles Bukowski and Hunter S. Thompson
How Work Became Drudgery Once Again (School and government led us down the road to re-ensferment.)
Nation of One:
I am glad to witness people walking away.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_32hy0FLoec
Nation of One:
Someone has their CLAWS out. They may have shut down whywork.org forums back in 2008 or so, but we must have been ahead of our times.
Forgive me if this is redundant, but the line about 90% of "jobs" being unnecessary is great. Bertrand Russell went as far as to suggest that there is really no need for fancy hotels and restaurants. The Leisure Class begs to differ. FTW.
As it turns out, restaurant and hotel workers led the way in spring resignations. The elites and their dull-witted businessmen are calling this The Great Resignation.
"You Can KEEP Your SH*TTY JOB!!"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r7PnBcmOaOk
“We’re not depressed; we’re on strike. For those who refuse to manage themselves, “depression” is not a state but a passage, a bowing out, a sidestep towards a political disaffiliation.”
― The Invisible Committee
related: Resigned to be hated by those working two jobs to pay for kids' college. (In other words, "Fuck the tyranny of public opinion!")
Could it be that many school teachers actually assigned Daniel Quinn novels for their students to read? Are we supposed to pretend we haven't read about refusing to work for the pharaohs, walking away from the quarry, and preparing for a world Beyond Civilization?
Nation of One:
This Great Resignation is global.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pOphIpddRAk
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