Purpleyin's slightly fannish tumblr

The fastest way to shut down my "freelance life means I have to constantly be working" thoughts is to remind myself that if I was a boss holding a worker to the standards I hold myself to, their union would hunt me for sport and nobody would blame them.

Not me immediately screenshotting this and posting it to the OPP freelance writers chat I'm in

I tell myself: "I'm the owner of the company. But more importantly, I'm also the head of Scriveners Local 23, and I have some demands."

So what that means is that I have a four day work week. I work monday-tuesday and then Thursday-Friday. Fuck the boss if they don't like it.

I have a workplace wellness program that means I can take breaks for yoga, meditation, exercise, and naps.

I have unlimited paid personal days thanks to my project oriented work structure--I get to decide what's the best balance between production and restoration. Fuck the boss if they don't like it.

I have five days each quarter for vacation. attending a convention, conference, expo, bookstore event tour, or a writing workshop *is not a vacation.* that's business-related travel. taking a day or two for a weekend jaunt *is not a vacation.* that's unlimited paid personal days. Five working days. Each Quarter. Vacation. and since I always have wednesdays off, it doesn't count.

I know there's a piece of your brain saying "I have to hustle, I have to hustle"

I know

My brain does that too

And without the union boss in my head, I'll just work until I drop. That's what I did for years. And then I burnt out so bad that this is the first time I have actually made real, noticable progress(1.) similar to my pre-burnout rates in years.

Because the union boss went on strike, and the boss' bottom line was *destroyed.* If I have to crunch now, the union boss enforces recovery time. that's all overtime. but since I don't get paid a wage, I get all that back in time.

The boss never wants to see a strike like that again.

There is power in a union, even if it's only the union in your head.

(1.) only it's not similar. it's half the "speed" of pre-burnout. It's probably my actual true real speed and not my sweatshop labour hustle culture speed. FUCK THE BOSS IF THEY DON'T LIKE IT.

This is outstanding advice for all forms of freelancing.

APPROVED

Sigh.

Important update! His story went viral enough that other paint companies reached out to him and he got a job with a new paint company!!

https://www.tiktok.com/@tonesterpaints/video/6898720259675540742

Listen. This is what people are talking about when they say that if you gave people a fucking UBI, folks would still work. Even “menial” work is beloved by various people if it’s given the respect it deserves and folks dont need to worry about - um - starving to death and dying of illness?

I legitimately love delivering pizzas! If it were sustainable i wouldn’t mind at all doing it for the rest of my life! One of my best friends absolutely loves cleaning, and the only reason she quit cleaning professionally is that she was sick of the ways she was treated. My stepfather has been a carpenter and construction worker for 30 years, despite being a highly qualified graphic designer and architect, bc the man just fuckin loves construction work. For every “menial/undesireable” job available, there is someone who is happy to work it, if not for the stigma and need to survive. And for the truly awful ones? Like slaughterhouse cleanup, sewer maintenance, roadkill pickup, etc? With UBI they could almost all be mechanized, saving people from having to do grueling and dangerous jobs they really don’t have to do.

There are even people who will do those jobs because they recognize that they need to get done. Those people may not love the job itself but they take great pride in doing something that needs to be done.

People don’t just work for free doing jobs they love. If there’s a niche there will always be someone willing to fill it.

I talk shit but I actually don’t genuinely truly HATE retail, what I hate is how people (customers and employers) use, abuse, overwork, and generally treat the employees like shit

If I could have reasonable hours and accommodations for my limitations and be paid enough to survive without being asked to do 25 jobs advertised as 1 job and had UBI to ensure I could leave if it was too much/I was being mistreated/taken advantage of by employers looking to overwork employees to make more money I’d be totally happy to work retail as long as I physically could

When I worked retail, my favorite part was working in the stock room cuz it’s like playing real life Jenga

Were it not for my disability and if it paid enough and I wasn’t treated like crap I am not kidding I would be happy to work at a movie theater probably for the rest of my life, I loved it that much.

Trust me, for every menial job that “no one would want” there is a person who would LOVE to do it. Forget that “I don’t dream of labor” stuff in a perfect world people would still work because there are people who genuinely enjoy working; It’s being FORCED to do it in shitty conditions for crap pay lest we starve to death or end up unhoused that’s the problem, not work itself.

One of the best jobs I ever had was cemetery landscape maintenance.

It all comes down to this: People don’t mind working. It isn’t work that people dread or are sick of. It’s working conditions.

Pay people well, respect them (and don’t allow customers to disrespect them), accommodate their needs, and people will work their asses off and more often than not do it happily. Work itself is not demeaning or soul-draining. Jobs don’t have to be that way.

I loved making pizzas! I liked getting a bunch of tickets with different toppings and trying to do them fast and well and trying to get them out of the oven and into boxes and slicing them up evenly.

But my boss never stocked ingredients, we were always out of stuff, the hygene was terrible. He would come over to my nice pizza and WITH HIS BARE HANDS reorganise all the toppings to remove pieces of pepperoni like he would go out of business if we put 10 pieces on instead of 8 or whatever.

The reason I’ve applied at Target multiple times over the last 5 years is because before the pandemic I used to shop at Target and I would take time out to face the shelves and throw away Starbucks cups and help people find things even though I didn’t actually work there. I like people and I like organising and tidying and finding things!

We talk about how hard it is for disabled people to get jobs, but I feel like we never talk about how hard it is for disabled people to KEEP jobs. To everyone who gets burned out after a few weeks or months. To everyone whose progressing disabilities make them quit jobs. To those facing discrimination and getting fired because their disabilities interfere with their work. To everyone who gets a job and then realizes they cannot handle the responsibilities. To everyone who cannot get accommodations and are pushed out of jobs for arbitrary reasons. I see you. I've been you, a lot. I love you. We deserve better accommodations and we deserve to live full lives without working if we need or want to.

Housekeepers and Janitors Need Praise As Unsung but Very Much Important

Remember when the NRA told doctors to “stay in their lane” RE gun violence and #thisismylane trended as a result?

One of the tweets I saw was a surgeon who’d taken a picture of her OR, having just finished surgery on a young man who’d been shot. Blood. Everywhere.

This bloke retweeted her, mentioning that he worked as a cleaner in a hospital and had had to clean up stuff like this and worse.

Surgeon replied to him (and went up *greatly* in my estimation) and, despite living in different countries, thanked him for his hard work.

I can’t find the tweets sadly, but hers went something like;

“Without a clean and sterile operating room to work in, my team, our skills and the best medicines in the world are next to useless. You are doing invaluable work, without which my work would be impossible.”

WITHOUT PEOPLE DOING THE CLEANING, SOCIETY WOULD GRIND TO A HALT WITHIN DAYS

Every garbage workers’ strike shows it.

Give them the respect they damn well deserve.

Well done ireland

it's real

every Saturday I am like ok today I am going to finish all the work I didn’t do this week and whatever I do I will NOT fall into a black pit of emotionless inertia and do nothing but watch moving pictures all day. and then. well

Wages in the US have become wildly, fantastically unshackled from the costs of doing business, and they’ve been that way for decades. We’ve been told our entire lives that the world is such a way, and that it’s the Natural Normal result of things working the way they Have to work.

It’s a lie. It’s been a lie the entire time. They just Started Lying one day and didn’t stop until everyone who knew better died, gave up, or got their voice drowned out in all the noise.

You can’t tell me a combo at any fast food restaurant hasn’t doubled in price since the 90’s. Guess how much minimum wage has increased....

1) if food prices go up if wages go up, complain about CEOs not taking the cut, not the workers who need the money to pay their rent

2) smash this idiot idea that it’s only high school kids working minimum wage jobs: who do you think is making you your Starbucks at 12 pm? The highschool kids are all in highschool, idiot. At my retail store where people make minimum wage, we have no staff under 25 years old right now, about half the staff have families, they are all making minimum wage.

3) these people are providing you goods and services that are important and you want. You want a burrito. You want a coffee. Why on earth should the people providing us essential services not make enough money to pay their rent and their bills? Explain to me why this group of people deserves to live in poverty?

4) these jobs are not “unskilled” as in they’re easy to do and any asshole could do them. They are working harder than any prick sitting in an office chair all day.

5) Canada has raised its minimum wage. My province has had a minimum wage of $15 per hour for four years. Burritos do not cost $30 here, no one has gone out of business because they can’t afford to pay their workers anymore. What HAS happened is that I can now afford to live with my kids in my own apparent and not have to share it with my sister and her kids, I can afford to actually buy things, I can afford to cook healthy food and replace my shoes when they fall apart. The extra money I am making goes straight back into the local economy. My health and the health of my kids will be better and we will cost our government less. Don’t be a fucking idiot.

Fuck every single asshole who ever shits on minimum wage workers, ESPECIALLY these days after the pandemic when we all screamed about wanting to go out and get a coffee during lockdown. Fuck every single one of you with a rusty rake.

Reblogging for rottenbrainstuff’s excellent response.

Wake up babe, new cursed capitalist doublespeak euphemism just dropped

Thanks I hate it

I just sent this to my husband and his response was “you can’t put a price on that” uh, yeah you can, they just did. 🙄

My mother used to mutter “I want a WIFE” angrily from time to time.

Later, after my parents split up and my mom’s bff’s spouse died, mom’s bff moved in. Mom would come home from work and the house would be clean! Dinner would be ready! Laundry done! Homework checked!

She called me up, delighted, a few weeks into it. “I was right! I DID want a wife!”

i remember the blissful 14 months when me and my friend shared a nanny, and coming back into the living room to find she had spontaneously tidied up the extreme chaos. That must be what it’s like, being a man, that you can just walk away from some mess to get ready for work, and when you come back somebody else has dealt with it without any physical or mental effort from you. 

I think about this essay all the time

If you’re interested in reading more about the unpaid labour of women, I can recommend the work of Silvia Federici. She started the Wages for Housewives movement in 1973, and in her book ‘Caliban and the Witch’ she explains that unpaid housework is a necessary condition for capitalism (and strongly tied to colonialism). She’s honestly a must-read if you’re interested in this topic!

Wana hear my theory for why the UK has a labour shortage in jobs?

For the last 30 years there has been a big push by the government, labour and conservative, for a university level education. Everyone needs to go to university. They’ve made a big business out of university with the fees, and the loans, and building a culture of anxiety around children. You need to go to university don’t  you? You need a well paying job don’t you? We don’t want to end up doing [insert job in labour shortage here]. Farm work, truck driving, hospitality industry. No you need to be successful and a Degree in anything is the only way forward.

And it’s continuing now. The government doesn’t want to do anything about Universal Credit, or minimum wage, because people need to get a better job. Jobs that were essential last year, and even essential this year, are simply not good enough. You need a better job. Get a better education. Do better. It’s your fault you’re working in a substandard job because you didn’t do well enough in school.

So people are going to university to get degrees that are worth less every year to go for jobs that don’t want to hire people without experience, while various jobs are going unfulfilled because they’re “undesirable” in the culture we have created. But of course now people from outside that culture can’t come and do that work any more. The jobs are unfulfilled.

Bonus: an apprentice wage is not enough to live off so once you are out of the care of your parents you can no longer take on the roll of apprenticeship because one needs to eat, and “earn while you learn” does not cover such nonsense, because Universal Credit ain’t gonna do shit.

It’s not that British people are lazy, or useless. It’s literally 30 years of bullshit telling children “You don’t want to drive a truck for a living, you want to go to university and get a degree to get a job that’s actually worthy of you.” and by the time you’ve unpacked that bullshit the future is upon you, and you’ve grown roots, and your parents need care, and all your friends live here, and you’re in a long term lease with your apartment, and you’re in a relationship, and you have kids, and your knees aren’t what they used to be, etc.