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 think the last thing I did that I loved that could be done as a job was filing. My mom was an accountant and ran her own practice out of our house, filing was a chore I did for a little extra money as a kid.
Also organizing her office supplies, and shredding. The organizing was satisfying, the shredding was horrible, but when I was filing I got into a groove.
I’m disabled, so actually doing it might be impossible, but if I were abled and had UBI and universal healthcare, that might be my happy place.