We have a puritanical idea burned into our society that you have to suffer to live, that you have to work your fingers to the bone to deserve even the most basic necessities of life, and can’t imagine a non-capitalist society where we just provide everything people need to live and not force people to do bullshit busywork just to prove they “deserve” the basics of life
Plus a lot of companies seem to think that customers prefer to witness workers “seem busy” as opposed to them actually being busy. I do deliveries for a restaurant, and there is a lot of downtime between 1 pm - 3 pm and 8 pm - 10 pm because people just aren’t ordering food at those times, so management usually makes us do pointless busy work. A lot of our busy work does have a point when the store itself is busy, but it would be really nice to just sit around and chat when we have nothing going on.
I remember I used to work at a grocery store and we had the same problem. After about 9 pm we usually only had the night shift people, with a minor rush at 11 pm or so, and our store closed at 1 am, so a lot of that time was just spent sitting around chatting. If you were a stocker you were probably busy, but us cashiers had nothing to do. Management seemed to think this was a horrible thing so instead they made us “look busy” by literally telling us to act like we were cleaning things.
I have had the rare few customers get mad at me in service jobs for not “working” when I was “supposed to be,” but I feel like deep down nobody really gives a shit. As a customer myself I much prefer somebody doing things timely and in a friendly manner than them just looking like a busy bee.
Well, only poor people do. Rich people can have anything they want because they’re rich, and god’s rewarding them for magic sky daddy reasons so we have to as well.
Because they are.
We have a puritanical idea burned into our society that you have to suffer to live, that you have to work your fingers to the bone to deserve even the most basic necessities of life, and can’t imagine a non-capitalist society where we just provide everything people need to live and not force people to do bullshit busywork just to prove they “deserve” the basics of life
Plus a lot of companies seem to think that customers prefer to witness workers “seem busy” as opposed to them actually being busy. I do deliveries for a restaurant, and there is a lot of downtime between 1 pm - 3 pm and 8 pm - 10 pm because people just aren’t ordering food at those times, so management usually makes us do pointless busy work. A lot of our busy work does have a point when the store itself is busy, but it would be really nice to just sit around and chat when we have nothing going on.
I remember I used to work at a grocery store and we had the same problem. After about 9 pm we usually only had the night shift people, with a minor rush at 11 pm or so, and our store closed at 1 am, so a lot of that time was just spent sitting around chatting. If you were a stocker you were probably busy, but us cashiers had nothing to do. Management seemed to think this was a horrible thing so instead they made us “look busy” by literally telling us to act like we were cleaning things.
I have had the rare few customers get mad at me in service jobs for not “working” when I was “supposed to be,” but I feel like deep down nobody really gives a shit. As a customer myself I much prefer somebody doing things timely and in a friendly manner than them just looking like a busy bee.
Well, only poor people do. Rich people can have anything they want because they’re rich, and god’s rewarding them for magic sky daddy reasons so we have to as well.
So. Much. This.