Amamba wrote in post #17286916
Yes, there are dead end jobs. They are meant as a temporary paycheck while you're doing something else, not as a career.
Right. I and most of the people I work with had dead end jobs at one point or another as a way of making some cash while in school or whatever. I worked some jobs like that for beer money, and I was an indifferent employee because the jobs were boring and doing a great job would net me nothing.
I work in a technology industry. My coworkers start making enough money to put them in the top 20% of American incomes and our local management staff probably tops out around the top 5% of incomes.
And all of us, pretty much, came from families that look just like our own. Upper middle class or wealthy, good neighborhoods, good school districts (or Cranbrook Academy, Detroit Country Day) etc. We all went to college and most of us had at least a good portion paid by our families.
I don't think I work with anyone who came up from poor families, worked hard, played by the rules and got ahead. Nobody worked their way up from the mailroom. Heck, nobody worked their way here from even a bad neighborhood by going to college, because we don't look at students from colleges that those people can get into.
You absolutely not will get a better position if you work as little as possible.
Fair enough, but that's the corollary. My main point is that all of these dead end jobs in retail and food service have no path for advancement. So the obvious tactic is to work as hard as it takes to not get fired while grabbing a paycheck. But your real efforts need to be elsewhere, because working super hard at a dead end job will get you nothing. That's why you cannot find a good sales associate at Best Buy and why the guy bagging your fast food order does not care to get it right.
If he is really smart and motivated, he's spending his time getting a degree or starting his own side company. If not, he's still going to be bagging your fries poorly in ten years. And getting better at bagging your fries is a complete waste of this guy's time.
My friend was a teacher in one of the Detroit's less-than-successful school districts. Not the worst part of the area, just a poor one. He quit because he got tired of being treated like a clown by the kids he was bending over backwards to help. He did have a few kids over the years - from the same poor working class / welfare background as the rest - who worked hard in school and went on to get decent jobs.
The point of your story seems to be that poor people (with a very few exceptions) are despicable people that are impossible to work with. I'm not sure what else to take away from that.
