This came up in Strife's thread, but I wound up typing a big provocative reply that would probably make it's own discussion. This being the new Life section of the forum, I'll just break it off into it's own thread. These are some violent communist observations, born out of thinking too much while at work.
Aqizzar, you should write a book about your life working for UPS. You can get some awesome title like "Riding the Clock: The Story of My Life Carrying Other People's Crap," but better and more relevant.
I am a devout marketeer and always will be, but working for UPS, I can figure out where early communists got their ideas, and I sometimes wonder why violent populist revolutions aren't springing up every day. When you all day toting crates of plasma TVs, hundred dollar shoes, and inflatable barbecues, busting ass for 9 dollars an hour, it's hard for me not to fantasize about leading my fellow Epsilons into a violent seizure and toppling of the wealthy ruling class. That's jest really, but I do sometimes write broken dissertations in my head on the societal danger of excessive wealth.
I get by fine, because I normally only work part-time hours, the pay's not bad for what it is, and I've got plans about where to go once I get my degree. But I can't help but feel some bizarre, likely misplace pity for many of my coworkers. My main man is this guy Nusret. He left Bosnia for America in 1996, when everything went to shit for him. He wound up in Dallas of all places, got some nightschool English, and has been working for UPS basically since he got his greencard. And for a dozen years, he's been working full time hours at the exact same job I got hired to nine months ago. My other go to guy is a little Mexican dude a year younger than me. He's already a divorced father, and works a full time job in addition to the part-time night shift with me, and involuntarily hides any time the on-station police officer walks by because he's got active warrants.
They're two stories among many. There's hundreds of people I work with who I have to wonder if they even think about their future, let alone have any particular hopes for it. I've always insisted that we are not defined by what you do for a living. A chosen profession or career sure, but not a job to pay the bills. But a lot of these guys, especially in light of the long depression we're entering, are completely fucked in terms of long-term financial security. And working as small lot shipping handlers, you get other people's compulsive consumerism and tenuous grasp of reality rubbed in your face every night. These aren't coherent, rational criticisms of market capitalism or anything like that, just ticked-off inspirations to do some raw plundering on the people who can obviously afford it, by the people who exhaust their lives making modern luxury possible in the first place.
It's more a reflection on me getting wrapped up in my thoughts to not think about work, but I've got to be on to something. Surely there's something beyond self-preservation that keeps 40% of the population from turning all Liberal Crime Squad on greater society at any given time.
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Topic: "Eat The Rich, I Have Their Mailing Addresses" (Read 13549 times)