Should We be 'Grateful to Even Have a Job'?

[epitech]

Being back in the world of employment, I have had people tell me that I should consider myself lucky and should be grateful to have a job.  Now let me start this rant out with a caveat, I am not opposed to work and I want to pull my own weight in the world but I will not be grateful to have a job.

Here is a list of reasons why!  XD

i) You are doing work for your employer in exchange for financial remuneration: Grateful doesn't factor into this because it is goodwill on behalf of no parties; you are exchange good or services in exchange for goods.  Now depending on your employer they may not be grateful, they might be glad that the work is getting done but most likely not grateful.
ii) Capitalism: In essence you give more than you get.  Whatever you make is most likely, in no way equivocal to what you're worth. You cannot be paid what you are worth, if that were true for everyone, capitalism would fail.
iii) Do we really have a choice?  Most of us don't know how to farm, hunt or live off the land.  If we were we to try it would probably be considered illegal and we would probably be trespassing to do so.

A friend brought up the point of being grateful for the fact that we could eat, shelter and continue to survive.  Shouldn't we be grateful for the shelter and food?  We don't need employment to survive.

The real reality as it gets said, and it is a very sad reality, 'we should be grateful that we have a job when so many people do not.'  I have to disagree here, if we are employed we are fortunate to not be in more dire circumstances, but that's not necessarily a reason to be grateful but more of a guilt trip.

Our need to be 'grateful' has been hammered again and again following the most recent recession.  I will admit here, I do not have a comprehensive knowledge of economics, but the average household does not have it within their capacity to destabilise a global economy and by that logic, why should the average worker be grateful to have a job?  Wouldn't more people have jobs had the finance sector acted responsibly and implemented appropriate safeguards?

So yes, I will go to work and I will do my job to a very high standard, but I will not be grateful.

Curious to see how y'all feel on this topic.  Are there some grains of truth or am I just prole'ing?

p.s.  I apologise for any grammatical errors or typos, I just needed to clear my mind before bed.

[Beguile's Mistress]

Examine the point of view that the average worker may be existing in an environment where job opportunities are fewer than the number of people available to fill them and jobs that pay a living wage are more scarce.  Single parents, older workers or those with health issues who want and need to work have a tough time of it in many places.  Often having a job, any job, is a matter of survival for them and their families.  It can mean the difference between having food and a place to sleep and being homeless.

People sometimes use the word gratitude when I think appreciation would serve better.  We feel gratitude for things like someone saving our life or rescuing us from serious injury or, truly, giving us a job when we are homeless as I was at one point and barely employable or when we have a family depending on us for the very basics of life and work that would bring in a paycheck is hard to find.  These days there are many people who have spent two to eight years on their education and can't find a job making a living wage let alone one in their chosen field.  When they do find work they must often hold down two or even three jobs with short hours and low pay to make ends meet or worry about the chance there will be cut backs and they'll be let go.  To find a place to work where these things are not considerations is something to be grateful for.

Appreciate the fact that you are young and strong and able to work and support yourself.  Appreciate the fact that you can find employment that will afford you the ability to provide for yourself.  Appreciate the fact that being employed means you don't have to continue looking for a job unless you want to.  Appreciate the fact, if you are working in your chosen field or a congenial one, that you have that opportunity when so many others don't. 

When you are in need and desperate you feel grateful for the opportunity to be able to work no matter what the job is.  I've heard fathers who have been out of work for months say they would shovel shit into the wind if it meant they had a job and could feed their families.  That is desperation.  When circumstances are less dire and you find that job you are looking for you can appreciate that it is there for you when you want it.

Appreciate the job you have and be grateful for the fact that while life may not be perfect it is working out for you.

[Mr Self Destruct]

My point of view is this: I am very grateful to have a job, but beyond that, a good paying job in comparison to what I do.

I've worked many, many jobs during the course of my life, and I've given up good jobs in the arrogance of my youth. However, it wasn't until I worked in the service industry in a pizza restaurant for almost a decade that I realized just how grateful I was for the job I have now. I work for a very well known delivery/freight company, and I drive a forklift, loading and unloading freight. 95% of my shift is spent on a forklift, and the other 5% is restacking freight, securing freight, and locating paperwork for supervisors. I make a great hourly wage, I have incredible benefits, a pension and 401k plan, as well as vacation and personal time, and paid holidays. I wish I had landed this job ten years ago!

I'm very grateful for my job. I'm very grateful to have this job. It allows me to provide for my family, pay my bills, but also the extra money to live comfortably...smoking fine cigars, eating healthy, caring for my pets, owning a motorcycle, etc. Working almost ten years in a pizza restaurant left me living paycheck to paycheck, and that was difficult to do, even with my ex-wife working full time, as well.

Yeah, my job is third shift, and, being on a loading dock, it's extremely cold in the winter and hotter than hell in the summer...but I've done so much worse for so much less. I think a big part of what's wrong with today's twenty-somethings is that they have this sense of entitlement, that the world owes them a good paying, easy job. They don't have the mindset that you have to work your way up in order to land that good job. They don't understand that you start at a job that you don't necessarily like, and find another one when you have the skills and ability for something better. Colleges and trade schools are a great way to advance your skill set so you're not working at a pizza restaurant for ten years.

As for your argument about capitalism, I wholeheartedly disagree. I am paid what I'm worth. I'm paid damn well for what I do. And the recent outcry of support for a socialist economy is ridiculous, considering that no socialist economy has ever seen success. Capitalism has made America an economic powerhouse, and given the opportunity for every single citizen to do and become whatever they please, within the confines of the law, of course. You don't like your job? Go to school. Learn a trade. Yeah, you'll be swimming in student loan debt, but ask yourself this: is it easier to pay my bills when I make a decent wage, or when I make minimum wage? Your choice.

[Tamhansen]

" And the recent outcry of support for a socialist economy is ridiculous, considering that no socialist economy has ever seen success."

I don't know. Norway, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands. All economies like Bernie Sanders for example are calling for. All of them seem to be fine, and scoring higher than the USA on life expectancy, health, education and citizen happiness indexes. (Indices?) I think you're falling into the typical Fox viewer trap of equating socialism to communism which is in fact a totalitarian regime, not a socialist one. Sure they called themselves socialist, but it's like North Korea calling itself democratic, or the US claiming it's the home of the free, while it has the highest percentage of incarcerated population in the world

"Capitalism has made America an economic powerhouse, and given the opportunity for every single citizen to do and become whatever they please, within the confines of the law, of course."

Well as long as that every single citizen has access to the right education, isn't starving because their parents can't feed them despite working two jobs each, and has someone to help them up the ladder.

"You don't like your job? Go to school. Learn a trade. Yeah, you'll be swimming in student loan debt, but ask yourself this: is it easier to pay my bills when I make a decent wage, or when I make minimum wage? Your choice."

Yes, go to college, put yourself in a hundred grand of debt only to end up in that same minimum wage job as you suddenly find there are no graduate jobs available. And that's only if you're lucky enough to be able to support yourself while going to college.


Nothing is more ridiculous than hearing the baby boom generation, who in thirty years time managed to implode the housing market, quadruple tuition fees, quintuple the unemployment rate, not to mention the enormous amount of underemployment, and on top of that all also knowingly wreckt the environment because they couldn't be arsed to even consider green technologies or environmentally sustainable living, go around and blame the millenials for 'Having a bad attitude' and 'being entitled' when all these people are asking for is to be given a similar starting position as the generations before them.

Not only that, but now that the chickens are coming home to roost the baby boomers even refuse to pay their fair share of the damage they created, because they are 'entitled' to what they were promised? What about the promise that was made to our kids?

Pfft entitlement, yeah right.

[Mr Self Destruct]

Well, you're entitled to your opinion, I suppose.

[KingKong]

We have a funny difference of viewpoints on gratefulness. You express that it's not a feeling that is going to be coerced out of you. You're treating gratefulness like a cost as though it takes something out of you to be grateful. I see it in the opposite light. When I consider what I will and won't be grateful for I include everything that I can think of. Gratefulness adds to a person's state. When a person thinks of his or her job they will feel either an uptick in mood due to gratefulness or a downturn due to anomie.

You're right, there are a ton of things that we can do to fine tune capitalism to support more equality. It's my stance that unless you are actually making a change to the system that will address these types of problems, you only poison your own well by choosing to forgo gratefulness.

[Teo Torriatte]

I've never felt grateful for any of the jobs I have been able to get. They have always been low pay for fairly hard to very hard work, and in some cases even a fair amount of danger. Now the reasons for this have been mostly my own fault, but I still feel that the wages were too low and that I was always getting the short end of the deal.

I guess that is the main reason I have quit pretty much every job after a few months with a few exceptions. Right now I am living with my brother, who is paying for everything. I feel terrible about it, but I also worry that I don't have the patience or energy to put up with the whole thing all over again. I'm not sure what I'm going to do in the long run, or if this was even the best place to post this, but there it is.

[epitech]

I don't expect anyone's opinions to change from this conversation, I just wanted to see the contrast in opinions that are out there.

I have had jobs where I have been grateful, my general experience though is not.  The job I was most grateful for was one where I was the one where I was doing volunteer work at a radio station for a few years.  The station got bought up by a small print publication company; the new owner liked me and my work, so he made a job for me; granted it was at minimum wage but this was a small start-up company and we gave it a good run but the company could not financially sustain.  That was a job I was very grateful for, we were all in the same boat.

Many larger companies however, who could afford to pay their workers a living wage, do not, this is quite common practice.  Now my thinking is, if someone works their entire week away, to struggle and get by, the owners and the share-holders rake it in and live large off the back of countless others, that's fucked up.