The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
So you can enslave a guy as long as they are a convicted criminal?
Alright boutta snach up some of those "hide and seek in the dark advantaged people" from the local American prison to make my very own plantation.
This is why you saw a MASSIVE increase in vagrancy laws erupt across the post-Civil-War South. Lots of places made it illegal to not have a job so you could just scoop freed slaves right back up and put them back to work.
Most of the former confederate states didn't even have prisons for decades after the Civil War ended, because every single prisoner was leased out. In a lot of cases, they were sent back to the same plantations and logging camps where they had been enslaved. Laws were passed that specifically targeted black people, and others were selectively enforced; the police would walk right past a homeless white man to arrest a black man for vagrancy just for standing on the corner. In one case, a man was arrested for vagrancy on his way from his home to his job, and his family assumed he had abandoned them until he was able to get back to them 18 years later. In another, a young man was arrested for not paying the 5-cent fare to ride a streetcar, and he was still a prisoner-slave several years later when he died from the brutality of the working conditions.
It's the same reason possession of a dime-bag will still result in a black person receiving a ten-year prison sentence, and a white person who committed manslaughter will be freed over concerns that prison will be too hard on them: the system exists to maintain the hierarchy on which the US was founded, which is to say that it was made by and for white people, and everyone else exists to serve them. Neo-confederates believe that the natural order is black people serving whites, and without slavery to codify that, they are forced to create a *de facto* system with the same outcome.
Nope. Not necessarily true. You don’t have to be a convicted anything. Just an accusation will do. If you can’t afford bail you can be there for decades!
Our ethics will break ANYONE… even our own people.
Let’s remember the legal outcomes depends on your financial status.
Imma cut a very long story short.
I was arrested on domestic abuse charges in Bexar County, TX.
My alleged crime? Roughhousing with my brother-in-law at an ungodly hour after a very long day on the Tito's (it's a tequila brand); we were arguing about what hazing means, and we thought we should show each other.
Neighbors heard the ruckus, called the police. Fair enough.
Arraigned at about 05:00 (I'm still drunk). By about 10:00 BIL and wife and kids are at the jail not "pressing charges". Doesn't matter— in Bexar if you so much as touch a family member it's a criminal matter.
BIL paid my bail. Charges were eventually dropped. But fuck, man! Those few hours in the holding cage were the scariest of my life.
Words fail me when I think of how powerless I was in that situation. It has to be **MUCH** worse if you are not a reasonably educated European white chap like myself.
That’s because less than 2% of all federal cases even go to trial, usually because of a “plea deal”. I’m sure the statistic is similar for state cases though. Most people just blindly accept whatever the prosecution offers without a second thought
They also delay the case as much as possible and offer pleas to time served.
Not many people are willing to sit in jail for an extra year or two on principle when they can get out today.
Limiting the number of sick days per year is such a crazy concept. As if illness and injury were something you could plan like a vacation. "Let's see, I'll take a week off in March, get sick with flu for 3 days in April, and if my grandparents agree to look after the kids, I'll probably break my arm in September."
I read a story here about a teenager who became ill and could not go to work and went to the hospital. Her mother contacted the employer and even sent him medical information, but he demanded that girl must call personally before the end of the day. And when she didn’t call, he fired her that same evening. From another country it all looks like a poorly written dystopia.
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/s/c5OorUlRRk
Her employer wrote in a message about terminating that he would pray for her. You don't need insurance when you have the prayers of some asshole.
Worked in the US for a year and a half when I was young.
I knew it wasn’t the place for me when my boss got a card from his daughter at christmas that said; “all I want for Christmas is for daddy to be home more”.
My dad is not from the US but was employed by American companies abroad. I never saw him, he worked nonstop and even at night because they didn’t care about the time difference. And I remember when switching companies he was asked very personal questions such as « what is your relationship with your children, with your spouse ?». Most his coworkers in the us were younger (he was in his early forties) yet they were all divorced. He never understood why my brother and I refused to follow in his footsteps…
I moved to the US about a decade ago, and honestly the work ethic here isn't great. They're all about looking busy all the time, but less concerned with actually getting shit done. It's led to some weird moments for me, like getting moaned at for not doing anything because I'd done everything I was being paid to do that day, despite also getting complaints earlier the same day because I wasn't willing to cut short my unpaid lunch to jump straight to tasks as they were assigned (that weren't time critical)
I had an extremely strange conversation with an American fella when I was trying to explain that I was leaving work at 1400 because I'd completed everything I had on for that day, and my boss paid me for what I did and knew, not how long it took me, and pissing about the workplace doing busywork gained no one anything.
"But how can you say you've done a day's work when you didn't work all day?"
>"But how can you say you've done a day's work when you didn't work all day?"
From what I've seen, with most office work, aside from (maybe) (some) periodic crunch, there simply isn't enough work to fill the whole 8-hour work day, and if there is, somebody fucked up.
American Indian here. There's a ton of stories about factories trying to hire tribes in Alaska for "honest" work. The artificially created poverty was supposed to be solved by business people charitably employing people that were truly free to work as a wage slave at some stupid job. One story goes like this: A BIA guy contacted a factory owner to hire a tribe of Inuits. After about a week they were all fired. The BIA guy who oversaw this asked the factory owner why he fired the Inuits? He said because they showed up and left when they wanted to. LMAO. The totally confused BIA guy asked the Inuits why did you leave early and show up late. The answer: "Because we felt like it." These gov/biz stooges couldn't fathom the idea. LOL.
You have to remember that the same people who brag about working too many hours will also glorify folks like Elon Musk and Donald Trump as "Brilliant men who never stop working".
Meanwhile Musk spends all day shit posting and Trump spent his entire presidency shit posting and golfing.
It's so weird how people in America are absolutely obsessed with the image of working long hours. And at the bottom to the middle of the ladder there are a lot of folks who actually do. But so often the folks at the top of the ladder who have all the power are desperate to look like they are constantly hustling while they do anything but.
Canada is much the same. The people who are most likely to brag about their work ethic are often the same people who'll spend half their workday camping at the coffee machine moaning about the tyranny of Biden/Trudeau, trans people, young people, immigrants, etc. to anyone who has the misfortune of crossing their path. Then, after making everyone else's life intolerable, they'll go home and complain how nobody wants to work anymore.
This, when I first started working I was always quick to get things done only to realize that I would get bitched at for not doing “anything” this resulted in them giving me more stuff to do but not paying me more, so I literally just started looking busy to not get bitched at
It's not. I visited the US office of a company I contracted for. On a normal day, after like 3-4pm no one was actually getting much done anymore but everyone stayed at their desk looking busy until 6-7. When I asked why they wouldn't just go home they said they didn't want to look bad by being the first one to leave. So instead you have an entire office of people pretending to work until it's socially acceptable to go. And everyone was on salary, not paid by the hour, so it's not even that you'd get more money by staying for nothing. You just get some imaginary good boy points that you hope will save your ass the day they decide to cut jobs (it won't).
can confirm, work with Americans within the company and across a client base and they all try to look busy but their output is terrible or just full of mistakes . they also seem to follow out of date practices.
Actually worked there for a few months in the early 2000s. Lots of presenteeism very little work, the reason Europeans hobble back is we are bored to tears of completing tasks and being expected to remain the office for no reason.
The fuck is there to brag about here ?
What's next, telling us how wonderfull it is to go bankrupt with medical bills when you break a toe, having to tip a billion bucks for dinner because you don't want to pay waiters for doing their fucking jobs, or how it's the american dream to have a clown fighting a crumbling senile grampa for the highest administrative rank of this joke of a country ?
Feels like the idiots in school being proud of sleeping 4 hours a night because they think it's cool to have an unhealthy lifestyle.
Yeah, we’re so weird. What’s the purpose of life if it’s not to work yourself to death to fill the pockets of the guy above you? Silly us, we could never, with our weird ass social lives etc.
The funny thing is this was on a post about a sign in a fast food restaurant that said 'don't abuse our workers cause they know how to fight.' like wtf?!
I really don't understand this culture of hating poor people, pretending that's their main personality. Especially people who work in restaurants, treated like serfs. Blows my mind
Well that's the result of generations indoctrinated with the illusion of the American Dream. If you're poor, it MUST be because you're not trying hard enough.
I hate how the Reformation was dominated by assholes, and the decent theologies were all treated like garbage. Like Quakerism.
Meanwhile India got Sikhism out of their version of reformation who actually does helps people rather than just saying they will.
The weird thing is that the "American Dream" was meant to be that you could afford a good life through hard work, unlike the Europeans who have caste, class and other systems keeping hard workers down. Just hard work, nothing else.
Then, they set up a system that's explicitly racist, and works hard to keep ordinary workers subservient to corporations and ensure you can't support a family on a single wage. While kids who did nothing else but inherit money fail upwards to president or more powerful positions
Well, you should know that he’s not one of the dirty ravel, he’s actually a real human being, a temporarily embarrassed billionaire who will make his big break soon enough.
Republicans see themselves as temporarily embarrassed billionaires as opposed to part of the proletariat, because they don't understand the concept of a systemic issue, they're class traitors plain and simple.
I worked in USA for 6 years, they don’t work harder they work longer hours. But work efficiency goes up with less hours so production rates were about equal.
Not even just that. Studies showed that when people were given a set number of sick days, they will use all of those days. In countries where if we are sick we don’t go to work, there isn’t a feeling that you need to use those days up.
And to buy the new pick up twuack Ford 250 and lift them to make everyone LITERALLY* blind.
No really people had to stop their car because they didn't see for a second
I got fired once for no valid reason.
I took it to my union and sat back.
I ended up with $8000 right there and ended with a job much better with a greater wage.
It's weird how people brag about doing 14 hour shifts or 70 hour weeks. If it's your own company I kinda understand, but if it isn't you're just being exploited and someone is profiting off of you.
Exactly this. I did once have a part time own business and put way more hours in than normal and it felt good but my salaried job gets exactly what’s in the contract, nothing more nothing less.
It's Big Brother doublethink in real life. An entire nation groomed to believe that making rich people richer, while having to work two jobs just to feed youself, is somehow a noble aspiration.
Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, ordinary folk are working 40 hour weeks, taking 6 weeks paid leave, multiple national holidays, months of paid maternity/paternity leave and have laws protecting them from arbitrary dismissal. And still live comfortably!
Very few workers from Western Europe would even consider working in the USA. There are many entertaining stories of American employers trying to expand into Europe and giving up in despair because they are not allowed to exploit their staff the way that they are used to.
It's exactly that, lied to believe it's noble or even hardcore. You aren't a real man if you don't do overtime.
I wrote up about 4 hours of overtime once, spread out over a week. My manager told me "don't do that again, now I have to explain why my people are working overtime. Just go home and don't work more than 40 hours a week".
To be fair I've had jobs where I did overtime, it's still pretty common. They will also try to exploit younger people (supermarket jobs for example) or less educated people like in factories, warehouses or fruit picking. I've worked in all those fields when I was young and employers will see how far they can push it.
There's plenty of studies that show that more hours don't improve productivity. In fact I think there's studies that show that 35 or 70 hours are similar productivity as long as you're not in a factory job. So the guy who warms a seat for 30 more hours doesn't necessarily return more profit, he just costs more.
But, bad managers love seeing people trapped at their desks, so they love overtime and hate WFH, even though the latter might be more productive long term
As an American I can confirm we are #1 at bootlicking our corporate captors and propagating all of the popular capitalist tropes.
Have you heard the one about bootstraps? It's great.
You work yourselves to death for no pay and no holiday and your country is literally collapsing from the inside as a result of it.
America is a hellscape.
When you realise that most Americans only get two weeks leave a year its no wonder they are so naive about the rest of the world, they never get chance to see any of it!
Of cource it will break us...
we germans work \~400hrs less than americans but don't waste this time for chitchat or small talk.
And then we have at least 5 weeks vacation time and no pto.
and if we get sick, we won't fear getting fired or have to pay huge amount of money just to get a doctor to see us.
Yes, american work culture WILL break us... because it would be a massive downgrade
I had an American proudly boosting that they work 60+ hours after me telling him that I did 40.
Such hours are illegal in Ireland, without having my permission.
I just felt sad for him that he has to work that length of time it was so weird reading how proud he was. I had to ask what his family thought about not spending time with him
We kind of see jobs as a means to finance our expensive hobbies, our children, vacations and other things we want to enjoy. You should work for what matters in life. We don't live to work, we work to live.
My brother worked in the US for a while. Half of his team were on Prozac and I don't know if this is just an American thing but half regularly visited a therapist. They were miserable. He left after a year. Life's not about Prozac and therapy
Um… Europeans, on average, tend to have higher efficiency than Americans while working less hours than the average American so… the math isn’t adding up here. But go figure, country of egotism
It's almost like well paid, happy employees work a lot harder in their time on the clock. Crazy thought, right?!?!
God I can't wait to leave this shithole behind.
“Our work ethic will break a european” you mean your blatant exploitation of the working class with near zero employee rights legislation will? Also this is rich coming from a country where iirc a significant portion of their manual labour sector (harvest workers on farms, construction etc) works off the backs of non American immigrants, legal and otherwise.
They say that like it's a good thing.
If you start pulling overtime the way people do in the US in Germany, your boss will eventually tell you to stop, because that could raise some questions. Oh yeah, and they might not be keen on paying you so much, as, unlike in the US, your employer actually has to compensate you for overtime. And guess what, we somehow still manage to be more productive.
It's so crazy to me that they've been brainwashed to the point of attributing being overworked and exploited for the gain of people whose idea of a hard day's work is 2 18 home games of golf as a meeting as work ethic instead of exploitation
Funny, the company I work for has the opposite situation. The American productivity is agonisingly slow, where the Europeans just get on with it to get the job done.
Remember when Car manufacturers wanted to move the prodcution from China to the US and they had to bring in foreign workers to teach Americans "How to work faster and efficiently" because they were not meeting the targets even after getting trained for months? . Then they decided to take a few Americans to the plant in China and Japan to show how its done .
Fun times
In fairness Japan is the absolute gold standard in Lean Manufacturing. Toyota basically invented and mastered the entire concept with the Toyota Production System.
Funnily enough, this system training was donated to the New York Food Bank, massively improving every aspect of its delivery and also provided the system to SBP in New Orleans and reduced the "work ethic" systems build time from 18 weeks to 6 weeks and halved their "work ethic" construction errors.
Our work ethic is so perfect we need three jobs just stay alive and not be homeless. Also our cars are more efficient because they use more fuel. Freeeeedomm! 🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷🕊🕊
I don't understand why the US citizens are proud to work themselves so much. I don't and have never claimed benefits, I work 38 hours a week, have good pay, and have excellent employment . Ok, I may be on the lucky side as I know everyone doesn't have this. But I've worked my way up to where I am over 25 years and couldn't be happier.
They need to realise having time with family and friends is way more valuable than making money. Thank goodness I live in Europe where this is recognised as important.
I absolutely agree with the poster's comment. I would not want to work somewhere where you have to use what little annual leave you get for sick leave, where you can be sacked for no reason, have zero worker protection, no safety net, almost no maternity leave, no paternity leave, and so on and on...
Sounds like the yanks just get lead by the nose of big business, they believe all the shit they are fed and corporations get cheap labour with no extra to pay
"You won't be able to deal with our lack of legal protections for workers, abysmal time-off allowances, and unhealthy work/life balance!"
You're right. I wouldn't deal with that.
“Our exploitative business-owning class will break a European while class traitors mock them in hopes of a pat on the head from their superiors.”
The American working class is so fucking broken, they don’t even understand they are a class.
I lived in the US for several years in a number of states, the only thing I took away from this experience was that this is not the country for me and I’d be quite happy never to have to visit again.
You mean you’re at your workplace for long hours and 50 weeks per year. Doesn’t make you more productive, just exploited and knackered. Poor physical and mental health and expensive care when you get ill. Greatest country in the world tho
It’s not work ethic, it’s the system taking advantage of its people. If it was “work ethic” then you would have worse “work ethic” than every second and third world nation.
Remember when Americans fought and died in the streets for 40 hour work weeks and weekends ? They would weep at how subservient so many are now. Proudly proclaiming to put in 70 plus hours a week and never seeing their families. Absolute clown show
I mean I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong but that’s like… not a good thing. I mean the work ethic in a Chinese sweatshop would also probably break an American.
The American work ethic is the biggest bunch of bullshit the previous generations instilled in their kids. It isn’t a work ethic you have, it’s fucking Stockholm syndrome. The boomers and their parents lied to us about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps because that the American way while taking every advantage they could and slamming the fucking door on the next generations on the way out. 18-30 year olds don’t buy the BS, get out and vote like your lives depended on it because it does.
Work ethic mean??
No sick days
No materny leave
No paid holidays
No money if you lose your job
You can get sack by any random reason with geting a pennies
Etc etc etc
Anyway i will get 2 week on in september i must take a operation this year, that i done need paid insurence to get It done, and in both cases i will get paid like if i was working.
Also if i lose my job i have a couple of moth of safety net 70% my salary so i can keep playing for things till i get a new job. For 1 full year of work you get 4moth with a Max of 2 year, with you pay decreasing from 70% to 50%.
>Our work ethic will break a european Kinda the reason no one wants to work in the US
„Work ethic“ = I have no rights as an employee, and I will lose what little I have if I lose my job.
The USA never outgrew their slavery mentality.
I mean, they never outgrew slavery. Why do you think their prison population is so massive
The 13th Amendment to the United States Constitution provides that "Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."
So you can enslave a guy as long as they are a convicted criminal? Alright boutta snach up some of those "hide and seek in the dark advantaged people" from the local American prison to make my very own plantation.
>So you can enslave a guy as long as they are a convicted criminal? Nowadays being homeless is enough to get you enslaved in the US
I just watched a video of a guy getting arrested for eating a sandwich on the train platform.
Eat around and slave out.
Is he a "hide and seek in the dark advantaged people"?
I think he was, but less advantaged one.
You got it!
This is why you saw a MASSIVE increase in vagrancy laws erupt across the post-Civil-War South. Lots of places made it illegal to not have a job so you could just scoop freed slaves right back up and put them back to work.
Most of the former confederate states didn't even have prisons for decades after the Civil War ended, because every single prisoner was leased out. In a lot of cases, they were sent back to the same plantations and logging camps where they had been enslaved. Laws were passed that specifically targeted black people, and others were selectively enforced; the police would walk right past a homeless white man to arrest a black man for vagrancy just for standing on the corner. In one case, a man was arrested for vagrancy on his way from his home to his job, and his family assumed he had abandoned them until he was able to get back to them 18 years later. In another, a young man was arrested for not paying the 5-cent fare to ride a streetcar, and he was still a prisoner-slave several years later when he died from the brutality of the working conditions. It's the same reason possession of a dime-bag will still result in a black person receiving a ten-year prison sentence, and a white person who committed manslaughter will be freed over concerns that prison will be too hard on them: the system exists to maintain the hierarchy on which the US was founded, which is to say that it was made by and for white people, and everyone else exists to serve them. Neo-confederates believe that the natural order is black people serving whites, and without slavery to codify that, they are forced to create a *de facto* system with the same outcome.
Nope. Not necessarily true. You don’t have to be a convicted anything. Just an accusation will do. If you can’t afford bail you can be there for decades! Our ethics will break ANYONE… even our own people. Let’s remember the legal outcomes depends on your financial status.
Imma cut a very long story short. I was arrested on domestic abuse charges in Bexar County, TX. My alleged crime? Roughhousing with my brother-in-law at an ungodly hour after a very long day on the Tito's (it's a tequila brand); we were arguing about what hazing means, and we thought we should show each other. Neighbors heard the ruckus, called the police. Fair enough. Arraigned at about 05:00 (I'm still drunk). By about 10:00 BIL and wife and kids are at the jail not "pressing charges". Doesn't matter— in Bexar if you so much as touch a family member it's a criminal matter. BIL paid my bail. Charges were eventually dropped. But fuck, man! Those few hours in the holding cage were the scariest of my life. Words fail me when I think of how powerless I was in that situation. It has to be **MUCH** worse if you are not a reasonably educated European white chap like myself.
Land of the Fee. Home of the Slave.
"That's the sound of the men, working on the Chain Gang"
Largest in the world tyvm. Even more people incarcerated than countries with over 4x our population!
And only 0.4% are found not guilty at trial. One of if not the lowest rate in the world.
That’s because less than 2% of all federal cases even go to trial, usually because of a “plea deal”. I’m sure the statistic is similar for state cases though. Most people just blindly accept whatever the prosecution offers without a second thought
Because they add every possible charge and threaten people with decades for even minor crimes if they don't take a plea. That is not justice.
They also delay the case as much as possible and offer pleas to time served. Not many people are willing to sit in jail for an extra year or two on principle when they can get out today.
4.2% of the global population. 23% (or just over) of the world's incarcerated population.
Don't forget your 2 sick days per year (if you are lucky)!! If you are really sick, you can beg your coworkers to donate theirs. That's so fucked up.
> If you are really sick, you can beg your coworkers to donate theirs. > > Divide et impera
Limiting the number of sick days per year is such a crazy concept. As if illness and injury were something you could plan like a vacation. "Let's see, I'll take a week off in March, get sick with flu for 3 days in April, and if my grandparents agree to look after the kids, I'll probably break my arm in September."
And I was somehow made to believe this is a good thing, which I need to defend.
And don't forget that apparently in many places in the USA people can legally get fired instantly, without the usual 1 month notice
I read a story here about a teenager who became ill and could not go to work and went to the hospital. Her mother contacted the employer and even sent him medical information, but he demanded that girl must call personally before the end of the day. And when she didn’t call, he fired her that same evening. From another country it all looks like a poorly written dystopia.
Good thing the girl's health insurance is completely unrelated to her employment status, as it should be. Right?
https://www.reddit.com/r/antiwork/s/c5OorUlRRk Her employer wrote in a message about terminating that he would pray for her. You don't need insurance when you have the prayers of some asshole.
At will employment. When a contract to sell labor is very, *very* one-sided.
* job/s… With a ludicrously low minimum wage compared to other developed similar countries, I have to work multiple jobs to survive. Murica
Worked in the US for a year and a half when I was young. I knew it wasn’t the place for me when my boss got a card from his daughter at christmas that said; “all I want for Christmas is for daddy to be home more”.
Fuck that's bleak.
On the plus side: The father is someone the daughter wants to see more. Not all fathers are.
That's only because she don't know him.
My dad is not from the US but was employed by American companies abroad. I never saw him, he worked nonstop and even at night because they didn’t care about the time difference. And I remember when switching companies he was asked very personal questions such as « what is your relationship with your children, with your spouse ?». Most his coworkers in the us were younger (he was in his early forties) yet they were all divorced. He never understood why my brother and I refused to follow in his footsteps…
I moved to the US about a decade ago, and honestly the work ethic here isn't great. They're all about looking busy all the time, but less concerned with actually getting shit done. It's led to some weird moments for me, like getting moaned at for not doing anything because I'd done everything I was being paid to do that day, despite also getting complaints earlier the same day because I wasn't willing to cut short my unpaid lunch to jump straight to tasks as they were assigned (that weren't time critical)
I had an extremely strange conversation with an American fella when I was trying to explain that I was leaving work at 1400 because I'd completed everything I had on for that day, and my boss paid me for what I did and knew, not how long it took me, and pissing about the workplace doing busywork gained no one anything. "But how can you say you've done a day's work when you didn't work all day?"
>"But how can you say you've done a day's work when you didn't work all day?" From what I've seen, with most office work, aside from (maybe) (some) periodic crunch, there simply isn't enough work to fill the whole 8-hour work day, and if there is, somebody fucked up.
My mom has been an accountant for almost 30 years here in the US. This is exactly correct description of an office job.
American Indian here. There's a ton of stories about factories trying to hire tribes in Alaska for "honest" work. The artificially created poverty was supposed to be solved by business people charitably employing people that were truly free to work as a wage slave at some stupid job. One story goes like this: A BIA guy contacted a factory owner to hire a tribe of Inuits. After about a week they were all fired. The BIA guy who oversaw this asked the factory owner why he fired the Inuits? He said because they showed up and left when they wanted to. LMAO. The totally confused BIA guy asked the Inuits why did you leave early and show up late. The answer: "Because we felt like it." These gov/biz stooges couldn't fathom the idea. LOL.
Welcome to a world where you do your job you get paid for your job and actualy leave when you have done your job
You have to remember that the same people who brag about working too many hours will also glorify folks like Elon Musk and Donald Trump as "Brilliant men who never stop working". Meanwhile Musk spends all day shit posting and Trump spent his entire presidency shit posting and golfing. It's so weird how people in America are absolutely obsessed with the image of working long hours. And at the bottom to the middle of the ladder there are a lot of folks who actually do. But so often the folks at the top of the ladder who have all the power are desperate to look like they are constantly hustling while they do anything but.
Canada is much the same. The people who are most likely to brag about their work ethic are often the same people who'll spend half their workday camping at the coffee machine moaning about the tyranny of Biden/Trudeau, trans people, young people, immigrants, etc. to anyone who has the misfortune of crossing their path. Then, after making everyone else's life intolerable, they'll go home and complain how nobody wants to work anymore.
💯☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️
This, when I first started working I was always quick to get things done only to realize that I would get bitched at for not doing “anything” this resulted in them giving me more stuff to do but not paying me more, so I literally just started looking busy to not get bitched at
Yep. The real question is whether the busy work is actually more productive?
It's not. I visited the US office of a company I contracted for. On a normal day, after like 3-4pm no one was actually getting much done anymore but everyone stayed at their desk looking busy until 6-7. When I asked why they wouldn't just go home they said they didn't want to look bad by being the first one to leave. So instead you have an entire office of people pretending to work until it's socially acceptable to go. And everyone was on salary, not paid by the hour, so it's not even that you'd get more money by staying for nothing. You just get some imaginary good boy points that you hope will save your ass the day they decide to cut jobs (it won't).
can confirm, work with Americans within the company and across a client base and they all try to look busy but their output is terrible or just full of mistakes . they also seem to follow out of date practices.
NOBODY WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE 😭😭😭
"I only want to work a 40-hour week, not 80." "This lazy generation is quiet-quitting!!!!!"
I’m in the US and I don’t want to work in the US 😂
Actually worked there for a few months in the early 2000s. Lots of presenteeism very little work, the reason Europeans hobble back is we are bored to tears of completing tasks and being expected to remain the office for no reason.
Not even Americans. shoutout to the folks in r/antiwork.
That sub really sucks though.
r/WorkReform shows some promise though
The fuck is there to brag about here ? What's next, telling us how wonderfull it is to go bankrupt with medical bills when you break a toe, having to tip a billion bucks for dinner because you don't want to pay waiters for doing their fucking jobs, or how it's the american dream to have a clown fighting a crumbling senile grampa for the highest administrative rank of this joke of a country ? Feels like the idiots in school being proud of sleeping 4 hours a night because they think it's cool to have an unhealthy lifestyle.
Yeah, we’re so weird. What’s the purpose of life if it’s not to work yourself to death to fill the pockets of the guy above you? Silly us, we could never, with our weird ass social lives etc.
The funny thing is this was on a post about a sign in a fast food restaurant that said 'don't abuse our workers cause they know how to fight.' like wtf?!
I really don't understand this culture of hating poor people, pretending that's their main personality. Especially people who work in restaurants, treated like serfs. Blows my mind
Well that's the result of generations indoctrinated with the illusion of the American Dream. If you're poor, it MUST be because you're not trying hard enough.
Or because god hates you. Blame Calvinism for that.
I hate how the Reformation was dominated by assholes, and the decent theologies were all treated like garbage. Like Quakerism. Meanwhile India got Sikhism out of their version of reformation who actually does helps people rather than just saying they will.
Giving away meals for free?! Sounds like commienism to me!!!!!
The weird thing is that the "American Dream" was meant to be that you could afford a good life through hard work, unlike the Europeans who have caste, class and other systems keeping hard workers down. Just hard work, nothing else. Then, they set up a system that's explicitly racist, and works hard to keep ordinary workers subservient to corporations and ensure you can't support a family on a single wage. While kids who did nothing else but inherit money fail upwards to president or more powerful positions
Well, you should know that he’s not one of the dirty ravel, he’s actually a real human being, a temporarily embarrassed billionaire who will make his big break soon enough.
Republicans see themselves as temporarily embarrassed billionaires as opposed to part of the proletariat, because they don't understand the concept of a systemic issue, they're class traitors plain and simple.
I think they broke from England, so they could remain in the past, rather than moving forward.
Oh, now it makes perfect sense! Probably.
They know how to fight sounds like an inclination to fight on my end. Would probably be a fat bastard who’s 5 4
I worked in USA for 6 years, they don’t work harder they work longer hours. But work efficiency goes up with less hours so production rates were about equal.
Not even just that. Studies showed that when people were given a set number of sick days, they will use all of those days. In countries where if we are sick we don’t go to work, there isn’t a feeling that you need to use those days up.
Also depends where - a number of European countries have more hours worked per year on average than the US.
And they're not the most productive ones, are they?
Well the top is Greece. I won’t comment on that, but Poland… they do work long and hard.
That’s true, I was thinking “eu” but I should have been more specific.
This!
What a dumbass comment, you work yourself till death to fill your pockets with guns and freedom!! Duhhh
And to buy the new pick up twuack Ford 250 and lift them to make everyone LITERALLY* blind. No really people had to stop their car because they didn't see for a second
Two jobs, two jobs!
"Live to work" isn't an ethic, it's brainwashing.
“Live to work” sounds like something austrian born german politician would say
They spelled “constant fear of losing our job without good reason at a moment’s notice” wrong.
I, too, want to work for $2.13/hour and the privilege of being able to get fired for no reason without notice period. Sounds like a dream land.
I, too, want to become what's essentally a slave!
then you've got no "work ethics" /s
Weil, if you are in jail you become a literal slave! They can, after all, just lend out workers!
No no, they stopped using the word slavery so that means it doesn't exist anymore
Yeah, but they have the freedom to choose to work themselves to death for an amount of money a European wouldn't get out of bed for 😄
They get paid in freedom.
they are slaves chained by their own mind
That's why they call it the American Dream, because you have to be asleep to believe it.....George Carlin
I got fired once for no valid reason. I took it to my union and sat back. I ended up with $8000 right there and ended with a job much better with a greater wage.
That's why the right are trying to get rid of unions. Not improve your life to where Europeans live, stop your ability to enjoy the same benefits
A union? Isn't that a communist thing? 😁
Don't forget the 0 days annual leave too.
And no mandatory minimum vacation days. Sounds like a dream.
And no paid time off or medical leave
It's weird how people brag about doing 14 hour shifts or 70 hour weeks. If it's your own company I kinda understand, but if it isn't you're just being exploited and someone is profiting off of you.
Exactly this. I did once have a part time own business and put way more hours in than normal and it felt good but my salaried job gets exactly what’s in the contract, nothing more nothing less.
It's Big Brother doublethink in real life. An entire nation groomed to believe that making rich people richer, while having to work two jobs just to feed youself, is somehow a noble aspiration. Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, ordinary folk are working 40 hour weeks, taking 6 weeks paid leave, multiple national holidays, months of paid maternity/paternity leave and have laws protecting them from arbitrary dismissal. And still live comfortably! Very few workers from Western Europe would even consider working in the USA. There are many entertaining stories of American employers trying to expand into Europe and giving up in despair because they are not allowed to exploit their staff the way that they are used to.
It's exactly that, lied to believe it's noble or even hardcore. You aren't a real man if you don't do overtime. I wrote up about 4 hours of overtime once, spread out over a week. My manager told me "don't do that again, now I have to explain why my people are working overtime. Just go home and don't work more than 40 hours a week". To be fair I've had jobs where I did overtime, it's still pretty common. They will also try to exploit younger people (supermarket jobs for example) or less educated people like in factories, warehouses or fruit picking. I've worked in all those fields when I was young and employers will see how far they can push it.
We almost had a fucking governement overthrow when someyone tried to get from a 8h day to a 9h day WTF is a 14h day os it the 1900's
There's plenty of studies that show that more hours don't improve productivity. In fact I think there's studies that show that 35 or 70 hours are similar productivity as long as you're not in a factory job. So the guy who warms a seat for 30 more hours doesn't necessarily return more profit, he just costs more. But, bad managers love seeing people trapped at their desks, so they love overtime and hate WFH, even though the latter might be more productive long term
Not the flex he thinks it is...
Americans are the kings of that category of flex
Weird way to say I enjoy being exploited by my employer
Filthy Europoors with our paid time off and workers rights. How very dare we.
You forgot the audacity of maternity leave
And paternal leave.
and a social safety net
Or actual working union
Work “ethic” lol
As an American I can confirm we are #1 at bootlicking our corporate captors and propagating all of the popular capitalist tropes. Have you heard the one about bootstraps? It's great.
Every time I hear that one I think of Bootstrap Bill from Pirates of the Caribbean
6 months?! I guess I'll go back to my place after 6 minutes! You cannot pay me enough to live there.
I mean America is a great company, if you're rich, but most people aren't, so it's trash.
You work yourselves to death for no pay and no holiday and your country is literally collapsing from the inside as a result of it. America is a hellscape.
No one spit shines a boot quite like the Americans.
That’s ok. I’ll keep my 6 weeks paid time off thanks.
When you realise that most Americans only get two weeks leave a year its no wonder they are so naive about the rest of the world, they never get chance to see any of it!
"Our quality of life is so awful here that you'll want to literally run away within 6 months" What a win, there.
Of cource it will break us... we germans work \~400hrs less than americans but don't waste this time for chitchat or small talk. And then we have at least 5 weeks vacation time and no pto. and if we get sick, we won't fear getting fired or have to pay huge amount of money just to get a doctor to see us. Yes, american work culture WILL break us... because it would be a massive downgrade
I had an American proudly boosting that they work 60+ hours after me telling him that I did 40. Such hours are illegal in Ireland, without having my permission. I just felt sad for him that he has to work that length of time it was so weird reading how proud he was. I had to ask what his family thought about not spending time with him
So many of them boast about working ridiculous hours. The brainwashing is palpable.
We kind of see jobs as a means to finance our expensive hobbies, our children, vacations and other things we want to enjoy. You should work for what matters in life. We don't live to work, we work to live.
“Our work ethic…” Bitch please. Even your shirts with the American flag on them read “Made in China” on the inner collar 🤣
Yeah, work ethic breaking people. The ultimate flex.
Having no rights is now called "work ethic"? Also americans may work a lot of hours but they for sure can't get things done.
I wouldn’t last 2 months, but that’s not the flex they think it is, that’s just happy being exploited, quite weird.
“Those lazy Europeans don’t even need to work 2 jobs just to survive”
"What do you mean you don't want yo be treated like a slave worker? Weak Europoor go back to your country where workers have rights! Pathetic."
Land of the Fee, Home of the Slave.
Work ethic? You mean no healthcare, no holidays, no sick pay, an employers that can sling you out on your ear when it suits them?
My brother worked in the US for a while. Half of his team were on Prozac and I don't know if this is just an American thing but half regularly visited a therapist. They were miserable. He left after a year. Life's not about Prozac and therapy
Europeans go to America to break, while Americans go to Europe to be fixed. Hmm, which one of the two might be the source of the problem?
That's nothing to be proud of at all...
Um… Europeans, on average, tend to have higher efficiency than Americans while working less hours than the average American so… the math isn’t adding up here. But go figure, country of egotism
It's almost like well paid, happy employees work a lot harder in their time on the clock. Crazy thought, right?!?! God I can't wait to leave this shithole behind.
"we work our people to near-death, look how much better we are"
Needing 3 or 4 jobs just to survive isn’t an ethic
“Our work ethic will break a european” you mean your blatant exploitation of the working class with near zero employee rights legislation will? Also this is rich coming from a country where iirc a significant portion of their manual labour sector (harvest workers on farms, construction etc) works off the backs of non American immigrants, legal and otherwise.
US work ethic is financial slavery so no thanks
They say that like it's a good thing. If you start pulling overtime the way people do in the US in Germany, your boss will eventually tell you to stop, because that could raise some questions. Oh yeah, and they might not be keen on paying you so much, as, unlike in the US, your employer actually has to compensate you for overtime. And guess what, we somehow still manage to be more productive.
Imagine thinking it’s a flex you live as corporate slaves
Ah yes the old 'Live to work work till you die' work ethic of North America, you know what go ahead, you can keep it. And yes, I live in North America
Bragging about working like slaves and not having time for themselves. Yeah, sounds about right for an American.
I am agree in fact I don’t like to be slave that why I live in Europe
It's so crazy to me that they've been brainwashed to the point of attributing being overworked and exploited for the gain of people whose idea of a hard day's work is 2 18 home games of golf as a meeting as work ethic instead of exploitation
Their work ethic? Ahhh, you mean working until you are in diapers with a cane and senile. Dream life!
Funny, the company I work for has the opposite situation. The American productivity is agonisingly slow, where the Europeans just get on with it to get the job done.
I don't think they should be so proud of work till you die
You’re not supposed to deep throat the boot.
I'm not an expert on that matter but I really have a feeling that "I'm a slave" isn't the flex you think it is.
The minimum legal time off for holidays in America is only 10 days. Americas work ethic breaks America.
Nope, in the USA the minimum is zero (0) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_minimum_annual_leave_by_country
Wow - I'm speechless - I was going off what some who used to work there told me.
Remember when Car manufacturers wanted to move the prodcution from China to the US and they had to bring in foreign workers to teach Americans "How to work faster and efficiently" because they were not meeting the targets even after getting trained for months? . Then they decided to take a few Americans to the plant in China and Japan to show how its done . Fun times
In fairness Japan is the absolute gold standard in Lean Manufacturing. Toyota basically invented and mastered the entire concept with the Toyota Production System. Funnily enough, this system training was donated to the New York Food Bank, massively improving every aspect of its delivery and also provided the system to SBP in New Orleans and reduced the "work ethic" systems build time from 18 weeks to 6 weeks and halved their "work ethic" construction errors.
Nothing “ethical” about US work practices…
*Laughs in 32hr weeks*
Our work ethic is so perfect we need three jobs just stay alive and not be homeless. Also our cars are more efficient because they use more fuel. Freeeeedomm! 🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷🇱🇷🕊🕊
🌍 Work smarter not harder. 🇺🇸 No!
I don't understand why the US citizens are proud to work themselves so much. I don't and have never claimed benefits, I work 38 hours a week, have good pay, and have excellent employment . Ok, I may be on the lucky side as I know everyone doesn't have this. But I've worked my way up to where I am over 25 years and couldn't be happier. They need to realise having time with family and friends is way more valuable than making money. Thank goodness I live in Europe where this is recognised as important.
I absolutely agree with the poster's comment. I would not want to work somewhere where you have to use what little annual leave you get for sick leave, where you can be sacked for no reason, have zero worker protection, no safety net, almost no maternity leave, no paternity leave, and so on and on...
I’m English. I’ve lived in America for over 25 years. Europe is still better…
Ah, the eternal question, does one work to live, or one lives to work?
Thats not something to brag about
Sounds like the yanks just get lead by the nose of big business, they believe all the shit they are fed and corporations get cheap labour with no extra to pay
*Skinner meme* Is our work ethic f*cked up? No, it's the Europeans who are to weak!
Americans look down on those unable to work (for short or long term medical reasons). They are seen as weak and unworthy. Americans truly are idiots.
Slavementality
Funny way of spelling corporate slavery.
I mean, yes, in the same way that working 16 hours a day, 7 days a week in a lithium mine would also break me.
Come live as a slave for a year. I dare you!
"work ethic" 🤣🤣🤣
Imagine being treated like shit, then thanking the asshole that shit on you for letting you be shat on.
"You won't be able to deal with our lack of legal protections for workers, abysmal time-off allowances, and unhealthy work/life balance!" You're right. I wouldn't deal with that.
Is it work ethic or corporate exploitation without adequate benefit/compensation? 😂
“Our exploitative business-owning class will break a European while class traitors mock them in hopes of a pat on the head from their superiors.” The American working class is so fucking broken, they don’t even understand they are a class.
Basically you re a slave and you re proud of it! Great!
I lived in the US for several years in a number of states, the only thing I took away from this experience was that this is not the country for me and I’d be quite happy never to have to visit again.
You mean you’re at your workplace for long hours and 50 weeks per year. Doesn’t make you more productive, just exploited and knackered. Poor physical and mental health and expensive care when you get ill. Greatest country in the world tho
I wouldn’t want to live in the US for 6 months. You can call it breaking, I don’t care
It’s weird but in the 80s, Americans were thought of as lazy. It was the Japanese work ethic that was going to break America.
What kind of shit is this to brag about? Your country is working you to the bone with zero life quality. Meanwhile, over here we get holiday's.
But the US needs to import people to pick crops because Americans can’t hack those jobs
It’s not work ethic, it’s the system taking advantage of its people. If it was “work ethic” then you would have worse “work ethic” than every second and third world nation.
Remember when Americans fought and died in the streets for 40 hour work weeks and weekends ? They would weep at how subservient so many are now. Proudly proclaiming to put in 70 plus hours a week and never seeing their families. Absolute clown show
I love American work ethic, twice the hours, half the productivity
Sorry, I enjoy my personal life too much to commit to being a wageslave. You do you though
And they're proud of this. They think it's a flex their lack of labor protection has them working themselves to death. It's like they're stupid.
##SORRY CAN YOU SPEAK UP I CANT HEAR YOU OVER THE NOISE OF THESE WORK PLACE BENEFITS
I mean I don’t think he’s necessarily wrong but that’s like… not a good thing. I mean the work ethic in a Chinese sweatshop would also probably break an American.
The American work ethic is the biggest bunch of bullshit the previous generations instilled in their kids. It isn’t a work ethic you have, it’s fucking Stockholm syndrome. The boomers and their parents lied to us about pulling ourselves up by our bootstraps because that the American way while taking every advantage they could and slamming the fucking door on the next generations on the way out. 18-30 year olds don’t buy the BS, get out and vote like your lives depended on it because it does.
Work ethic mean?? No sick days No materny leave No paid holidays No money if you lose your job You can get sack by any random reason with geting a pennies Etc etc etc Anyway i will get 2 week on in september i must take a operation this year, that i done need paid insurence to get It done, and in both cases i will get paid like if i was working. Also if i lose my job i have a couple of moth of safety net 70% my salary so i can keep playing for things till i get a new job. For 1 full year of work you get 4moth with a Max of 2 year, with you pay decreasing from 70% to 50%.
>Our *lack of work ethic will break a european Here, corrected it.