That put things in perspective for me, because I had thought that the back of the restaurant was a hard dangerous s*** job - - in fact the hood fans and ac didn't and work, the food thermometer in my shirt pocket regularly read above 110F, and I was generally surrounded by sharp things, hot things, greasy floors and boiling oil, and the shift manager chest bumped me and screamed in my face. But for that guy it was a promotion.
That was in Texas, which is a "business friendly" state, so those progressive reforms might be more... incremental than the average hn reader might wish.
> his remarks on your other areas of concern would be ill suited to this forum
This isn't a kid's show. Your comment is really interesting to me, and I'd like to hear what he said about these issues.
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My apologies, that's hilarious.
Not sure what that word is that you don't want to say, but if it's a racial epithet then I have to admit I won't say any of that shit either. I try not to even think those words, lest they become part of my internal monologue that becomes not-so-internal when I get old and demented. Maybe that makes me a hypocrite when I accuse others of self-censoring.
Your friend sounds like trash. I have some super trashy friends and acquaintances, and I can just hear them talking through your description. Trash white people are a tribe, and there's hardly anything trashier than the kind of grifting that painter did to you.
I love that Johnson quote, and it seems ever more prescient now that trash whites are a distinct voting bloc.
That quote applies just as well to black trash. There seems to be a resurgence of black nationalism now, with multitudes of black revolutionaries talking pan-africanism, reparations, and utopian black socialism. Moors and whatever the fuck else. I was reading about a group of these characters that briefly set up shop down in the far corner of my state. Black Hammer, they call themselves. They got a bunch of suckers to gofundme them to the tune of hundreds of thousands of dollars, saying they'd liberate some land and start some sort of black-supremacist commune. Surprisingly it didn't work out and the leaders have since moved on to more mainstream BLM-type activism. And they kept the money obviously.
Maybe that would work with construction, but they also hire a lot of exconvicts due to turnover and pay.
If I were running a meat processing plant, and there was:
- Sexual harassment
- Racism
- Violence
- Etc.
I'd have a huge liability on my hands. Unfortunately, prison convicts would be much more likely to expose me to those types of liability. If an employee catcalls another employee, that places a lot of burden lands on the employer.
This happened largely due to progressive reforms. I'm not claiming to have any solution here, or to even have a semblance of idea of cost/benefit. People need jobs. People deserve to be safe.