small victorian child @fancy-letter-rectangle - Tumblr Blog

Posts

computer-voiced-by-majel-barrett

Shoutout to my favorite genre of TOS episode:

aropride

please god let chatgpt die out like nfts did. With a fast and graceless fall into irrelevancy

bladespark

Like to charge, reblog to cast.

atwotonedbird

This spell has a very low hit ratio, so we need a lot of us to do it.

bird-gifs-collection-agency

this baby tawny frogmouth is hungry hungry hungry! hes taking it all!

contrary to popular belief, i am made of water soluble materials

#m-ty thoughts

maxknightley

being a jack of all trades is dope as fuck honestly. it's like I'm doing crop rotation inside my own brain

werewolf-transgenderism

rip king, truly nobody was doing it for weird sci-fi and fantasy obsessed nerds like you 💔

kosmogrl

glowingghosty

myfootyrthroat

When the health food store unionized, something wild happened that I thought was just a goofy one-off, but makes more sense now.

There was a big push to eliminate "degrading jobs" but the strategy was to eliminate the position, then create a new position outside of the bargaining unit to do the work. So like, we wouldn't have dishwashers, but we'd have people who washed dishes that weren't eligible to be in the union.

I was like A) what the actual fuck? Dish washing isn't "degrading", it's fucking vital. B) What the actual fuck? You want to create a union just to exploit different people?

There were enough of us to be like "Absolutely the fuck not," and put a stop to it, but I was absolutely flummoxed that people involved in a union would say that out loud. Working with more leftists now, it makes sense.

myfootyrthroat

I think it was coming from a background that viewed labor as necessary to accomplish anything, but advocated for the equitable distribution of the gains made by labor... and then being thrown in with people who just thought labor was icky.

The first time someone told me that busing tables was "degrading", I was like "Oh, uhh, yeah, like it's very necessary work but under compensated for how vital it is?" and they responded "No, touching plates that other people have eaten off of is disgusting."

But I want to eat off of clean plates. So somebody is going to have to touch/clean those plates. And I respect that person and want them to be able to afford to live.

official-torfmoor

Those people sound like a guy I'd make up to be mad at.

myfootyrthroat

I mean, that job definitely had a Truman Show vibe. If they hadn't been in-person interactions, I'd think I was getting trolled.

myfootyrthroat

Just to put a bow on it:

In bargaining, someone on the Union side suggested that we eliminate all the cashiers and exclusively use self-checkouts (they were a cashier and didn't like it). The organizer told them that the union wasn't in the habit of eliminating bargaining unit positions. (This is the same person I've talked about how said that "as a prison abolitionist" we just needed to execute most criminals.)

When I explained holiday scheduling (time off requests granted in order of seniority, shifts assigned in reverse order of seniority). Someone was angry and said that time off requests potentially being denied "wasn't in the spirit of the union". When I pointed out that our departments made like 30% of our annual revenue between Thanksgiving and New Years and that required production staff to be working, they said that we just needed to create a class of positions ineligible for the bargaining unit that wouldn't be able to request time off. (Which again, most of us figured we'd just rotate holidays or something, but assumed that some holiday production was mandatory.)

bees-and-mice-and-frogs-and

I was on leftie tiktok (as a creator) for a bit and I saw this attitude there as well. I specifically remember one argument around cleaners where someone said that employing a cleaner was, like, ethically bad, and that "after the revolution" we wouldn't have cleaners.

It got me thinking, along with Ann Russell talking about how to treat cleaners (being a cleaner herself), about how we conceptualise domestic service as particularly degrading in all its forms, when, really, why is that? Why is paying someone to do something intrinsically bad?

Like, even in a moneyless, gift economy society, there would still be people whose primary contribution to their communities would be cleaning. Some people like to clean, and are really rather good at it.

I've talked ad nauseam in the past about how British attitudes towards cleaners and other service based positions today are the descendants of Victorian attitudes. That is, both the attitudes of conservatives and many progressives of that time. The trade union movement was particularly exclusionary towards service workers.

I think people on the left thinking about forms of labour can sometimes be worse than people on the right. People who have taken these positions generally just conceptualise them as something you need to do to get by, and there are particular employers where these positions are degrading but in general the jobs themselves aren't.

myfootyrthroat

Yeah, that really sums it up. There's stuff that needs to get done, so I'll never be of the opinion that it's degrading work. I worked in kitchens for a long time, and every other position is reliant on having clean dishes, so nobody can really be "above" washing dishes. The shitty thing about washing dishes or busing tables is how people treat the people doing it. The work itself is vital.

And some of those jobs are like, sure, you can throw almost any warm body at it and get it done adequately, but you still run into people where you're like "Holy shit, you're good at this."

leebrontide

People doing a job most people don't want to do should be paid MORE in order to get people to do it. That's how it would work if we weren't mired in a schema assuming that less-frequently-desired jobs are the province of people who "can't do better" and "deserve" poverty because they have less value as people.

toreblogallthethings

Peer reviewing the tags: #these attitudes are also why ppl are weird about sex work#and weirdly enough visibly disabled people working - like esp thinking of like#places that employ ppl w LDs as workers and volunteers#what they FEEL is 'these people make me uncomfortable'#and they say 'they shouldn't have to do that'#so the solution is. no visibly disabled people getting to work#the fact that. they want to work. and want jobs#is irrelevant#too many people base their politics off their like. gut feelings of discomfort and unease#which are completely disconnected from both practicality and actual morality

mediasideblog

It's rooted in misogyny. Cleaning and domestic labor has gendered expectations & there's taboo around paying or even organizing a time to do it because it's quite literally "supposed to be" invisible work.

Domestic tasks are expected to "just get done" without anyone having to think about it.

You speak to a lot of people who think they're in 50/50 split households who don't realize that their partner is doing a majority of the cleaning. (I'm using gender neutral language, but you know what I'm actually saying.)

I was once helping my ex's mother clear the table, and he said "I feel bad just watching you tidy up," so I said "well, you could always help."

marlinspirkhall

#it's racist, too

jumpin--bean

There are many wild things about Amok Time as an episode but I feel like we don't talk about the fact that the resolution is pulled from Romeo & Juliet. Like. Administering a drug that feigns death? For the purpose of escaping an arranged marriage? Spock/Romeo falsely believing the trick and being devastated?? This shit is from the most classic romance of all time what the HELL

#how did i miss this actually

sw33t-transv3stit3

people on September 15th, 1967: oh wow it’s the season premiere for Star Trek i can’t wait to see what the crew of the enterprise is up to ha ha :)

star trek:

mia-n-ceetee

Changing the relationship status to "Stalemate"

mia-n-ceetee

Changing the relationship status to "Uneasy truce"

mia-n-ceetee

Changing the relationship status to "Mutually assured destruction"

marlinspirkhall

thedeepthought

me: I ship them

friend: oh like romantically?

me: no. like cursed object passed between hands for centuries, they are cosmically linked, probably bonded by blood ritual, I think they’ve fought in a war together in at least three lifetimes, and their souls make direct eye contact every time they breathe in the same room

friend: so… romantically?

me: yeah. like. with kissing.