quiddities and agonies of the ruling class - a rolling new york times thread

Charan Sachar, 37, a former software engineer who lives near Seattle, used to spend his downtime perusing Etsy, the D.I.Y. crafts site. He daydreamed of an unfettered life at his kiln, creating Bollywood-inspired teapots and butter dishes.

I love this thread so much.

butter dishes!

"scoops westside"

Lolz

"Matthew Kang, 26, a former commercial bank analyst in Los Angeles, has it worse. Last year, he quit his prestigious job to open Scoops Westside, an ice cream shop in Culver City. “I feel like a janitor sometimes,” he said.

At least janitors have a steady paycheck. Plan B might entail more freedom, but that often comes at the expense of financial security. "

Wow, so it's even worse than being a janitor!

Obvious, but pitch-perfect:

4.
Thingthree
London,KY
August 13th, 2011
3:39 pm
I completely agree. The American's who are able to quit their $250,000 a year job as a lawyer to pursue their dream job only to realize there is no manual labor fairy to wish all their hard work cares away have it tough. That a baker might lift her own bags of flour is a travesty the very idea of which is disheartening. Woe is the life of a baker who must suffer such misfortunes as accidentally cutting a finger in a moment of carelessness with a knife.
This article is fantastic and worthy of a place in the New York Times. It is most fortunate this article about the troubles of entrepreneurs who have to do work should be posted at such an opportune time; had it been posted a week later I would have never seen it as I must sell my computer to afford rent.

lol yeah. my parents owned a restaurant for about two years and it took a fucking toll on them.

http://www.creativewithclay.com/butter_dishes_june09_small.jpg

they're nice butter dishes.

they look like things you painted yourself at the clay-painting-studio downtown

weeeeell, to be fair, those are a bit beyond the average and dude's work is nice though not my style.

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-_-7KsYJKTlc/TfX9i6Z0rWI/AAAAAAAACNo/6-ILmrfqsew/s1600/IMG_3643-1.JPG
having just done some pottery i can compliment this unironically

but yeah, it's still on the outskirts of professional and it sure ain't my aesthetic

I love how people open businesses in industries which they have never actually worked for money.

People who have worked in restaurants for a long time will tell you that some of the worst owners to work for are those for whom running a restaurant was a "dream" escape from office work.

I'm talking more about full-service restaurants, but the point is the same: some of those proprietors had never before done a lick of manual labor, never mind working in a kitchen or dining room or bar, so it seems like they come at it only considering the perspective of the guest. Maybe think it's going to be a nightly party where they gain popularity and make connections, but it's not. It's hard work and long hours where you're dealing with perishable goods, pleasing the public, and herding a staff of students, actors, drunks, and coke- and pot-heads. The good ones suck it up and run the place, but the bad ones let the wheels come off while they hob-nob and comp bottles of Dom to their buddies.

At my last waitering job, the owners were a corporation, so in the roll of the harried owner was the revolving door staff managers who went stayed a year and then got regular office jobs. Like a couple of them said, they missed their friends and families, who were at home in bed when they got off work at 1:00 a.m.

Basically what Yerac said, but longer.

totally correct.

When my parents decided they wanted to open a coffee shop as a pleasant retirement business, I had a fit because they barely drank coffee, didn't go to coffee shops and had no clue what it entailed to run a business. They also didn't think it would be necessary to hire a manager for the store. Then they realized they would have to be at the store at all times to open, do orders, receive deliveries, schedule workers, do payroll, deal with health inspectors, etc. etc. They actually seemed shocked that the high schoolers they hired gave away free stuff to friends. They got super lucky when the previous owners of the shop for some reason decided not to close on the sale and they only lost a little money.

I at least got a ton of these Plan B jobs out of my system in my 20s so I know that my boring corporate job with cushy pay and hours is something to hold on to. And I have the experience to know what it takes to run a bar, record store, coffee shop, retail business, restaurant, franchise and I would never do any of these things again. Unless I needed a money laundering front.

hah yeah most people who own or work at restaurants/shops push for their kids to get exactly the kind of white collar jobs these folks are giving up (or are fired from), so they can spend those long hours at a desk instead of wrestling with bags of flour in the cellar.

"Former white-collar workers are also surprised by the demands of manual labor."

I dunno it's not like *everyone who owns a cafe* is miserable

Yeah, but I think you have to open that type of business really knowing what you are getting into (that you will be living there, unless you can find super trustworthy people to help you run it).

there are exceptions to everything, and some people do enjoy the grind of owning a cafe. we are mostly lolling at the conceptions of these white collar folks that running a business would be an airy and pleasant daydream.

Every time I think it would be fun to join the Food Truck Revolution® I remember that I hate work.

"Former white-collar workers are also surprised by the demands of money laundering."

Flower shops are another potential vanity business. I've seen burnt out two corporate types open a shop, thinking it will be all playing with posies and balloons and making people happy on their weddings and birthdays. But again, you have to manage perishables, try to make the public happy, do a lot of dirty manual labor, and in this case having to have some knowledge or skills that are more obscure than the basics of food. I mean, does some former insurance subrogationist know if a designer improperly wrapped boutonnieres so that they wind up falling apart right before a wedding? When they do fall apart after her designer has gone home, can she fix them? Since this example is ripped from the headlines of my real life, I can tell you: No, she doesn't know, and all she can do is stab at them with pins to try to voodoo them into functionality.

you guys have me daydreaming about money laundering fronts now

thread making me feel p smug about quitting my cushy overpaid corporate job to get my doctorate

lol ditto

I never have had an "overpaid" cushy corporate jobs but I've had enough shitty office jobs to know that working in an office can be totally shitty and manual labor is... Not always a bad thing at all? It does make you physically exhausted in a different way

I do lol at these ppl but I don't rlly think in the abstract an office job is preferential. I've had dece service industry work and horrible office gigs

I realize this isn't what the article is talking about but I thought id mention

best jobs ive ever had involved manual labor

Cushy corp jobs can certainly be overrated. There's a different kind of misery to long hours of monotonous, meaningless sit-on-your-ass work. In my new job I make more than most of my friends but not enough that I'm going to enjoy some kind of luxury that makes it all worth while, and in fact IME luxuries DON'T tend to make it all worthwhile. It's really only the stability/security/relative lack of financial worry that make these jobs worth it, and maybe also the defined boundaries between work and leisure, as opposed to a small business which seems more like taking care of a baby.

best jobs ive ever had involved manual labor
Probably because you knew it wasn't forever. It's easier to enjoy those jobs when you know you've got an out.

eh manual labor can be rewarding, theres obvs lots of other variables than the blue/white collar binary

I always took my vision of what the service industry is like from Fawlty Towers.

Probably because you knew it wasn't forever. It's easier to enjoy those jobs when you know you've got an out.

― kate78, Monday, August 15, 2011 8:14 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark

this is mostly true, i guess. still think longingly of ski patrolling though

Obv there are a lot of variables, but I've found a lot of it to be psychological. My cushy full-time office jobs have all left me feeling terrible. Sitting in a chair in front of a computer all day, getting yelled out, yelling at people, making people cry. It can also be more monotonous and tedious than many lower paid jobs, manual or not. Meanwhile when I've done manual labor, working in a printshop or working on my own printshop, some of those repetitive tasks don't bother me so much because of the stake you have in it. I can spend 4 hours cutting paper because I know I'm making something that I'm involved in and I'll be responsible for the final product. But there's no personal stake at the office job.

there are all different sorts of manual labor too - if you are pushing around carts loaded with cartons of coca cola all day that's no fun

and c'mon "ski patroller" sounds like "baywatch life guard" on the list of manual labor jobs

What worries me about manual labor jobs is that once the job wears your body out or you sustain an injury, you're fucked unless you have some transferrable skills. I have a biased view in that I only see the injured people and not those that happily retire after 45 years as a brick layer, but it's heartbreaking when someone who has been an active manual laborer can't work anymore.

unless ski patroller was tongue in cheek

I have found splitting it 50/50 ideal. After years of computering I'd daydream of manual labor involved jobs. Then I started printing and would suddenly be on my feet all day. By mid afternoon I'd be like "can I sit down please?" But it's been proven that sitting all day is super bad for you. Anyway, if/when I transition to my own thing it'll involve sitting at the computer for an hour or two, standing and working with my hands for an hour or two and so on...

some people prefer manual labor and some people prefer office jobs! and sometimes the demands of your life require you to work one or the other! the hilarious thing about the nyt article was all the lawyers and marketing execs who quit their jobs apparently without giving one iota of thought to the amount of work that it takes to start and run your own business

we can't all be peter at the end of office space

Peter's collecting SSDI now thanks to two failed lumbar fusion surgeries.

i know someone who's thinking about throwing her job overboard in favor of taking over a small flower shop. she has never gardened in her life nor run a small business. she is 40. and obviously, insane.

could be worse, could be cupcakes

lol otm

yeah idk there is a huge variation in "manual labor" which scales from intensely focused detail work to loading boxes to heavy constriction. but dan selzer otm, there are definitely rewards to *making stuff* that are very different from managing your inbox and moving information around or whatever. i made candles my first year out of college and the manufacturing process was pretty great -- i could get stoned and play with wax all day and look at the amount of inventory i'd produced at the end of each day as proof of my productivity. it's easy to romanticize labor, but it's still work and the you cannot take it for granted!

the hilarious thing about the nyt article was all the lawyers and marketing execs who quit their jobs apparently without giving one iota of thought to the amount of work that it takes to start and run your own business

this is something to which i can testify from first-hand experience.

also, i've never been big on manual labor ... either as a way to make a living or in the handyman-around-the-house sense. so i guess i'm not the ideal reader for these sorts of articles.