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10 17

I was a Cable Guy. I saw the worst of America.

A glimpse of the suburban grotesque, featuring Russian mobsters, Fox News rage addicts, a caged man in a sex dungeon, and Dick Cheney.

[huffingtonpost.com]

LiterateHiker 9 Dec 30
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3

Very insightful article about how the elite and upper middle class treat the servant/service worker class as well as how corporate America treats its employees like machines or robots that are all expendable and replaceable. I have always, as a socialist, thought that workers in physically demanding jobs should have a lower retirement age, like they do in Europe, than those in desk or non-physical jobs. The reason being that death and disability often come earlier to people with a career in those jobs than the rest of us. So the fair thing would be to not penalize them for dying younger or having their bodies wear out sooner than other workers. Why should they have to spend all or most of their retirement years with already wrecked bodies? Unless of course, the intent of government is to save money on them by making them wait to retire later than they should and not having to be disabled first. I bet this woman's employer made it very hard to retire on disability for work related injuries or conditions.

Electricians are another field that working in it as a career usually means your knees and back are shot by age 55.

1

Eye opening. Thanx, good post.

@kmdskit3

I always offer repair people a glass of water. Now I feel bad about not asking if they need to use the bathroom.

1

There are an awful lot of shitty jobs out there. Some break us down physically, some mentally, and some just starve us. Be thankful if your job is any better than shit.

1

Yep. I installed phones for about a minute. Between the leering pervs, the roaches, the hanging on the telephone pole waiting for the colored wire codes.....I took McConnell's advice & went to work for the government to access all of the perks he gets.

3

I used to work for a telco doing broadband support. Spoke to a lot of the install/fault guys. Worst story I heard was of a guy doing an install on a freshly renovated house with a sweet young couple who'd just moved in. Everything is going fine until he had to run the internal cable through the crawl space under the house.
This being Australia, all techs wore gloves when going into lofts or under houses, because our creepy crawlies are kind of infamous. And thank Christ this guy did, because when he went into the crawl space under the lounge room he put his hand straight into about a dozen used hypodermic needles. When he looked further in, there were hundreds of the things piled up right in the crawlspace entrance.
Turns out that before the house had been redeveloped, it had been abandoned for several years and used as a squat by local heroin addicts, who had disposed of their used fits by just dropping them through gaps in the lounge room for boards.

1

Sounds like she was mired in trumpanzees. Jeezus, this is what people have to do to make a living nowadays? One reason I got a college education.

It's funny - I used to live in that area, just up the road from the CIA. Yes, it's an upscale suburban neighborhood, populated mostly by professionals, including high paid military and gov't workers and their families. I wouldn't call their homes mcmansions unless it's changed a lot in the 30 or so years since I left. Even so, I realize the creeps and pervs are everywhere, but she seems to have crossed paths with a surprising number of them. I'd like to believe that most people are pretty decent regardless of religion and politics so I hope the sample she reported on is just a small percent of her total experience.

@jerry99 one would hope so, but I've heard similar stories from others from different areas. I cleaned swimming pools for a living for a short while when I was young, and saw some nasty shit at the residences of what were, supposedly, "normal" people; though, I never felt endangered by any of the customers.

1

Perfect place for gangster Cheney

1

Interesting and scary.

1

Not sure she made the best career choices.

Making a choice from lack of options isn't really a choice.

3

That was a very enjoyable read. Thanks.

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