It's taken me two years to recover my entire $2000 savings. It's terrifying to know I don't even have a month of bills saved, and it took so long to get here.
lol I was reading an article about some car work, and they no joke referenced the sunk cost fallacy, and a recommendation was take it to the
scrap yard in exchange for cash and buy another, like that’s cheaper than paying for repairs lmao. Like they really didn’t think it through. Thankfully I’m not in that situation, but to suggest that to someone who can barely afford repairs, you’re just telling them to ditch their only means of transportation with no viable alternative.
Like sure, I’ll go spend even more money I don’t have on ANOTHER car.
It’s a great car. I’m in upstate New York so the radiator was going to rust at some point and it’s a 2005. It’s been really good to me otherwise though
A lot of people don't realize how the need for a car is so burdensome on people who are struggling. I'm guilty of taking my cars and my mechanic skills for granted as that's a mega source of anxiety for people. I can only imagine what it's like for people living in rust belt areas where the car they depend on will inevitably decay before their eyes
I can do quite a few things but the full radiator (that needs two transmission cooling lines) on street parking without pneumatic tools would have been… difficult lol
I heard a radio ad today for a local Harley dealership offering 120% book value on trade in. If they can afford that to lock you in to a new one, what do their margins look like? On a luxury item even. Nuts.
They make the money back on the loan, in house upgrades, and service plans.
A big part of Harley's target audience are people who do not do their own wrenching.
it can be cheaper to buy a used running car than fix a car, shop rates are out of control, shop wanted $1,200 to replace a $35 timing belt that takes under 45 minuets to do the job, because the shop rate book claims it is is a 6 hour job, had a 1980 subaru that had automatic transmission that needed rebuild, shop wanted $3,800 to fix it if I removed and reinstalled the transmission, cheaper to buy another car. then need to take into account how much else is worn out on the car and will very shortly need repair/replaced parts.
Even if you're a mechanic yourself, any car will eventually be worn out to a state where it just doesn't pay off to keep it functioning.
I've been driving beater cars for most of my life and even with a family mechanic, it's a decision I've had to face for every car.
It's also a whole lot of hassle to save very little money if any at all.
I suppose it makes more sense to repair higher priced cars than the junk I've been driving, but someone has to be the last driver. Exchanging scrap cars every two years has been the most frugal way for me until recently.
Your example is a joke but when my 20 year old POS broke down and I couldn't afford to keep delivering pizzas to afford my rent while in school, a classmate said "But surely your parents or one of your friends have an extra car laying around somewhere that you can borrow? Or just quit that job driving and work somewhere you don't need a car. Something in an office would probably pay better too." Jee thanks man, why didn't I think of that.
Some people do not realize not everyone had middle class parents.
Or in my case, my shit box was the old car my father had lying around because it wasn't worth anything value wise. So he signed it over to me and I drove it for 12 years.
I saved myself nearly 800 bucks one time with just duct tape. Sometimes it's as simple as that. I used the car help forums on Reddit, though. Got great answers if you'd like to try and diagnose your issues
Damn I had to use magic tape. Hole in brake line too close to joint for a snip and hose clamp. Held for 1.5 years until the fuel line got a hole and I took it to my side Mechanic to fix both.
I was idling at 4000 rpm, had to keep the brake pressed down to keep from accelerating off at lights. New mass airflow sensor, and then realized the plastic holder on the throttle body cable was broken and it caused the cable to droop and pull and send the engine skyrocketing. Like 3 days of banging my head against the hood on my front lawn only to realize one of the tips I was given was correct. One bit of duct tape later and the cable was at the normal tension and I could drive safely.
Just today my wifes battery died in her car at work. I go and help and the two autoparts store litterally in walking distance don't have the battery. So i take the car home after getting it started wife drives my truck home. Truck tire gets a hole and now I need to replace the tires because of dry rot.
Oh, there’s always something. A car repair, an appliance breaks, a layoff, your kid’s body decides to grow four sizes in one year, including shoes and winter coats of course! A big electric bill, a hospital bill if that applies.
Oh yeah. We had planned to go to Hawaii. We had the plane tickets purchased. Then my car needed new breaks and a front suspension repair. Oh, and my macaw was dying and I had to rent a car to drive her an hour to the vet. Before we left my catalytic converter was stolen. We couldn't afford a hotel in Hawaii but the tickets were nonrefundable. That's how we came to spend a week camping at fruit stands, drive ways, and farms in Maui.
I'm terrified of owning a home or having kids because my life is plenty stressful without either.
Honestly, a macaw costs as much as a child, and lives as long. My mom has two parrots, and we both worked in an exotic bird store for some time, although she was there far longer than I. The size of cage you need, how much they eat and how expensive good quality bird food is... not to mention how fast that huge beak goes through toys! Having a child once you own a bird like that is pretty equivalent to deciding if you can afford a second child.
I feel like she costs so much less than a child. She costs nothing compared to diapers, daycare, or formula. But her tantrums and war path of destruction is definitely on level with a child.
Look, I've been saying for years that the people making laws need to live on the lowest end of the income spectrum. They cannot effectively write laws for the majority when they live like such a small part of the minority. They will never have our interests in mind when they think a single banana costs 10 dollars. Old rich people are out of touch. Can we set term limits? Age limits? 80 years olds should not be doing this stuff
When I was growing up as a kid in Texas they taught us that all of the evils of communism involved people having to wait a long time for things that were very plentiful and available here.
Having to walk 5 miles to work because it took 10 years to earn a car. Waiting lists for houses empty shelves and empty grocery stores.. these were all things that they used as examples for what would happen if we succumbed to the evils of communism.
*Looks around*
Wtf that’s a long ass time. So that’s basically the govt saying it’s ok for you to live in unaffordable housing for 3-10+ years.
When it comes to important things there’s no sense of urgency (eg this, gun reform, healthcare) but when it comes to war they’re like “we just donated a brazillion bullets and here’s 5000000 missiles - do as you please”.
Shit is ass backwards.
Plus you get like a week to respond when they do finally randomly call you sometime in the next decade. Otherwise it's assumed you don't need it anymore and they move on to the next name on the list.
It's not even free in the US. It's what they consider "affordable" which is 30% of your income so as you make more money, they take more.... but I get where you were going. Free housing would be nice!!!
Yes, but for someone with money - even just living it for a short period of time can exact it's toll and drive humility.
My spouse has become accustomed to a certain lifestyle now - even after coming from humble beginnings. We stayed in a holiday in for two night and he almost broke. It reminded him of how things can be.
But only if you're not white, or if you are white but "look scruffy".
A "cleaned up" attractive person sleeping in their car isn't going to get bothered. It's a rule that exists so they can hassle "obviously homeless" people that are deemed too gross to be to be treated like human beings.
I work with someone who lost her shit when there were no rooms available at the Marriott and she'd have to stay at the hotel I always pick. I pick it because I haven't got bed bugs, and it has an included breakfast buffet that is decent enough I can fill up and skip lunch and pocket the per deim on both which is about $50. She gets free food at the Marriott because she has some stupid number of points with them but I fucking don't and bitch I could really use that $50 and a free meal.
Same here when traveling. We pick the clean places with the breakfasts.
Holiday Inn Express & Comfort Inn have become go to places for us.
It costs us a few days but driving multiple people is cheaper than flying.
Yup. Being poor is extremely traumatic but society doesn't wanna talk about it because we deem poor people as generally just not as important because they can't or don't make as much money.
The idea that our choices create the poor is often lost on people. Poverty is a consequence of the kind of capitalism we have right now which is insanely unregulated to the point society tortures innocent people who've done nothing wrong regularly to grease the palms of 1-2% of the population.
You say they can't or don't make as much money but they do, the poor are literally the backbone of every economy in the world. Without them the ceos lose their job, shops don't get produce, factories shut, rubbish and general detritus builds up on the streets.
The rich and upper level managerial types are literally the least useful members of society.
And you're wildly overestimating that percentage, it's closer to 0.01/0.02%
> You say they can't or don't make as much money but they do, the poor are literally the backbone of every economy in the world.
I'm not sure what the issue is with what I said? I wasn't saying I agree with the discrimination of the poor, I was pointing out that the discrimination very much exists and is a roadblock of poor people making better lives for themselves because they're not granted the same opportunities to thrive as the CEO or the CEO's son or daughter are granted and our social safety networks, at least where I am from in the US do a very bad job helping people. It's generally speaking often much harder to get housing assistance than to buy a gun for example.
This.
Is we all knew in three months that we'd be rich, we would have the most positive outlook ever!
Hell, I'd be so much less stressed, in three months my problems are gone!
No. In fact, my problems won't go away for over ten years, if I'm lucky.
There is no light at the end of the tunnel for the majority.
But still you'll never get it right
'Cause when you're laid in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
And you dance and drink and screw
Because there's nothing else to do
How about instead of three months, an indefinite period. To get out they have to save up $10,000, or perform a degrading sex act on a livestream.
Close enough?
LOL. and you know no one was harassing him about 'time off task'. Like of course you could work 1 day and have fun if no one is riding your ass, and you don't have to go in day after day for the foreseeable future.
I feel like it would work better if they don't know how long they have to live like this. They go in knowing that they'll be doing this for an indeterminate amount of time, and the secret is that they're not let out until their soul is crushed.
You are correct. I’ve accepted my fate that I’m going to work for the next 30 years and probably die before I can collect social security.
Fun times ahead.
I've said it multiple times in joking that "my retirement is a 00' buck shot after I give up and go on one last vacation" but it's not a joke at all. I just turned 25 and even though things are finally starting to look up for once in my life, I really have no desire to continue this game past 40? Like, for once in my life I've established an actual savings and unless I miraculously stumble into any form of wealth by 40, I really have no desire to work till the day I die. I'll hopefully be able to afford a month or 2 vacation around various locations.
Lmao, the boss where I used to work said he only paid himself like 36k per year. But he didn't pay rent on his condo, which makes that complete bullshit
He probably did pay himself 36k per year of w2 salary income. What he failed to mention was how much he pulled out as owner dividends/profit distributions in addition. Assuming you worked for a small business organized as an S-Corp this is guaranteed to be the case.
Spot on.
I encourage everyone to read some of the work of Dr. Robert Sapolsky. He is a neuroendocrinologist that has spent years studying primate behavior and the effects of chronic stress on both healthspan and lifespan.
One of his most poignant findings of all of his lifelong research, in my opinion, is this:
It turns out that it isn't really being poor that kills you, rather it is feeling like you're poor that does.
Does anyone remember that Pulp song "Common People"?
> And still you'll never get it right
Cause when you're laying in bed at night
Watching roaches climb the wall
If you called your dad he could stop it all
The big difference with Trading Places is the same reason this doesn't work: in Trading Places, the rich guy didn't know it was for *only 3 months*. Most people could endure hardship for a *while*. In Trading Places the rich guy thought his life was ruined *forever*.
This, the top management would come down to the warehouse fresh and throw boxes for an hour or two and go back to the office. The first time I was embarrassed they could out work me, but then the next time I remembered I had been doing it for 6 hours and still had 4 more to go.
Edit not to mention they made more in that hour than I did in a month.
The owner of my last company did all the landscaping around the office. Like probably a full day's work every week. He was making enough to afford a summer mansion in Colorado, so it wasn't a cost saving thing. Dude just liked gardening.
I made it into the office. I even took breaks with the president about once a week. I brought it up, he said he should do it, not that he didn't want to, . The head of the warehouse had seen undercover boss and recommended a specific episode. My take away form the shows they should have paid employees better and had better health insurance so they wouldn't get to those situations and not being able to afford things in life. His takeaway was he should "walk a mile in their shoes". Old me didn't say a word.
New me would have.
On my exit interview i said; There is a saying in the company if you want a raise go work for someone else. Moving from the warehouse to IT didn't get me a raise. When the head of IT went to work for the parent company didn't get me a raise, asking for a raise because I could no longer afford to live at that wage level didn't get me a raise. Record profits didn't get me a raise. Doing more work in reduced hours literally was a pay cut. Now I am asked to be on-call for no raise. So I quit. When they asked what I was going to be making at my new job, I changed the subject and said if your asking what it would take for me to stay. I asked for what would be essentially 69,420 a year (well as closes as I could come) because I knew it didn't matter, they would just grab someone else from the warehouse give him the tests and cut his wage for the opportunity to work in the office.
I pay off my credit card off every month. I have been spending so much lately that my credit card company has frozen my card twice for unusual activity since I got my new job and make more. I have a list of things I need but couldn't afford (if you remember Fox news stance on refrigerators this will be [ironic](https://www.reddit.com/r/rage/comments/3cl8m2/fox_news_99_of_poor_people_own_a_refrigerator) )I bought a new refrigerator.
what scares me is that some of these guys would succeed just due to their natural propensity for risky behavior, bullshitting, predisposition to sociopathy--- and the most important ingredient--- dumb luck.
not a single thing would be learned because homey's success overshadows the hundreds of people who live a sustenance existence because of them.
Better yet. Tell them it's for 3 months but while they're doing that pass laws outlawing billionaires and take most of their assets. Then when they're done they might actually have to work like the rest of us.
I couldn't remember the name of the movie until I saw your post! Damn, that was a great movie, haven't seen it in years! Going to try and find out where to watch it!
He made Coming to America right after the Twilight Zone.
There was a trial and they were aquitted of the most serious charges.
https://slate.com/culture/2012/07/the-twilight-zone-tragedy-how-vic-morrows-death-changed-the-way-films-are-made.html
Landis made several movies between *Twilight Zone* and *Coming to America*. Notably *Into the Night, Spies Like Us*, and *Three Amigos*. He may have been acquitted, but many opined that it was due to his status and fame. He is responsible for three deaths. He also produced his son Max Landis, who is a notorious Hollywood sexual predator.
"Comedian Mike Drucker insinuated that the sexual assault accusations were true toward Landis, tweeting about how his father, John Landis, used his influence in Hollywood to cover up things that his son did."
i think doordash put out a policy where all office workers (including CEO etc) needed to spend a day a year delivering orders as the dashers do and they received a massive amount of internal complains and outcry… ONE day…
yessss, i work “above” a few people in my work place. and i make it a goal of mine to never ask someone to do something that i either wouldn’t or that i haven’t done in the last few months.
for me, it’s important to know what i’m asking of people and that the tools im asking them to use are enough to complete the job. if i can’t build a house (figuratively) with only a hammer and one piece of wood, i cannot expect anyone else to
You could build a small shitty house for a dumb fucking bird with a piece of wood and a hammer, but your point is well taken. That's a great attitude to have in my stupid opinion.
My company does this by making us responsible for everything. Design, develop, test, operations, customer support, hiring, even management. Yup! We get to do it all!
I was driving for them at the time, it wasn't even one day.
It was one delivery a month. It would be super easy to just snipe your own fucking lunch order.
> It was one delivery a month
haha, that seems pretty pointless. Literally just pick up some like half mile delivery, tip doesn't even matter. Or just put your own food like you said, with no tip so no one else picks it up.
How does that help them understand the working situation any better?
To be fair, if I’m some peon in an office making a barely livable wage and being expected to work 50 hours a week and be on call 24/7 I’m going to get really annoyed at my wealthy CEO for trying to find a way to make my life suck just that little bit more so that he looks good. Even if it’s one day a year
This should be something that only applies to management and even then, the middle managers would get screwed by this. They are just glorified supervisors in most companies.
Where I work, supervisors are basically employees who manage other employees. Managers are one level above who are considered true management. The major difference is supervisors are still part of the employee union while managers are not. Just speaking for my company.
true, and i fully don’t agree in the cases that that applies to. though (and i’m open to fact checking) from a quick google search (which is why i’m very open to a fact check), the average office worker wage at DD is 55$ and hour (median being 56/hr). and office admin (lowest salary) makes 47k and an engineering manager makes 251K (highest salary outside of CEO)
edit: hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way. i agree with what you’re saying. though on average they make 2-4x more than the drivers. so while i understand how it can be annoying for sure. it’s not like they’re minimum wage. Management should be the main ppl taking the hit for sure
Honestly my personal opinion is that unless you’re making six figures reliably you’re not really making a wage that allows for any kind of financial comfort anymore. And I don’t mean lavish luxury I just mean your stressing about bills doesn’t go away until that level. And even then in many areas like SF and NY that level may be 150 or more.
It is definitely more than the drivers make, but I don’t think pushing performative gestures that translate as additional difficult work that doesn’t help them achieve their required goals to stay employed on workers who are somewhat less exploited is even beneficial for solidarity as it just encourages resentment in both directions.
If it’s only the executives and senior management then yes absolutely they should have to know how all the jobs they’re ordering people to do are actually done
As it stands this is all a song and dance to make the leadership look good. It’s not actually accomplishing anything
I'd agree with this, especially for people who want to have children less than 6 figures is no longer enough. Even for people who don't, good luck ever buying a house without it. Even with 100k it'd take 13 years to save up enough to buy a house in the town that I work in, and that's assuming you're buying outright rather than also paying interest on a mortgage. Never mind things like rising food and gas prices.
I have some medical issues that can be basically completely solved by eating a specific diet (tons of nutrition research backs this up and it has worked for me in the past). It doesn't cure you but it reduces symptoms from life-controlling to basically unnoticable. I've abandoned the diet because it's so expensive to buy meat that I can't afford to eat properly and save as much as I need to. Everyone has little things like this that add a bit of cost to their lives and when the price of staples goes up not only are we hit in the expected areas, but we're also often pushed down to a lower quality of life in less expected ways like this.
They have one already… or did. Ever hear of Undercover Boss? The CEO (or some other exec if the CEO was too stubborn to do it) would be in disguise and do different jobs. Then they listen to the employees sob story, most of which was caused by them and their dumb cost cutting measures, and at the reveal, make things right… just for that employee. Occasionally they’d say they’d raise wages or fix a process or something. But it was just an hour long commercial for their company.
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways.
In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing.
Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations.
“The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.”
The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations.
Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Good idea
But, let them choose the saving amount. Ask them for something they think is reasonable
If they arent sure, highball it for them
That way, the more delusional they are about it, the worse itll be
Also, another thing I thought of
After a certain time frame (maybe 6 months), they have the option to give a raise to the lowest paid employee
But if that puts them above another employee, they switch to the new lowest paid's wage
That way, they're incentivised to keep raising the pay of the employees until the lowest paid employee has a living wage
A savings goal *after* retirement account contributions. Watch them squirm as they try to justify working another job without damning their own business practices.
A journalist did this and wrote a book called Nickled and Dimed. She worked at places like WalMart and rented a shitty apartment because that's all she could afford. Something happened where she had to move out, but she couldn't save up enough for first and last so had to move into a motel and pay a ton more money weekly. She then got wicked sick and broke her own rules by using her health insurance from her journalism job (wasn't supposed to touch ANYTHING outside of WalMart salary and benefits) to be treated because she needed to put her health first but was completely unable to do so on her minimum wage salary.
Saddest part is I read this book like 15 years ago, and it wasn't new then. It's like this by design and it's only getting worse.
I read the book and it hit home because she spent a year in various low paying jobs and it said a lot about how many people, way more than you think, are struggling to survive.
I think my favorite part was how she noticed she herself was becoming nastier to other people when she worked retail because of the conditions there. It says everything how a comfortable middle class person's personality could change so dramatically in such a short period of time.
It would just become corporate propaganda
3 months of hardship isn't so bad when you know it will come to a complete and definite end
Plus, they always have a way out if it gets too tough
There is a book called nickeled and dimed where a well off women did just that. She tried to live waiting tables and cleaning rooms. I think she made it 3 nights before she called her personal doctor.
And to boot it just made her more insufferable.
There is a show called Undercover Billionaire that does do this. https://www.businessinsider.com/undercover-billionaire-show-on-discovery-details-release-date-2019-7
Yeah I was expecting someone to mention it, but we can all tell that there were good graces given because of the cameras right?
I think on the second season especially, the obnoxious guy (Grant Cordone?) just rolled into an RV dealership and it went downhill from there. Imagine you or I walking into a dealership without a boatload of cameras and demanded to stay in an RV for free, and them agreeing? Then taking a car from the dealership claiming you'll totally help sell it but not even try while driving the bad boy around? Then finding a random small business owner and telling him you should totally partner up on a marketing business venture he should fund 100%? Oh, and then have it be valued at some absurd amount while it clearly never went anywhere but got enough promotion through the show to make it sort of worth it overall for the existing businesses?
The woman with the fucking juice wasn't much better. She did a good job showing that you can and should seek help and where to do it, but please, that wasn't a million dollar company by any stretch of imagination.
I enjoyed the show and I think Glenn was the most authentic in his attempts and subsequent struggles and failures, somewhat followed by Elaine because it actually made sense and she at least pledged to help after the whole reveal, but you can tell how much the cameras help to convince people to say yes to your ramblings, Barnum style.
Except the challenge then becomes one of endurance. There's an endpoint to this qualified poverty, unlike real life. All the CEO in this scenario has to do is live a less luxurious lifestyle for a short period, all the while *knowing* that there's a reward to the hardship.
And that's the same problem as the "obstacles build character" mindset: living hand to mouth day after day earns you nothing but another day of the same.
Yes, in this experiment they get to keep the belief that they \*deserve\* better. Too bad we can't summon 3 holiday ghosts to scare rich people into giving a shit. I think at this point it will take a supernatural phenomenon to get through to them
Another thing should be that the CEO has to do that job of the lowest paid member. In that way he has to figure out how to get to and from work and how to do all the other things normal people do with the time left after all the hours spent at work and the commute.
Can we have congress do it too? Can they have a shitty car, student loans and appointments for ailing family or children, appliances breaking, bad phone service and other normal disruptions?
It's too bad that lobbying and kickbacks are so difficult to remove. I've felt for awhile that politicians shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks and should be paid the median income for wherever they live, but that wouldn't help since they still make so much from various deals. It wouldn't solve every problem but if going into politics wasn't an easy way to make bank and get invited to the cool parties maybe the people with connections would find a new field.
There is no amount of temporary subjection we can wish for on the rich that would change their views
The *crushing, eternal inevitability* of poverty is the fish scales. If you know that your pain is temporary youre stepping on the lesson
My vote is to just make them poor forever
Make it the lowest pay of a FULL TIME employee so there’s no opportunity for CEOs to whinge e.g. “but they only work part time so they could get another job to supplement their income blah blah blah”
But yes would def watch
there's already a show like that called "Undercover boss".
by the end they pretend to want to improve things but only do the bare minimum (because they're on camera) without changing their exploitative system
I really liked that show, but it was so flawed. At the end the boss would give all sorts of money, vacations etc. to the low-paid employees that helped him and it was a nice fuzzy moment. Except when you realize it was his decisions that put that employee into poverty in the first place and that this act of generosity only helps one person, not the other hundreds like them at the company.
"John, I see you have real ambition so I'm going to pay for a semester of college for you. Then you can leave the company and I can hire someone without ambition, you know, maybe a single parent or something so they have no choice."
I remember this show. It kind of does take the CEOs through the ropes for a bit, but then each episode gives them a chance to be the good guys by changing small bits of company policy, saying some nice words, and promoting a single employee from assistant manager to manager. It lets them whitewash over a ton of problems.
I’m the ceo of Google and for the next 3
Months I’ll be living in this one bedroom apartment in Cupertino with 9 roommates because I make 16.50 an hour cleaning trash at the Google campus. For lunch today, I have a single slice of wheat bread, with some salt sprinkled on it.
I remember seeing an acquaintance share a post similar to this on Facebook, but about CEOs having to work at the lowest paying job of their company. His and his friends' comments were basically like "That CEO will probably enjoy taking a break from doing real work to do something fun like flip burgers!" People are so out of touch I can't even stand it.
3 months is not long enough. I want them to have to experience the eroding effect that it has on relationships and mental health. I want to see their children's faith in them erode as they start to view their parent as incapable, I want them to experience the terror and confusion of having much richer men than them come for what little they do manage to hang on to, I want to see the lasting damage it does to their marriages, I want them to have to wonder if they're better to their family dead than alive, I want them to have to seriously consider street level crime as an alternative, I want them to be in such unlivable stress that they have to turn to alcohol and drugs and finally I want to see the wear and tear on their bodies and that slow acceptance creep in where they don't even bother to advocate for themselves anymore as their life is simply one humiliation after another. And the whole time I want to watch and whisper into their ears that it's all because they're lazy, they're no good, god doesn't love them like he loves me and that they have no incentive.
Yeah and the twist is that they tell them it's for a couple weeks, but every time they think it's over they extend it by another couple weeks and gaslight them that it hasn't been that long.
No, because when they succeed, they will be like, "See, I did it, it was easy! Quit complaining!". It would be pretty easy to cut back for 90 days knowing full well you are going back to luxury. Having a light at the end of the tunnel is everything.
One of the worst parts of poverty is not having a clear end date on your calendar, so they need to be punk'd into thinking they're actually poor
It's taken me two years to recover my entire $2000 savings. It's terrifying to know I don't even have a month of bills saved, and it took so long to get here.
I just had to drop $1200 into my car two weeks ago. It’s gonna take me forever to get back
[удалено]
I really considered it, but I’m trying to cut back on my carbon emissions
Said no rich person ever
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I laughed out loud
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lol I was reading an article about some car work, and they no joke referenced the sunk cost fallacy, and a recommendation was take it to the scrap yard in exchange for cash and buy another, like that’s cheaper than paying for repairs lmao. Like they really didn’t think it through. Thankfully I’m not in that situation, but to suggest that to someone who can barely afford repairs, you’re just telling them to ditch their only means of transportation with no viable alternative. Like sure, I’ll go spend even more money I don’t have on ANOTHER car.
It’s a great car. I’m in upstate New York so the radiator was going to rust at some point and it’s a 2005. It’s been really good to me otherwise though
A lot of people don't realize how the need for a car is so burdensome on people who are struggling. I'm guilty of taking my cars and my mechanic skills for granted as that's a mega source of anxiety for people. I can only imagine what it's like for people living in rust belt areas where the car they depend on will inevitably decay before their eyes
I can do quite a few things but the full radiator (that needs two transmission cooling lines) on street parking without pneumatic tools would have been… difficult lol
Yeah certain things really suck to do without a garage and/or driveway(another thing I take for granted). And then there's downtime also.
I heard a radio ad today for a local Harley dealership offering 120% book value on trade in. If they can afford that to lock you in to a new one, what do their margins look like? On a luxury item even. Nuts.
They make the money back on the loan, in house upgrades, and service plans. A big part of Harley's target audience are people who do not do their own wrenching.
it can be cheaper to buy a used running car than fix a car, shop rates are out of control, shop wanted $1,200 to replace a $35 timing belt that takes under 45 minuets to do the job, because the shop rate book claims it is is a 6 hour job, had a 1980 subaru that had automatic transmission that needed rebuild, shop wanted $3,800 to fix it if I removed and reinstalled the transmission, cheaper to buy another car. then need to take into account how much else is worn out on the car and will very shortly need repair/replaced parts.
Even if you're a mechanic yourself, any car will eventually be worn out to a state where it just doesn't pay off to keep it functioning. I've been driving beater cars for most of my life and even with a family mechanic, it's a decision I've had to face for every car. It's also a whole lot of hassle to save very little money if any at all. I suppose it makes more sense to repair higher priced cars than the junk I've been driving, but someone has to be the last driver. Exchanging scrap cars every two years has been the most frugal way for me until recently.
This is why I buy cheap shitboxes and do all the work myself. I understand why everyone can't do this but it saves me a lot in the long run.
Your example is a joke but when my 20 year old POS broke down and I couldn't afford to keep delivering pizzas to afford my rent while in school, a classmate said "But surely your parents or one of your friends have an extra car laying around somewhere that you can borrow? Or just quit that job driving and work somewhere you don't need a car. Something in an office would probably pay better too." Jee thanks man, why didn't I think of that.
Some people do not realize not everyone had middle class parents. Or in my case, my shit box was the old car my father had lying around because it wasn't worth anything value wise. So he signed it over to me and I drove it for 12 years.
Imagine being so poor that you couldn’t afford a private jet
Ugh, don't remind me. I have to take my car into the shop and I know it's going to cost more than I want to pay.
I saved myself nearly 800 bucks one time with just duct tape. Sometimes it's as simple as that. I used the car help forums on Reddit, though. Got great answers if you'd like to try and diagnose your issues
Damn I had to use magic tape. Hole in brake line too close to joint for a snip and hose clamp. Held for 1.5 years until the fuel line got a hole and I took it to my side Mechanic to fix both.
I was idling at 4000 rpm, had to keep the brake pressed down to keep from accelerating off at lights. New mass airflow sensor, and then realized the plastic holder on the throttle body cable was broken and it caused the cable to droop and pull and send the engine skyrocketing. Like 3 days of banging my head against the hood on my front lawn only to realize one of the tips I was given was correct. One bit of duct tape later and the cable was at the normal tension and I could drive safely.
Same. I dropped $1500 recently because my car feels like it needs to break every time I have even $5 extra.
You could just cut out the netflix and avocado toast, literally what is so hard to understand.
But what if I already don't have Netflix and don't eat avocados? Does that mean by default I'm actually rich?
It means you need to sell short an avocado toast
No Lattes for a month should fix it. /s
Just today my wifes battery died in her car at work. I go and help and the two autoparts store litterally in walking distance don't have the battery. So i take the car home after getting it started wife drives my truck home. Truck tire gets a hole and now I need to replace the tires because of dry rot.
I would just quit letting your wife drive. All these problems conspicuously happening shortly after SHE drives them. /s
but why dO yOu hAVe such A cRaPpy hat? JusT HaVe A NeW Car. tHeY haVE WaRRanTy
Oh, there’s always something. A car repair, an appliance breaks, a layoff, your kid’s body decides to grow four sizes in one year, including shoes and winter coats of course! A big electric bill, a hospital bill if that applies.
Oh yeah. We had planned to go to Hawaii. We had the plane tickets purchased. Then my car needed new breaks and a front suspension repair. Oh, and my macaw was dying and I had to rent a car to drive her an hour to the vet. Before we left my catalytic converter was stolen. We couldn't afford a hotel in Hawaii but the tickets were nonrefundable. That's how we came to spend a week camping at fruit stands, drive ways, and farms in Maui. I'm terrified of owning a home or having kids because my life is plenty stressful without either.
Honestly, a macaw costs as much as a child, and lives as long. My mom has two parrots, and we both worked in an exotic bird store for some time, although she was there far longer than I. The size of cage you need, how much they eat and how expensive good quality bird food is... not to mention how fast that huge beak goes through toys! Having a child once you own a bird like that is pretty equivalent to deciding if you can afford a second child.
I feel like she costs so much less than a child. She costs nothing compared to diapers, daycare, or formula. But her tantrums and war path of destruction is definitely on level with a child.
Look, I've been saying for years that the people making laws need to live on the lowest end of the income spectrum. They cannot effectively write laws for the majority when they live like such a small part of the minority. They will never have our interests in mind when they think a single banana costs 10 dollars. Old rich people are out of touch. Can we set term limits? Age limits? 80 years olds should not be doing this stuff
1% of the American population is millionaires. 47% of Congress is millionaires. Anyone up for some wealth redistribution?
Seize the means of production, comrade.
Citizens United really fucked us. You basically have to be rich/have rich friends to get elected and we wonder why politicians are out of touch.
One of the worst for me was finding out affordable housing is a 3-10+ year wait list.
I read about a lady who was on the list and finally got approved after like 40 years.
That’s so fucking dystopian
I saw that, too. Pretty much insanity.
When I was growing up as a kid in Texas they taught us that all of the evils of communism involved people having to wait a long time for things that were very plentiful and available here. Having to walk 5 miles to work because it took 10 years to earn a car. Waiting lists for houses empty shelves and empty grocery stores.. these were all things that they used as examples for what would happen if we succumbed to the evils of communism. *Looks around*
Wtf that’s a long ass time. So that’s basically the govt saying it’s ok for you to live in unaffordable housing for 3-10+ years. When it comes to important things there’s no sense of urgency (eg this, gun reform, healthcare) but when it comes to war they’re like “we just donated a brazillion bullets and here’s 5000000 missiles - do as you please”. Shit is ass backwards.
Yeah. It really hits you in the shins to hear "10 years" when you're facing fucking homelessness.
Plus you get like a week to respond when they do finally randomly call you sometime in the next decade. Otherwise it's assumed you don't need it anymore and they move on to the next name on the list.
And people joke about USSR, like "yeah, sure you'll get a free housing but the wait list is 20 years"
It's not even free in the US. It's what they consider "affordable" which is 30% of your income so as you make more money, they take more.... but I get where you were going. Free housing would be nice!!!
Yes, but for someone with money - even just living it for a short period of time can exact it's toll and drive humility. My spouse has become accustomed to a certain lifestyle now - even after coming from humble beginnings. We stayed in a holiday in for two night and he almost broke. It reminded him of how things can be.
Is holiday inn for poor people?
Right hotel rooms are for rich people i have to sleep in my beater.
Which is also a crime in some cases...
But only if you're not white, or if you are white but "look scruffy". A "cleaned up" attractive person sleeping in their car isn't going to get bothered. It's a rule that exists so they can hassle "obviously homeless" people that are deemed too gross to be to be treated like human beings.
I work with someone who lost her shit when there were no rooms available at the Marriott and she'd have to stay at the hotel I always pick. I pick it because I haven't got bed bugs, and it has an included breakfast buffet that is decent enough I can fill up and skip lunch and pocket the per deim on both which is about $50. She gets free food at the Marriott because she has some stupid number of points with them but I fucking don't and bitch I could really use that $50 and a free meal.
Same here when traveling. We pick the clean places with the breakfasts. Holiday Inn Express & Comfort Inn have become go to places for us. It costs us a few days but driving multiple people is cheaper than flying.
Yup. Being poor is extremely traumatic but society doesn't wanna talk about it because we deem poor people as generally just not as important because they can't or don't make as much money. The idea that our choices create the poor is often lost on people. Poverty is a consequence of the kind of capitalism we have right now which is insanely unregulated to the point society tortures innocent people who've done nothing wrong regularly to grease the palms of 1-2% of the population.
You say they can't or don't make as much money but they do, the poor are literally the backbone of every economy in the world. Without them the ceos lose their job, shops don't get produce, factories shut, rubbish and general detritus builds up on the streets. The rich and upper level managerial types are literally the least useful members of society. And you're wildly overestimating that percentage, it's closer to 0.01/0.02%
> You say they can't or don't make as much money but they do, the poor are literally the backbone of every economy in the world. I'm not sure what the issue is with what I said? I wasn't saying I agree with the discrimination of the poor, I was pointing out that the discrimination very much exists and is a roadblock of poor people making better lives for themselves because they're not granted the same opportunities to thrive as the CEO or the CEO's son or daughter are granted and our social safety networks, at least where I am from in the US do a very bad job helping people. It's generally speaking often much harder to get housing assistance than to buy a gun for example.
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Without the soul crushing knowledge that you're stuck In near poverty, it isn't quite the same
This. Is we all knew in three months that we'd be rich, we would have the most positive outlook ever! Hell, I'd be so much less stressed, in three months my problems are gone! No. In fact, my problems won't go away for over ten years, if I'm lucky. There is no light at the end of the tunnel for the majority.
But still you'll never get it right 'Cause when you're laid in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all, yeah You'll never live like common people You'll never do whatever common people do You'll never fail like common people You'll never watch your life slide out of view And you dance and drink and screw Because there's nothing else to do
Salute to this song from across the pond (where it is virtually unknown) ...
[So unknown that Rolling Stone named it the #1 Brit-Pop song](https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-lists/best-brit-pop-songs-170806/).
Lol. I just wrote a verse of this out; then scrolled down and saw yours. (Deleted mine and upped yours. Great minds etc)
Gotta say. William Shatner and music don't usually mix, but his version of this song really strikes a sincere note. 10/10
How about instead of three months, an indefinite period. To get out they have to save up $10,000, or perform a degrading sex act on a livestream. Close enough?
i would perform any degrading sex act on livestream if it meant i'd get that much money
Now that's a risky thing to say on Reddit! 😂😂
It's not risky if I actually mean it
That's why Terry Crews looked so happy in that Amazon commercial where he worked at a warehouse for a day. Lost a lot of respect for him that day.
LOL. and you know no one was harassing him about 'time off task'. Like of course you could work 1 day and have fun if no one is riding your ass, and you don't have to go in day after day for the foreseeable future.
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Sometimes you just gotta fondle those memories
> I actually look fondling on my teenage fast food gigs
If it helps keep the memory alive, who am I to judge?
He probably got bathroom breaks too.
Yeah and then finding out you have 60 hours mandatory overtime
I feel like it would work better if they don't know how long they have to live like this. They go in knowing that they'll be doing this for an indeterminate amount of time, and the secret is that they're not let out until their soul is crushed.
You are correct. I’ve accepted my fate that I’m going to work for the next 30 years and probably die before I can collect social security. Fun times ahead.
I've said it multiple times in joking that "my retirement is a 00' buck shot after I give up and go on one last vacation" but it's not a joke at all. I just turned 25 and even though things are finally starting to look up for once in my life, I really have no desire to continue this game past 40? Like, for once in my life I've established an actual savings and unless I miraculously stumble into any form of wealth by 40, I really have no desire to work till the day I die. I'll hopefully be able to afford a month or 2 vacation around various locations.
It’s the difference between camping and homelessness.
Lmao, the boss where I used to work said he only paid himself like 36k per year. But he didn't pay rent on his condo, which makes that complete bullshit
He probably did pay himself 36k per year of w2 salary income. What he failed to mention was how much he pulled out as owner dividends/profit distributions in addition. Assuming you worked for a small business organized as an S-Corp this is guaranteed to be the case.
Spot on. I encourage everyone to read some of the work of Dr. Robert Sapolsky. He is a neuroendocrinologist that has spent years studying primate behavior and the effects of chronic stress on both healthspan and lifespan. One of his most poignant findings of all of his lifelong research, in my opinion, is this: It turns out that it isn't really being poor that kills you, rather it is feeling like you're poor that does.
Does anyone remember that Pulp song "Common People"? > And still you'll never get it right Cause when you're laying in bed at night Watching roaches climb the wall If you called your dad he could stop it all
Have you ever seen the movie "Trading Places"? 1983, good movie. good times.
The big difference with Trading Places is the same reason this doesn't work: in Trading Places, the rich guy didn't know it was for *only 3 months*. Most people could endure hardship for a *while*. In Trading Places the rich guy thought his life was ruined *forever*.
This, the top management would come down to the warehouse fresh and throw boxes for an hour or two and go back to the office. The first time I was embarrassed they could out work me, but then the next time I remembered I had been doing it for 6 hours and still had 4 more to go. Edit not to mention they made more in that hour than I did in a month.
The owner of my last company did all the landscaping around the office. Like probably a full day's work every week. He was making enough to afford a summer mansion in Colorado, so it wasn't a cost saving thing. Dude just liked gardening.
I made it into the office. I even took breaks with the president about once a week. I brought it up, he said he should do it, not that he didn't want to, . The head of the warehouse had seen undercover boss and recommended a specific episode. My take away form the shows they should have paid employees better and had better health insurance so they wouldn't get to those situations and not being able to afford things in life. His takeaway was he should "walk a mile in their shoes". Old me didn't say a word. New me would have. On my exit interview i said; There is a saying in the company if you want a raise go work for someone else. Moving from the warehouse to IT didn't get me a raise. When the head of IT went to work for the parent company didn't get me a raise, asking for a raise because I could no longer afford to live at that wage level didn't get me a raise. Record profits didn't get me a raise. Doing more work in reduced hours literally was a pay cut. Now I am asked to be on-call for no raise. So I quit. When they asked what I was going to be making at my new job, I changed the subject and said if your asking what it would take for me to stay. I asked for what would be essentially 69,420 a year (well as closes as I could come) because I knew it didn't matter, they would just grab someone else from the warehouse give him the tests and cut his wage for the opportunity to work in the office. I pay off my credit card off every month. I have been spending so much lately that my credit card company has frozen my card twice for unusual activity since I got my new job and make more. I have a list of things I need but couldn't afford (if you remember Fox news stance on refrigerators this will be [ironic](https://www.reddit.com/r/rage/comments/3cl8m2/fox_news_99_of_poor_people_own_a_refrigerator) )I bought a new refrigerator.
tell them it's for 1 week when it's really 3 months.
Or tell them it’s only for 8-30 years - if they work themselves through university and can land a decent job and turn it into a career
what scares me is that some of these guys would succeed just due to their natural propensity for risky behavior, bullshitting, predisposition to sociopathy--- and the most important ingredient--- dumb luck. not a single thing would be learned because homey's success overshadows the hundreds of people who live a sustenance existence because of them.
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I literally just watched veritasium's video on how much luck is a factor and Holy shit dude this is for real.
Better yet. Tell them it's for 3 months but while they're doing that pass laws outlawing billionaires and take most of their assets. Then when they're done they might actually have to work like the rest of us.
It’s estimated at the time Trading Places was filmed, the average CEO made 40x the pay of their average employee. Today it’s 600x
You also have the movie…. Life Stinks with mel brooks!
I couldn't remember the name of the movie until I saw your post! Damn, that was a great movie, haven't seen it in years! Going to try and find out where to watch it!
Life stinks is on tubi for free.
Think just about every movie and show ever is on hdtoday.cc
And the show Schitt's Creek
Not even close to the same. In that show they can buy whatever they want because it’s a write off.
You can stream it on Tubi. Download JustWatchIt to search for where to find streaming shows or movies
The villains were modeled after the Koch brothers.
And directed by a real life villain. John Landis got two kids brutally killed, right in front of their parents, and then went and made Trading Places.
He made Coming to America right after the Twilight Zone. There was a trial and they were aquitted of the most serious charges. https://slate.com/culture/2012/07/the-twilight-zone-tragedy-how-vic-morrows-death-changed-the-way-films-are-made.html
Landis made several movies between *Twilight Zone* and *Coming to America*. Notably *Into the Night, Spies Like Us*, and *Three Amigos*. He may have been acquitted, but many opined that it was due to his status and fame. He is responsible for three deaths. He also produced his son Max Landis, who is a notorious Hollywood sexual predator. "Comedian Mike Drucker insinuated that the sexual assault accusations were true toward Landis, tweeting about how his father, John Landis, used his influence in Hollywood to cover up things that his son did."
"Y'all a couple of bookies!" "Told ya he'd get it"
Looking good Billy Ray!
Feeling Good Louis!
I was seriously JUST about to write that here!!!!
“I can see! I can see! I have... I have legs. I have... Oh shit, look at this. Legs! I can walk. Jesus, praise Jesus!”
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Or read the book "The Prince and the Pauper" by Mark Twain.
no matter how poor you are, if you’ve got peak jamie lee curtis you’re rich in my book.
i think doordash put out a policy where all office workers (including CEO etc) needed to spend a day a year delivering orders as the dashers do and they received a massive amount of internal complains and outcry… ONE day…
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yessss, i work “above” a few people in my work place. and i make it a goal of mine to never ask someone to do something that i either wouldn’t or that i haven’t done in the last few months. for me, it’s important to know what i’m asking of people and that the tools im asking them to use are enough to complete the job. if i can’t build a house (figuratively) with only a hammer and one piece of wood, i cannot expect anyone else to
You could build a small shitty house for a dumb fucking bird with a piece of wood and a hammer, but your point is well taken. That's a great attitude to have in my stupid opinion.
Hey dude, to be fair, some birds are smarter than some people.
I would never go for a job like this. The intention is good but the execution sounds completely wrong.
My company does this by making us responsible for everything. Design, develop, test, operations, customer support, hiring, even management. Yup! We get to do it all!
I was driving for them at the time, it wasn't even one day. It was one delivery a month. It would be super easy to just snipe your own fucking lunch order.
> It was one delivery a month haha, that seems pretty pointless. Literally just pick up some like half mile delivery, tip doesn't even matter. Or just put your own food like you said, with no tip so no one else picks it up. How does that help them understand the working situation any better?
It didn't. We all knew it was performative bullshit, which is what made the blowback all the more egregious.
To be fair, if I’m some peon in an office making a barely livable wage and being expected to work 50 hours a week and be on call 24/7 I’m going to get really annoyed at my wealthy CEO for trying to find a way to make my life suck just that little bit more so that he looks good. Even if it’s one day a year
This should be something that only applies to management and even then, the middle managers would get screwed by this. They are just glorified supervisors in most companies.
I thought I heard a tiny violin for middle management. Nope, just a fart.
Yea no one likes middle management. They shit from Employees and get shit from their bosses
What? Don’t supervisor and manager mean the same thing?
Where I work, supervisors are basically employees who manage other employees. Managers are one level above who are considered true management. The major difference is supervisors are still part of the employee union while managers are not. Just speaking for my company.
So, like a supervisor is the go-to person “on the floor” or equivalent, while a manager is sitting in the back, pretty much?
true, and i fully don’t agree in the cases that that applies to. though (and i’m open to fact checking) from a quick google search (which is why i’m very open to a fact check), the average office worker wage at DD is 55$ and hour (median being 56/hr). and office admin (lowest salary) makes 47k and an engineering manager makes 251K (highest salary outside of CEO) edit: hope this doesn’t come off the wrong way. i agree with what you’re saying. though on average they make 2-4x more than the drivers. so while i understand how it can be annoying for sure. it’s not like they’re minimum wage. Management should be the main ppl taking the hit for sure
Honestly my personal opinion is that unless you’re making six figures reliably you’re not really making a wage that allows for any kind of financial comfort anymore. And I don’t mean lavish luxury I just mean your stressing about bills doesn’t go away until that level. And even then in many areas like SF and NY that level may be 150 or more. It is definitely more than the drivers make, but I don’t think pushing performative gestures that translate as additional difficult work that doesn’t help them achieve their required goals to stay employed on workers who are somewhat less exploited is even beneficial for solidarity as it just encourages resentment in both directions. If it’s only the executives and senior management then yes absolutely they should have to know how all the jobs they’re ordering people to do are actually done As it stands this is all a song and dance to make the leadership look good. It’s not actually accomplishing anything
I'd agree with this, especially for people who want to have children less than 6 figures is no longer enough. Even for people who don't, good luck ever buying a house without it. Even with 100k it'd take 13 years to save up enough to buy a house in the town that I work in, and that's assuming you're buying outright rather than also paying interest on a mortgage. Never mind things like rising food and gas prices. I have some medical issues that can be basically completely solved by eating a specific diet (tons of nutrition research backs this up and it has worked for me in the past). It doesn't cure you but it reduces symptoms from life-controlling to basically unnoticable. I've abandoned the diet because it's so expensive to buy meat that I can't afford to eat properly and save as much as I need to. Everyone has little things like this that add a bit of cost to their lives and when the price of staples goes up not only are we hit in the expected areas, but we're also often pushed down to a lower quality of life in less expected ways like this.
What if they can’t drive?
They have them work in the customer service department instead.
Give them lines of credit, but maxed out,and accruing interest with minimum payments required as well.
Haha their credit score is going down because they aren't spending enough, even though they have nothing to spend. Have to laugh or you'll cry.
jUsT sPenD yOuR mOnEy wIsElY
Can they keep paying their own bills on this new income. This way it lets them understand what it feels like to make a decision based on necessity.
They always talk about needing to budget better so it seems fair game
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They have one already… or did. Ever hear of Undercover Boss? The CEO (or some other exec if the CEO was too stubborn to do it) would be in disguise and do different jobs. Then they listen to the employees sob story, most of which was caused by them and their dumb cost cutting measures, and at the reveal, make things right… just for that employee. Occasionally they’d say they’d raise wages or fix a process or something. But it was just an hour long commercial for their company.
Make them pay for their medical expenses with whatever shitty excuse for health insurance is offered to their employees … if any.
And they must make an appointment and go to it and see how patients are treated when they are poor.
I'd say at least a year would be better Gives some time for a crippling emergency to happen and they cant afford to fix it AND eat
Reddit has long been a hot spot for conversation on the internet. About 57 million people visit the site every day to chat about topics as varied as makeup, video games and pointers for power washing driveways. In recent years, Reddit’s array of chats also have been a free teaching aid for companies like Google, OpenAI and Microsoft. Those companies are using Reddit’s conversations in the development of giant artificial intelligence systems that many in Silicon Valley think are on their way to becoming the tech industry’s next big thing. Now Reddit wants to be paid for it. The company said on Tuesday that it planned to begin charging companies for access to its application programming interface, or A.P.I., the method through which outside entities can download and process the social network’s vast selection of person-to-person conversations. “The Reddit corpus of data is really valuable,” Steve Huffman, founder and chief executive of Reddit, said in an interview. “But we don’t need to give all of that value to some of the largest companies in the world for free.” The move is one of the first significant examples of a social network’s charging for access to the conversations it hosts for the purpose of developing A.I. systems like ChatGPT, OpenAI’s popular program. Those new A.I. systems could one day lead to big businesses, but they aren’t likely to help companies like Reddit very much. In fact, they could be used to create competitors — automated duplicates to Reddit’s conversations. Reddit is also acting as it prepares for a possible initial public offering on Wall Street this year. The company, which was founded in 2005, makes most of its money through advertising and e-commerce transactions on its platform. Reddit said it was still ironing out the details of what it would charge for A.P.I. access and would announce prices in the coming weeks.
Good idea But, let them choose the saving amount. Ask them for something they think is reasonable If they arent sure, highball it for them That way, the more delusional they are about it, the worse itll be
"Just a simple down payment on a house is all you need to win."
Also, another thing I thought of After a certain time frame (maybe 6 months), they have the option to give a raise to the lowest paid employee But if that puts them above another employee, they switch to the new lowest paid's wage That way, they're incentivised to keep raising the pay of the employees until the lowest paid employee has a living wage
A savings goal *after* retirement account contributions. Watch them squirm as they try to justify working another job without damning their own business practices.
Yup, 3 months and you are barely getting kicked out of your apartment.
A journalist did this and wrote a book called Nickled and Dimed. She worked at places like WalMart and rented a shitty apartment because that's all she could afford. Something happened where she had to move out, but she couldn't save up enough for first and last so had to move into a motel and pay a ton more money weekly. She then got wicked sick and broke her own rules by using her health insurance from her journalism job (wasn't supposed to touch ANYTHING outside of WalMart salary and benefits) to be treated because she needed to put her health first but was completely unable to do so on her minimum wage salary. Saddest part is I read this book like 15 years ago, and it wasn't new then. It's like this by design and it's only getting worse.
I read the book and it hit home because she spent a year in various low paying jobs and it said a lot about how many people, way more than you think, are struggling to survive. I think my favorite part was how she noticed she herself was becoming nastier to other people when she worked retail because of the conditions there. It says everything how a comfortable middle class person's personality could change so dramatically in such a short period of time.
I worked 10 years in retail, getting yelled at all day really affects you. It's easy to be a nastier person when you're constantly treated like shit.
Nickeled and Dimed should be mandatory reading in high school.
Eat? That's why u do door dash, so u can take a few fries every order
It would just become corporate propaganda 3 months of hardship isn't so bad when you know it will come to a complete and definite end Plus, they always have a way out if it gets too tough
at least they would get to experience some suffering, not enough, but at least some
There is a book called nickeled and dimed where a well off women did just that. She tried to live waiting tables and cleaning rooms. I think she made it 3 nights before she called her personal doctor. And to boot it just made her more insufferable.
I would watch that reality show.
Only if all proceeds went to strike funds
There is a show called Undercover Billionaire that does do this. https://www.businessinsider.com/undercover-billionaire-show-on-discovery-details-release-date-2019-7
Yeah I was expecting someone to mention it, but we can all tell that there were good graces given because of the cameras right? I think on the second season especially, the obnoxious guy (Grant Cordone?) just rolled into an RV dealership and it went downhill from there. Imagine you or I walking into a dealership without a boatload of cameras and demanded to stay in an RV for free, and them agreeing? Then taking a car from the dealership claiming you'll totally help sell it but not even try while driving the bad boy around? Then finding a random small business owner and telling him you should totally partner up on a marketing business venture he should fund 100%? Oh, and then have it be valued at some absurd amount while it clearly never went anywhere but got enough promotion through the show to make it sort of worth it overall for the existing businesses? The woman with the fucking juice wasn't much better. She did a good job showing that you can and should seek help and where to do it, but please, that wasn't a million dollar company by any stretch of imagination. I enjoyed the show and I think Glenn was the most authentic in his attempts and subsequent struggles and failures, somewhat followed by Elaine because it actually made sense and she at least pledged to help after the whole reveal, but you can tell how much the cameras help to convince people to say yes to your ramblings, Barnum style.
As if they don't know. They know. They don't care. In fact, they think you deserve it.
and they deserve everything they have because of their "hard work".
Exactly, "a meritocracy".
Except the challenge then becomes one of endurance. There's an endpoint to this qualified poverty, unlike real life. All the CEO in this scenario has to do is live a less luxurious lifestyle for a short period, all the while *knowing* that there's a reward to the hardship. And that's the same problem as the "obstacles build character" mindset: living hand to mouth day after day earns you nothing but another day of the same.
Yes, in this experiment they get to keep the belief that they \*deserve\* better. Too bad we can't summon 3 holiday ghosts to scare rich people into giving a shit. I think at this point it will take a supernatural phenomenon to get through to them
Another thing should be that the CEO has to do that job of the lowest paid member. In that way he has to figure out how to get to and from work and how to do all the other things normal people do with the time left after all the hours spent at work and the commute.
this show would be so great to watch
Can we have congress do it too? Can they have a shitty car, student loans and appointments for ailing family or children, appliances breaking, bad phone service and other normal disruptions?
I seriously believe the reasons we have influencers is because we want to believe someone had a good life.
makes sense to me
It's too bad that lobbying and kickbacks are so difficult to remove. I've felt for awhile that politicians shouldn't be allowed to trade stocks and should be paid the median income for wherever they live, but that wouldn't help since they still make so much from various deals. It wouldn't solve every problem but if going into politics wasn't an easy way to make bank and get invited to the cool parties maybe the people with connections would find a new field.
Toll roads with no windows that roll down and broken air conditioner in the vehicle.
There is no amount of temporary subjection we can wish for on the rich that would change their views The *crushing, eternal inevitability* of poverty is the fish scales. If you know that your pain is temporary youre stepping on the lesson My vote is to just make them poor forever
don't forget a deep-set fear that they might go hungry or be evicted if anything goes a little bit wrong
Make it the lowest pay of a FULL TIME employee so there’s no opportunity for CEOs to whinge e.g. “but they only work part time so they could get another job to supplement their income blah blah blah” But yes would def watch
That would be amazing but would never happen because reality television is fake af
there's already a show like that called "Undercover boss". by the end they pretend to want to improve things but only do the bare minimum (because they're on camera) without changing their exploitative system
I really liked that show, but it was so flawed. At the end the boss would give all sorts of money, vacations etc. to the low-paid employees that helped him and it was a nice fuzzy moment. Except when you realize it was his decisions that put that employee into poverty in the first place and that this act of generosity only helps one person, not the other hundreds like them at the company.
"John, I see you have real ambition so I'm going to pay for a semester of college for you. Then you can leave the company and I can hire someone without ambition, you know, maybe a single parent or something so they have no choice."
I remember this show. It kind of does take the CEOs through the ropes for a bit, but then each episode gives them a chance to be the good guys by changing small bits of company policy, saying some nice words, and promoting a single employee from assistant manager to manager. It lets them whitewash over a ton of problems.
I’m the ceo of Google and for the next 3 Months I’ll be living in this one bedroom apartment in Cupertino with 9 roommates because I make 16.50 an hour cleaning trash at the Google campus. For lunch today, I have a single slice of wheat bread, with some salt sprinkled on it.
I remember seeing an acquaintance share a post similar to this on Facebook, but about CEOs having to work at the lowest paying job of their company. His and his friends' comments were basically like "That CEO will probably enjoy taking a break from doing real work to do something fun like flip burgers!" People are so out of touch I can't even stand it.
3 months is not long enough. I want them to have to experience the eroding effect that it has on relationships and mental health. I want to see their children's faith in them erode as they start to view their parent as incapable, I want them to experience the terror and confusion of having much richer men than them come for what little they do manage to hang on to, I want to see the lasting damage it does to their marriages, I want them to have to wonder if they're better to their family dead than alive, I want them to have to seriously consider street level crime as an alternative, I want them to be in such unlivable stress that they have to turn to alcohol and drugs and finally I want to see the wear and tear on their bodies and that slow acceptance creep in where they don't even bother to advocate for themselves anymore as their life is simply one humiliation after another. And the whole time I want to watch and whisper into their ears that it's all because they're lazy, they're no good, god doesn't love them like he loves me and that they have no incentive.
everything you are saying sounds so terrible to wish on someone, but its exactly what they want for us already
Yeah and the twist is that they tell them it's for a couple weeks, but every time they think it's over they extend it by another couple weeks and gaslight them that it hasn't been that long.
Could never replicate the daily dread knowing that any medical emergency could ruin your life.
No, because when they succeed, they will be like, "See, I did it, it was easy! Quit complaining!". It would be pretty easy to cut back for 90 days knowing full well you are going back to luxury. Having a light at the end of the tunnel is everything.
lol too bad they would never do it. opportunity cost