If someone comments saying their actual current job, please be kind and thank them in a reply.

  • fiat_lux@kbin.social
    661·
    1 year ago

    • Waste pickers in the clothing canyons of Ghana, or any other landfill/wasteland

    • Volunteer caregivers for people with disabilities, especially in places where there are limited or no social safety nets

    • Street vendors like the children hawking goods in Yemen or Samoa or Zimbabwe…

    • Cleaners, such as the Sewer divers in places like India where there is no protective equipment provided

    • Food services workers.

    • “Domestic” services workers like childcare, housekeeping, etc. I include victims of forced marriages here.

    • All other exploited, outsourced, trafficked, and/or forced labour, such as the cobalt miners in Congo, or the clothing sweatshop workers in Bangladesh, or the Phillipines call centre workers, or the hazelnut pickers in Turkey, or construction labourers in Qatar, or the chaingangs in the US.

    Our supply chains for everything are filled with slavery. 49.6 million people were living in modern slavery in 2021, of which 27.6 million were in forced labour and 22 million in forced marriage. That’s an estimated increase of 10 million people from 2016 to 2021.

    • malamignasanmig@group.lt
      6·
      1 year ago

      thanks for this very exhaustive list. this is the first time ive heard of sewer divers - with no PPE - sounds terrible.

      • fiat_lux@kbin.social
        7·
        1 year ago

        Sudharak Olwe has spent a lot of time documenting the lives of “conservancy workers” in Mumbai. His entire body of work is worth a look, Content warning: Image 12 is extremely NSFL with the body of a human child, but there are also dead and dying animals in images 4 and 11 but here is one collection. The photo I see most frequently is the one of a worker neck-deep in a drain

        Terrible is certainly a good word to describe it.

          • fiat_lux@kbin.social
            3·
            1 year ago

            Oh goodness, I’m really sorry! I entirely forgot some of those pics were at that level. I’ll add a content warning to my post.

    • j_roby@slrpnk.netEnglish
      4·
      1 year ago

      This is a great comment, and I believe the best addition to the thread.

      I think you may really like this 4 part music/art video series.

      Filastine - Abandon
      From the description: Abandon bridges video art, documentary, and music to explore how we sell our time on earth, and how we could imagine to get free. Each of the four episodes profiles a unique personal revolt against low-valued work: an Indonesian miner, a Portuguese maid, American office workers, and Spain’s scrap metal salvagers.

      • fiat_lux@kbin.social
        4·
        1 year ago

        Thanks for sharing that! I confess dance is not really a medium I appreciate enough, but the music and filmography and overall sentiment were great. It reminds me of my favourite movie, Baraka.

        If you haven’t seen it, it’s a beautiful collection of global footage with music, and arguably more optimistic than I am. But it was from 1992 when things did seem a little more hopeful. It’s in a similar vein to the Qatsi trilogy, which is more famous.

        This is just one “Chapter”/song from it, but it’s something I think about often. It’s probably the saddest part of an otherwise emotionally varied film: Baraka: Dead Can Dance - Host of Seraphim (7mins 14sec) Unfortunately none of the people here are actors or performers though, except the Japanese Butoh dancers at the end of it.

        I can’t help but wonder how many of these people have survived the last 30 years since this movie.

  • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
    541·
    1 year ago

    Certified Nursing Assistants (CNAs). These people do the grunt work at nursing homes. They change bed pans and wipe butts, they fetch things, help people stand and sit, and generally get talked down to by the lower level nurses. When I did ambulance transfer, they were the ones that actually knew the patient’s normal mental state, and how they’d been changing over time. All for minimum wage.

    • HipHoboHarold@lemmy.world
      16·
      1 year ago

      One of my old roommates did it. I work in patient transportation at the hospital, and two of my coworkers did it. All of them have talked about terrible the job was. And not even because of the things people think would be terrible. Like bed pans aren’t fun. But its part of the job.

      But they’re understaffed, the managers suck because they’re all only interested in money, so they get mentally abused by the higher ups, they have to work over time to get things done so people don’t die but then get yelled at for working over time, etc. And all you said, it’s for shit pay. I don’t blame anyone for leaving those jobs. And it’s sad, because ultimately it’s the elderly who suffer from all of this.

    • Trainguyrom@reddthat.comEnglish
      15·
      1 year ago

      My wife was a CNA until a few months ago. The pay rate has gone up to $12-15ish per hour at least but still terrible benefits on top of getting verbally beaten down by the nurses while getting physically beat up by the residents. Could make the same money with less risk of bodily harm working fast food

  • Dantpool@lemmy.world
    431·
    1 year ago

    Street/Parking Lot Cleaners.

    Every night, I clean up:

    • Styrofoam cups/cans/plastic cups & bottles
    • tossed out left over fast food
    • dirty diapers that someone couldn’t walk 7 feet through the Walmart parking lot to throw in an actual trash can
    • empty boxes for: flat-screen TVs, Car seats, memory foam mattresses, or Amazon purchases
    • disposable vapes
    • trash bags that someone decided needed to be left in a parking lot instead of in a dumpster
    • So. Many. Plastic. Hangers.
    • receipts
    • grocery bags
    • candy wrappers
    • Edit shattered glass, but it makes that gravel in a vacuum sound when the truck sucks it up, so that’s nice.

    And the only time I get thanked is when my employer asks me to do extra work because there was a storm, another driver was out sick, another driver needed help on a site, or there was a big event that needed to be cleaned for/after.

    • neptune@dmv.socialEnglish
      61·
      1 year ago

      Poor persons credit card interest pays for the points rich people can easily gain and spend.

      I’d imagine the margins on many cheaper products are better than the luxury version. Disney+ comes to mind where they want people to take the cheaper ad version because it earns disney more money.

      Hell, the whole point of a credit score is so that poor people pay higher interest rates, allowing for interest rates for the rich to become more competitive.

  • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
    286·
    1 year ago

    Step parent. While not entirely thankless (depending on the kids involved) it’s tremendously underappreciated.

    So much expectation that you do things for kids that aren’t yours.

    Don’t get me wrong - it can still be rewarding in many ways, and my stepkids and I love each other like blood. We have a fantastic relationship.

    But it gets under my skin every time I think about how little their own father has done for them, and I’ve had to pick up the (financial) burden, yet that prick will be the one who gets to walk my stepdaughter down the aisle.

    • vis4valentine@lemmy.mlOP
      161·
      1 year ago

      That depends in her because it would be HER wedding.

      If she is grateful enough, you’ll get to walk her because you would have been her real dad all her life.

      There is no written law that the bio that most be the only one who can walk her, its all just stupid wedding traditions.

      If she grows to be a brat, and makes her bio dad walk her, then she doesn’t see you as her real dad, and would be something for you to reflect on.

      • DeltaTangoLima@reddrefuge.comEnglish
        1·
        1 year ago

        I’m sure that’s true in plenty of families, but sadly not ours. My stepkids’ dad is a entitled and materialistic, and he’s married someone just like him. They even try and “teach” the kids that you don’t have to thank wait staff at restaurants, because they’re paid to do the job.

        It’s funny - my wife and I were each originally married to the same type of selfish arsehole, then found each other after our respective marriages broke up. Our exes, however, didn’t wait that long. Kinda says everything…

  • PatFusty@lemm.ee
    243·
    1 year ago

    Walmart greeters. They always say ‘thank you’ to you, but have you ever thought to thank them? I dont think so.

      • ArumiOrnaught@kbin.social
        1·
        1 year ago

        A story from before I joined, someone was training and got pinned with a light pole. The vehicle cut him in half. Now we require backup cameras :D

    • commiewithoutorgans [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netEnglish
      1·
      1 year ago

      Good booked called “A Decolonial Feminism” by Françoise Verges talks about the line of oppression which is defined by those which arrive at clean places and those that must make those places clean. Totally thankless and even exported for imperialism (sending trash to other countries to deal with for very little money, which they must accept because they’re already in poverty from Imperialism).

  • ShranTheWaterPoloFan@startrek.website
    161·
    1 year ago

    There are several jobs that are frequently mentioned in discussions like this that are actually thanked all of them time.

    Nurses, teachers, fire, EMTs and police are always mentioned. They are hard jobs and mostly under paid. However they are constantly thanked, businesses give discounts and commercials and politicians thank them endlessly.

    Grocery store workers, butchers, plumbers, electricians, custodians, truck drivers and most “menial jobs” are completely thankless. Think of the last time you saw a 10% off for nurses and if you’ve ever seen 10% off for overnight stockers.

    • bradorsomething@ttrpg.network
      6·
      1 year ago

      Electricians get thanked in money. I’m a paramedic and an electrician. I volunteer as a paramedic because electrician pays double.

    • MartinXYZ@lemmy.ml
      5·
      1 year ago

      Nurses, teachers, fire, EMTs

      I,too, wanted to become fire when I grew up. Turns out it’s not a real job. Instead I became disappointed.

    • russjr08@outpost.zeuslink.netEnglish
      9·
      1 year ago

      Oh man, I worked at a call center for a little over four years doing internet technical support… Never again.

      I am thankful for those that can push through it (especially on the more direct customer service side of things), as I certainly don’t have the cognitive fortitude for it.

      One of my roles at my current job still involves a lot of support, but at least its not over the phones thankfully.

    • ɔiƚoxɘup@infosec.pub
      2·
      1 year ago

      I did that once. Now I try to get them to laugh on the phone, ya know? Make their day a little better without disrupting their average handle time stats.

      • Blake [he/him]@feddit.uk
        3·
        1 year ago

        Telephone support people have helped me hundreds of times in my life, I’ve have had phone calls with people who have been really kind and thoughtful and done a lot to help, going above and beyond the call of duty.

  • oakey66@lemmy.world
    15·
    1 year ago

    My wife is a school based therapist. The parents routinely cancel without notice. The kids have behavioral problems and trauma that makes interacting difficult and stressful. Not to mention that she has to read through the kid’s trauma history that requires them seeing her in the first place. Not a lot of thank yous for that kind of work.