This is a place to share greentexts and witness the confounding life of Anon. If you're new to the Greentext community, think of it as a sort of zoo with Anon as the main attraction.
Be warned:
If you find yourself getting angry (or god forbid, agreeing) with something Anon has said, you might be doing it wrong.
I feel crazy because when I was younger I would say this stuff to friends and family like I really felt this struggle and realization of how much time we dedicated to work. It wasn't just 9-5. It was all these extra bits including resting just so we could recharge for the next work day. Nobody understood it. They just didn't think this way. Now I see so many people online with this mentality and it's becoming more main stream. It feels good to have that validated like I'm not crazy.
Anon is just inefficient with his time.
In Asia it's even worse. Standard work day in China for example is 9-9-6 which 9am to 9pm six days a week - remember that next time you see China living in 2070 propaganda. Six days a week is still de facto standard in most Asian countries.
The best part is that the actual work output is actually worse than five day 9-5 but I guess you have to keep the masses too busy for self awareness even if it costs economically. I'd remote contract with many teams in Shenzen, Tokyo and Hochiminh city and its incredibly how little actual work they get done with these crazy hours and its not due to lack of employee skill. It's stupid.
Bruh, I worked in Taiwan for a while. Those hours are insane but most of the time you're just sitting around or doing busy work. Tasks that I would do in a day would take me about a week in Taiwan because of all the meetings and dinners that got shoved in between. If you work in Asia I hope you like your colleagues because they're basically your family and friends.
The 996 in China is far from standard, it's prominent mainly in the informatics/electronics sector, and it doesn't exist in the public sector as it's technically illegal afaik, just not prosecuted. Also, there's increasing pushback in China against it, and it's diminishing in scope.
You're right and I've edited that my pov is from tech side after posting but for some reason edit didn't confirm. Can't really comment on areas as I work in software but it's technically illegal everywhere including less developed asian countries but no one is actually enforcing this unfortunately.
Fitter, healthier and more productive
A pig
In a cage
On antibiotics
Have kids, a dog, a house, two cars, and a white picket fence.
What are, "things that have been stolen from us by the ultra rich"?
Except maybe for dog?
#meirl
It should be illegal to call it 9-5 when employers don't pay you for your lunch break. It's like when Subway got caught with their not that long foot longs. It's BS. They have the nerve to expect us to be honest when they can't even be honest about how they're going to shill us out of work-life balance. Capitalism is just modern slavery y'all. It's time for this charade to end.
monkey's paw:
you get paid for lunch break but in return, your hourly wage diminishes by 12%, sothat your total salary stays the same.
Speaking as an American, we'd totally fall for it, too
Real and straight. This is all of us.
We should rise up, and unionize.
Ok but I don't want to have to eat any rich people. Frankly that sounds disgusting.
Okay you can feed them to your pet, but cook them thoroughly first, you ~~don't know~~ suspect where they've been.
I think people are confused by seeing influencers and/or rich people and thinking what they have is normal.
In the 1500s it was sun-up to sun-down, 6 days a week for the work outdoors. Once the sun set, nothing could really be done. If you were a typical peasant you couldn't even afford to keep a candle lit. So, people went back to their one-room huts with their livestock in the same room and slept and/or waited for morning. They didn't have to work Sundays, but they were absolutely required to attend church on Sundays, so it wasn't a free day. There were other days off, but many of them were days where you had to do a certain prescribed activity.
In the early 1800s it was 12 hours of work, 6 days a week. Industrial era lighting technology meant that work could continue after the sun had set, so there were no winter days where you only worked 8 hours. Also, because this was the era of the factory, people had to commute to the factory and back, so if you were lucky you had a full 10 or 11 hours when you weren't working or commuting. If you wanted to sleep for 8 hours, you'd have 2-3 hours to do your cooking, eating, cleaning, bathing, mending, socializing, etc.
Thanks to tireless and bloody protesting by labour unions, 6 days of 12 hours each was shortened to 5 days of 8 hours each. It started in Chicago. The "Haymarket Affair" was a protest that led to a riot which led to public hangings. But, eventually, as a result of that, the work day was shortened to only 8 hours. Then, in the years that followed, a 2 day weekend became standard.
It might not feel like it, but your ancestors would be jealous about how much free time you have these days. Your distant, peasant ancestors might actually have had fewer work hours. But, they only stopped working when it was too dark to do anything, and then they basically sat or slept in a tiny, drafty, stuffy, one-room hut along with their livestock until the sun came up.
If we kill and eat the rich and use their bones as decorations, it would be possible to keep a bit more of the value of our labour. But, we're nowhere near a situation where we can all live like the rich. Someone does still need to plant the food, harvest the food, pump the oil, cast the iron, smelt the aluminum, keep track of the shipping, etc. Life is hard, and has always been hard.
Interestingly, the one glaring exception to this is hunter-gatherer lifestyles. They had to work less hours than modern day workers. Hunter gathered groups tended to evolve cultural practices that lead to constant population. When you're living off the land, the land only gives what it gives. When your area is already near its population carrying capacity, there isn't a ton to gain from putting in extra work. You go and gather what you need for the day, and that's it. Getting extra will just mean more food that is rapidly spoiling, leaving less for tomorrow. Better to just sit in camp, sit around the fire, sing some songs, and conserve some calories.
If you own/use as much as a hunter-gather owned/used, you also wouldn't need to work very much.
Take away the fridge, tv, computer, phone, car, hvac, stove, microwave, running water, electricity, gas, the house (you get a tent), going out to eat, etc. You are not left with many expenses. You can live that way, it doesn't require much working to maintain that lifestyle.
Now afford a place to pitch that tent.
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/2751-Two-A-Edwards-MO-65326/456747770_zpid/
$7,500 and you fully own your 3.4 acres. That shit won't take long to pay off. Now, you actually own more than the hunter/gatherer did!
Edit: Grabbed a different one to make sure there was no HOA
I think it's more likely that people saw their parents or grandparents living on a single income, so between two people there was a lot more "free" time. When one adult is managing the home, and the other is making money, both get to be more off duty after work. The grocery shopping, meal prepping, social calendar finagling, and cleaning were happening simultaneously with the money making job.
Managing a household is a whole ass job and a lot of people are expected to do it on top of their day job and that's why we feel like we have no time. I don't think we're comparing ourselves to celebrities, just our own family members.
Someone does still need to plant the food, harvest the food, pump the oil, cast the iron, smelt the aluminum, keep track of the shipping, etc. Life is hard
This is only true because capitalism is limiting technology to the point where all these mundane tasks can't be automated or improved with tech so that it can be possible for all to self-maintain. Yes, not that simple and yeah someone would need to program things and maintain things, but there's no way in hell I'm going to believe that humanity can waste so much time and money on something as unethical as AI but somehow can't come up with technology to let people maintain crops without having every piece of the puzzle we have now.
They can do it. Everybody talks about how crazy it is about how in such a short time span we've gone from flying planes to landing on the moon and it is ridiculous. It's not that inconceivable to believe that we can come up with tech to better maintain society beyond what we have now. People want to keep the status quo because they limit their minds to what has been.
Capitalism dictates that profit means everything. We don't need pot holes to be filled every other year just because people get a job. People shouldn't be dependent on such a system to survive. Pot holes can be filled with a solution that will not dissipate over time but capitalism doesn't want that. It wants to make sure there's a demand to pay someone despite the penalty of the many.
Do we actually archaeologically/anthropologically know that this is the amount of time that people spent working in those different periods?? Would love to see sources because I always think this is one of the most valuable things those fields can bring to us, but I've had trouble finding clear answers.
My version:
24 hours in a day
12 hour shift
1 hour commute each way, so 2 hours
1 hour cooking/eating/cleaning
1 hour showering, getting dressed, getting ready for the next day.
Uh oh, bedtime if I want to have a chance at 8 hours of sleep.
1 hour walking the dog and playing with her. 7 hours of sleep possible.
Fuck it, I'll get groceries next week I guess.
Trouble sleeping due to the anxiety of not getting enough sleep.
Cry.
Sleep 5 hours.
"And you run, and you run to catch up with the sun, but it's sinking Racing around to come up behind you again The sun is the same in a relative way, but you're older Shorter of breath, and one day closer to death"
-Pink Floyd
This exact line brought a chill down my spine back in high school that got me really depressed about my life.
And they wonder why no one wants to have children anymore. Between not having enough money and not having enough free time, how the fuck do they expect all that? The rich really are a parasite and capitalism is a cancer.
WFH has been a blessing.
You easily eliminate almost 2h from there, no commute, and some workdays no showerp/getting ready to go out. Even when I shower I try my damnest to do it between meetings in company time.
I also do zero overtime, you'd be surprised that there are actually decent consultancy companies in that regard.
Sometimes you can sit and cut vegetables and peel potatoes in a meeting.... Which drastically cuts down meal prep time, I find.
I have strictly limited overtime with high bonuses and mandatory rest days, afternoon/night shift bonuses, 20 days minimum fully paid vacation, fully paid maternity leave, fully paid sick leave, healthcare paid through taxes, all written into law. Feels nice to live in a place where workers have rights. Sometimes I don't even know what to do with all this legally mandated freedom. Anyway, how's that deregulation going, America?
The post still applies to you in its entirety except for the 1h unpaid overtime. And yes, socialist ideas are good, that's the entire point of the post.
The traffic and living situations in socialist countries are also not as bad as in USA due to better public transport and denser housing near work, so remove an extra hour of commuting as well.
Socialist countries? You mean like China? Or are you talking about European-style socialdemocracy? Plenty of suburban neighborhoods with detached housing in Germany or Norway too
If you're unsure what to do with your copious freetime, I recommend some political activism to make sure that your rights don't backslide. Fascism is on the rise practically everywhere in the west.
From 2020 to 2025 I worked maybe two hours a day while remote. Made millions for my company but I didn’t have to work continuously through out the day. It was a nice existence. Went through two layoffs in that time but I finally had to take a job in an actual work environment.
I guess anon is too tired to do maths correctly. That sums to 21 hours, so only 3 left instead of 4.
One hour commute each way 💀 Bruh that is brutal, waste of life. My commute takes 15 mins
Out here in Maine it's pretty common to have to travel for work. All of the jobs are in or around Portland, but you can't fucking afford to live where you work so many people have to live further north and travel south for work everyday. It's the ideal environment for remote work, but fucking boomers run everything so they expect you in the office everyday.