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How poor is the average American? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) by Kushia@lemmy.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I've been watching a few American TV shows and it blows my mind that they put up with such atrocious working terms and conditions.

One show was about a removal company where any damage at all, even not the workers fault, is taken out of their tips. There's no insurance from the multimillion dollar business. As they're not paid a living wage the guy on the show had examples of when he and his family went weeks with barely any income and this was considered normal?!

Another example was a cooking show where the prize was tickets to an NFL game. The lady who won explained that she'd be waiting in the car so her sons could experience their first live game, because she couldn't otherwise afford a ticket to go. They give tickets for football games away for free to people where I live for no reason at all..

Yet another example was where the workers got a $5k tip from their company and the reactions were as if this amount of money was even remotely life changing. It saddens me to think the average Americans life could be made so much better with such a relatively small amount of money and they don't unionize and demand far better. The company in question was on track to make a billion bloody dollars while their workers are on the poverty line and don't even have all their teeth?

It's not actually this bad and the average American lives a pretty good life like we're led to believe, right?

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[–] Trainguyrom@reddthat.com 5 points 11 months ago

I recently went back to college and I'm now in my first professional role with real professional benefits and the difference is night and day

I got sick and had to miss a couple of days of work. I literally just had to send a single teams message from my work phone and could ignore everything else for the rest of the day and still be paid. I've had previous jobs where I'd be required to get a doctor's note by the end of the day just to not be disciplined for my absesnd, which meant going to urgent care which costs more because i couldn't make a same day appointment with my primary care doctor. Y'know all for a common cold

I went to go to the office one day (my job is hybrid) and found a 4 inch screw in my tire. I had zero obligation to explain myself for why I didn't come in when I was expected. I had another time I had a different issue with the car for which I didn't get around to mentioning why I didn't come in and I never heard about it. My last job I had a very catastrophic flat and literally had to miss 2 days of work while I waited for shop to get in tires to put on my car

Every holiday is paid. I've had previous jobs where I had to burn literally all of my vacation time to not take a 20% hit to my paycheck for a holiday that I don't even get the choice of working if I wanted to. I've had other jobs where I just had to accept that I'd have to take a hit on a paycheck for a holiday because I didn't get any vacation time

If I have an important personal phonecall, I can just answer the call. I don't have to do some song and dance about burning a timed break or saying out loud to everyone in earshot who sees me getting a call "oh this is an important call, I need to take this" I can just answer the damn phone and get on with it

There's usually some snacks somewhere in the building that i can grab for free. If I don't pack enough food and find myself getting hangry I'm not forced to spend my own money at the vending machine or to go to the store at lunch, I can just go grab a snack and be done with it. I also don't have to wait for a break, I can just get up and go grab my damn snack without having to explain myself

Notice how every one of these benefits is not having to spend time and/or money to appease my employer