Antick Musing's Fridays, Black and Otherwise

[james_davis_nicoll]

[...] [M]odern Westerners can be separated by the work they did when they were young and unskilled. One great mass worked in retail, selling goods of one kind or another. A second cohort worked in food service, waiting tables or working a grill. And the third group, seemingly the luck ones, were those rich or privileged enough not to have to work at all -- the ones who were children, then entirely students, and then set off on their careers, without ever having had "just a job."

Comments

[zxhrue.livejournal.com]

oh how times have changed. antick doesn't even mention another cohort -- those whose job path when young and unskilled began with agricultural labor. otherwise accurate though.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Or the significant cohort whose first job is selling drugs.

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

That's retail.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

:P

[fridgepunk.livejournal.com]

It's actually both retail and warehousing technically - with a bit of freight/transport work depending on how far down in the supply network you work.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

True. Still, I think that the potential for being shot, cut, raped or put into prison would put this particular first job in it's own column.

[jamesenge.livejournal.com]

"It's actually both retail and warehousing technically - with a bit of freight/transport work depending on how far down in the supply network you work."

It could even be agricultural.

[ljgeoff.livejournal.com]

Yep. One of the feds at the center where I work said that his first job was trimming marijuana, when he was 13. (in Garden, Michigan)