Political Meme Thread 21.9.5 Endwalker

For each of those, there are a dozen who did the same and didn't make it.

Do you consider them failures?

What did they do wrong?

I work hard at my job because it passes the time and because I like the feeling of doing a good job for its own sake. I certainly don't do it for any chance at promotion. I'm not one of the favorites...it isn't going to happen.

Maybe we need a poll - everyone can tell us what is their definition of "hard work".

I don’t consider them failures, but hard work doesn’t guarantee success. That’s no reason to not try though. Kissing up to your boss and being good at interviewing doesn’t guarantee success either.

NORAD tracks Santa every year.

NORAD does not track imaginary targets.

NORAD has decades worth of tracking data on this particular target.

Santa is real, bitches.

You guys always leave out the "the people are the government" part.
But yeah, keep voting the party that disenfranchises every chance they can.

But what guarantees success more? Stop thinking in terms of that Horatio Alger bullshit, that rough-hewn log-splitter mythical crap. Think in terms of reality, of how people actually interact and respond to each other. Give me a person who focuses on working hard and nothing else, and I'll give you a person who's not far up the ladder.

Weren't pale enough.

And if they were, their eyes weren't blue enough.

And if they were, maybe they were a soulless ginger.

Gotta be EXACTLY the right gradient on the paint chip.

Why can’t it be both?

The concept of luck does not automatically negate the value of hard work. The existence of bad employers does not cancel out the good ones. Either way, there is honor and integrity in earning your keep and keeping your word. Making a lying bum out of yourself will not teach the world any lessons about fairness.

The problem is not whether or not someone is a "hard worker". The question is "what do you consider 'hard work'?"

You say to me "hard work", I'm thinking manual activity. Which, I definitely do not do.

Do I do my job? Do I get my work done and meet deadlines? Do I understand my job and how my job affects the entire company? Yes, and that is what makes me a valuable employee. But, I'm definitely not out there chopping trees or shoveling manure.

keep falling for memes. It seems to be the only thing you understand.

Yeah, that's absolutely right. Honor and integrity are valuable things. But they won't buy you a jug of milk or a gallon of gas, and generally they won't get you ahead in the world. It's nice to think that they will, but what really gets people ahead isn't hard work, integrity, honor, or even luck--it's how you sell yourself to other people. And hell, maybe people work hard making themselves look good to other people. Maybe I shouldn't cheapen their labor.

I mean, imagine if someone like that got elected to high office or something. What sort of message would THAT send?

Working hard applies to any kind of work where you apply a lot of effort, whether it's digging ditches (which I've done) or sitting at a computer all day (which I do all too frequently now).

Some days I'd be happy to trade the keyboard for a shovel.

And that's the crux of it. The definition means different things to different people.

So, saying "hard work will get you ahead in life", is a bullshit thing to say because I sure as hell am not going back to doing physical labor.

I don't entirely agree with that. Hard work is relative. By saying that only manual labor is work, you're basically saying that people who can't do manual labor don't work hard. To me, a hard worker is someone who works diligently at whatever job they do, and who focuses on their tasks with a minimum of wasted time. A coder who works ten hours a day coding is working harder than a fry cook who takes a break every fifteen minutes (and vice versa). Personally, I admire hard workers more than I do schmoozers and bullshitters. If I owned a company, I know who'd I promote. But in the real world, the schmoozers and the bullshitters are generally more successful than the hard workers because that's the point of schoomzing and bullshitting! Hard work is admirable, but politics is what makes the world go round. It's why things like the Peter Principle are truisms.

For most people hard work means applying yourself to whatever job it is that you do and not just showing up and doing the bare minimum. The nature of the work has nothing to do with it.

The Trump Administration.
Voting for the Dems to undo as much of it as possible.
The GOP trying to stop folks voting.

You may have a point.

I'll give you both that. I'm just saying, not everyone thinks that way.

Still, as @Useful Idiot pointed out, that still doesn't guarantee you a job, a promotion, or even higher wages.

Let's look again to one of our sacred texts for inspiration:

Peter Gibbons: The thing is, Bob, it's not that I'm lazy, it's that I just don't care.

Bob Porter: Don't... don't care?

Peter Gibbons: It's a problem of motivation, all right? Now if I work my ass off and Initech ships a few extra units, I don't see another dime, so where's the motivation? And here's something else, Bob: I have eight different bosses right now.

Bob Slydell: I beg your pardon?

Peter Gibbons: Eight bosses.

Bob Slydell: Eight?

Peter Gibbons: Eight, Bob. So that means that when I make a mistake, I have eight different people coming by to tell me about it. That's my only real motivation is not to be hassled, that and the fear of losing my job. But you know, Bob, that will only make someone work just hard enough not to get fired.

Don't you owe your entire livelihood to being a government employee?

I had to google those names. I don't watch Office Space. But ..., when you work for a small company and don't have a lot of opportunity for advancement or even change to a different department, it's hard to keep motivated.

My problem is that while I've basically had the same job for .. 12/13 years, the job itself keeps getting moved to different departments. I get new bosses with any input. I didn't interview with them, didn't ask for a job from them, yet I am subject to their bulshit. Does that motivate me to work harder? No.

In fact, the only thing that's motivated me over the last 12/13 years is an unreasonable obsession with getting all the ducks in a row - to ensure the data is correct. The problem comes with new bosses, new co-workers, office politics (note the job changing departments), and IT deciding which program I should use without any input from the subject matter experts who know why "this" program is shit and we shouldn't be using it.

Also, Penn Jillette is an entertainer, not a politician. And one of those "look at me" sorts, rather than a "good at what he does" sorts.

He's the kind of guy that gets ahead by schmoozing.