Comments on: Meat Grinders

By: fielding

fielding — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 15:59:09 +0000

any job that pays taxes is a meat grinder and separates pounds of flesh from the rest of the body

By: dresserdrawer

dresserdrawer — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 15:31:51 +0000

Parents, take heed and act now, before it is too late. Indoctrinate your children with the principles of math and science and see that they perform at school. Send them to technical schools. Encourage them to be engineers. They will not fight people or hawk wares or mop floors, but be constantly thinking, planning, inventing. They will make money, more than 70K a year, and not worry about debt or taxes or insurance. They will retire at fifty or sixty. They will not be free of it, but the aggravation you face on a daily basis because of your job will be less for them, and you will be glad, because you broke the trend.

-the chemical engineer next door

By: avy

avy — Thu, 18 Sep 2008 23:35:25 +0000

I’m inclined to say telemarketer but that’s only cause I’ve done it. It wasn’t even my body or soul that felt like it had been ground up, it was my brain, every original thought or scrap of personality shoved through the pre-written speech into a uniform mush.

By: henrebotha

henrebotha — Sun, 07 Sep 2008 16:45:20 +0000

I am indeed. I am studying classical composition and theory at the University of Cape Town. I’m also in popular music, though… very into avant-garde rock.

By: MalikTous

MalikTous — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 16:50:34 +0000

Nine Inch Nails’ ‘Happiness in Slavery’ music video comes to mind.

By: Neville

Neville — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 22:44:09 +0000

My guess would be lawyer as well perhaps.

Or perhaps soldier.

Both are often taken up by their practitioners in an idealistic fashion and out of a desire to serve and do the right thing.

Both have different “practical applications” to what might have been hoped for or expected and serving people often gets a strange line blurred where one ends up taking orders and direction from senior staff who may also have had their dreams and ideals brutalised in the course of their service.

Both operate under specific instances of the “letter of the law” which is often not what the original spirit of the law might have been, and so one can find oneself acting out one’s part in a tragedy of epic proportions in which everything you do runs contrary to the ideals and original purpose of your taking up that profession…

And supposedly all “for the greater good”.

By: Geckokin

Geckokin — Sat, 01 Mar 2008 18:32:02 +0000

Meatgrinder job? I work as a munitions technician. Long strange road to get here, but I spend most of my days doing heavy manual labor building explosive devices that are used to end things. The time not spent hammering my body to pulp is spent improving the devices. These devices are already so scarily good at what they do.
And the most crushing thing about the job is that the work will continue, no matter what I do, or don’t. And that is the thing that makes me cringe. I have an out. I can quit if I want. Many many many of my co-workers are people stuck for years, with contracts that make them no more than a number and a slave. No way out, and so they continue work. Day by day another inch of their souls is chewed up, and they cannot leave.

By: Anna

Anna — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 08:14:21 +0000

Pet Stores slowly suck out your soul…I’m a 5’2 120lb. 20 year old girl who hauls around 100 pounds of dog food at a time and cries when we sell good animals to bad people. My coworkers tell me that I will become hardened to these things over time…but do I want to?

By: somerled

somerled — Wed, 06 Feb 2008 15:23:08 +0000

You are right at the intersection of very emotional topics for people; their health, their money, sometimes their family. It sounds like the child might have had a formative experience in favour of universal, socialized medicine.

A Softer World is a really cool site, by two really awesome people. I’m often curious to know how people found Secret Vespers. Thanks for your comment!

By: Ian

Ian — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 19:42:53 +0000

I found your site through A Softer World, and I fell in love.

I work as a Pharmacy Technician. I deal with insurances, sick people, and old people all day. A mother, her two kids, and their grandmother walked up to buy the grandmother’s medication. The medication was pretty costly, and when the grandmother pulled the cash from her purse one of the little boys started screaming at me, “You made her spend all her money!” The mom tried to tell him it was the doctor that had prescribed it for his grandma, but the little boy didn’t understand. All he saw was me standing behind the register taking all of his grandmother’s money and giving her pills in return.