I agree STRONGLY with this Tumblr post. People should be ABLE to work at the grocery store and make enough to support a family. That is how a functional society works. Grocery store workers (and other people in the service sector) are absolutely essential members of our society, and should not be disrespected and told that their jobs are only suitable for children.
(U) I used an AI assistant to generate alt text and a caption there. It did a good job. Interesting.
I used Google Drive’s Optical Character Recognition to OCR the text, so here’s that, too:
User “youthincare”:
people should be allowed to have low ambition, and also be able to feed a family on the salary of a cashier at a convenience store.
User “kidsomeday”:
My very first job was at Taco Bell, and most of us working there were horrible young adults with horrible young adult problems, but one of my coworkers was a woman in (I think) her 50s.
And us horrid young adults would ask her why she still worked at Taco Bell, because it was starter job and who would want to stay there forever? Her response?
“I make enough money to make sure I always have roses in my bedroom.”
This answer changed me as a person. It changed the way I thought about what makes someone successful, and made me step back and realize that I was so caught up in what I thought success and
happiness should mean that I didn’t know what I wanted them to mean.
Which is to say that sometimes ambition is making enough money to keep fresh roses in your bedroom, and you should be able to do that working at Taco Bell.
I like that.
And yes, low ambition means this person will never have a 7-bedroom house. That is OKAY. It is okay that not everyone will always be able to have the nicest and biggest things. But people should be able to have basic things on a basic salary: an apartment, health care, enough food to eat, access to information and education. It is a problem when people cannot have those things.
(And I know nobody argues with me anymore now that I’ve moved to this blog instead of Facebook; but if you want to go toe to toe on “frivolous” expenses, bring a real life budget and let’s dissect.)
Emilybook 