Have you ever heard some old timer make some crazy claim about how things were in the old days? They say things like, back in my day, there was no school bus. We had to walk. Everyday. Through the sleet and the snow. Five miles. Up hill. Both ways.
That last part is of course ridiculous. There's no way it could be uphill both ways unless the school building physically moved while you were in it, or your house did. At least half of the trip was easy because it was mostly downhill and precipitation doesn't fall from the sky EVERY day. While it is an exaggeration. It does go to show that we do take a lot of things for granted. Life did used to be harder without all of our modern conveniences.
And George Carlin, rest his soul, used to say we were turning our nation into a bunch of wimps(his word was less kid friendly) due to preemptively rescuing our loved ones from bad situations. He would say, in the old days, parents would purposely bring their healthy kids in contact with sick ones that way they could get sick and their immune systems could get stronger. Kids would learn how to defend themselves, either diplomatically or physically by getting into fights. Now we break things up before they get that far and kids never learn to deal with these situations.
I used to think that what he was saying was funny, but nonsense. But, now, I wonder. When it comes to working, I have seen evidence of the current generation being a whole lot more fragile than the previous one was. While we don't associate with him anymore, we used to know this kid. He was kinda young, I think maybe twenty at the time. He still lived at home with his parents. And he used to come home from his job and complain to one of us that because his manager was working that day he had to stay on his feet for half of his entire shift. He was in so much pain and he suffered for soooo long!
Was he busting his back working construction or maybe sweating it out in the hot Florida sun as a roofer? Nope. He was busy peddling novelty items at Spencer's, in the local mall. And the best part? Was he working for 18hours? 16? 12 maybe? None of the above. His shift was four hours. He was complaining about his body being beaten up over having to stand for a grand total of two hours.
We currently live with another youngster who has been part of the work force for about ten years now. But for around seven of those years he has only worked four to five hours at a time. He has just started getting longer shifts, like eight to nine hours and he has spent some time going on and on about how much time he spends on his feet, about how his back hurts and he is working all these long hours.
Most of the rest of us living in the house together have at one time or another worked a great deal longer than that and quite often doing real back breaking work. To most of us eight hours is a short shift.
When I was around the age of the guys I've mentioned here, I worked construction eighteen hours a day, six days a week, for six months. My back and feet and leg muscles used to hurt so much, I would have to take pain medication just so that I could relax enough to fall asleep, in order to get up and start it all over the next day. Four of us used to do telephone technical support for thirteen and a half hours a day, three to five days a week(depending on overtime). During several of the hurricanes that we have had down here in Florida, a couple of us have worked more than twenty four hours with no breaks. So, we really have no sympathy for the newer generation of workers
If George Carlin and the other old timers that say we are destroying our country by coddling ourselves are wrong, then why is it that many of us that have been part of the work force for ten years or less seem to find actual labor so much harder than those of us that have been around for so much longer?
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