Daycare workers clean up the shit of children not their own. There's nothing degrading about cleaning up shit and piss; The degradation comes when you're doing it for minimum wage as a second job.
I cleaned bathrooms (and buffed floors) for a Michael's hobby store many years ago. It was a morning job, every other day, and was a second job on top of my full-time job. I desperately needed more money, and made the choice to do this to assist with that.
I never felt "degraded" by it. I chose to do it to earn much-needed extra income. I eventually went into construction, and never felt "degraded" when I had to dig foundations, which is essentially ditch digging for a different purpose.
This idea that people have no agency in their life and are perpetually victims is itself dehumanizing and disempowering. I'm grateful that nobody was around me telling me I was a victim of an evil system when I was doing these kinds of jobs while working to get into tech and feeding a new family at the same time. I probably would have listened to them, gotten discouraged, and kicked back and waited for someone else to solve my problems.
I'm glad that you didn't feel degraded by it. You are correct -- work environment is more than just the wage and whether its your primary vocation or not. As a counterpoint to your anecdote, I know several women who felt degraded during their times working as home healthcare aids. In their own words, it motivated them to find better opportunities. They still felt degraded.
I don't know where you're getting all that other nonsense. You're putting a lot of words in my mouth it seems.
The degradation might also come from the fact that someone who is capable of steering a truck certainly is capable of wiping his ass and of not leaving an exploded loo behind... but they literally didn't care enough to clean up after themselves.
I mean: someone literally shits over your work area, someone who must be able to handle themselves better. Kind of hard not to take that as dehumanising.
yep, it definitely comes from that situation as well. No dispute here. Many times the mess will be from an asshole, yeah. But not all times, and when you start making assumptions like that... I was raised to think that you're the asshole.
There will always be the need for some people to clean up after others, and that in and of itself isn't degrading.
I take offense to people who make assumptions that just because you have to empty bedpans then your job is unworthy or degrading. When well compensated that sort of work is just as worthy as the bullshit us dipshits toil at.
>There's nothing degrading about cleaning up shit and piss
That fragment emphasizes the feces and urine but not the circumstances.
>The degradation comes when [...]
Yes, now we do get to the particular circumstances in regards to shit & piss and it turns out that it does matter.
For example, on the Apollo 8 spaceflight, astronaut Frank Borman had diarrhea in space. The turds were floating around in the capsule and landed on the instrument panels:
https://www.google.com/search?q=Frank+Borman+diarrhea
It is not dehumanizing nor demeaning for his fellow astronauts to help clean up the poop.
But an inconsiderate truck driver leaving behind a shit explosion on the toilet and floor without cleaning it up is treating the office workers as subhuman. It's a different circumstance.
Similar idea to clearing food and dishes off the tables. That act in isolation is not dehumanizing. E.g. many people clear food off the tables whether it's Thanksgiving dinner or everyday occasion. However, leaving behind a table mess like the following pics show for restaurant workers to clean up after you is treating them as subhuman:
That moms around the world willingly clean up dinner tables without feeling dehumanized is irrelevant to mistreating restaurant workers like that. And consider that fast food wrappers and half-eaten food is a much lower level of nastiness than feces and urine on the toilet seat and floor.
"But an inconsiderate truck driver leaving behind a shit explosion on the toilet and floor without cleaning it up is treating the office workers as subhuman. It's a different circumstance."
You're putting the blame solely on the truck driver -- perhaps he couldn't afford or was unable to be considerate -- and not the fucked up situation we've built regarding what should be considered a basic human right (easy access to sanitation). Tantrums are bound to happen. Some people smear shit onto walls I'm not saying they're ok. It doesn't change the fact that everyone deserves access to a toilet and clean water, and some of our fellow citizens aren't getting it.
I specifically take issue with the number of bad assumptions you are baking into your argument.
It's degrading for an office worker to clean up someone else's shit, _unless_ that's the job they've signed up for and they're cool with it. I imagine few offices actually pay their facilities staff well enough to deal with shitsmearing, but as I said -- that's where the actual degredation comes from. shit jobs should give stellar pay, but we don't value things like that around here.
>I specifically take issue with the number of bad assumptions you are baking into your argument.
I see your confusion. To clarify, nowhere did I say that workers who deliberately take jobs to clean up human waste (e.g. janitors, daycare workers, etc) are degrading. I made no assumptions like that.
Your other sentence about office workers who are not janitors is the group I'm talking about:
>It's degrading for an office worker to clean up someone else's shit,
