If someone comments saying their actual current job, please be kind and thank them in a reply.
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Waste pickers in the clothing canyons of Ghana, or any other landfill/wasteland
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Volunteer caregivers for people with disabilities, especially in places where there are limited or no social safety nets
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Street vendors like the children hawking goods in Yemen or Samoa or Zimbabwe…
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Cleaners, such as the Sewer divers in places like India where there is no protective equipment provided
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Food services workers.
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“Domestic” services workers like childcare, housekeeping, etc. I include victims of forced marriages here.
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All other exploited, outsourced, trafficked, and/or forced labour, such as the cobalt miners in Congo, or the clothing sweatshop workers in Bangladesh, or the Phillipines call centre workers, or the hazelnut pickers in Turkey, or construction labourers in Qatar, or the chaingangs in the US.
thanks for this very exhaustive list. this is the first time ive heard of sewer divers - with no PPE - sounds terrible.
Sudharak Olwe has spent a lot of time documenting the lives of “conservancy workers” in Mumbai. His entire body of work is worth a look, Content warning: Image 12 is extremely NSFL with the body of a human child, but there are also dead and dying animals in images 4 and 11 but here is one collection. The photo I see most frequently is the one of a worker neck-deep in a drain
Terrible is certainly a good word to describe it.
Klick on those links with caution, especially the collection is most definitely NSFL.
Oh goodness, I’m really sorry! I entirely forgot some of those pics were at that level. I’ll add a content warning to my post.
This is a great comment, and I believe the best addition to the thread.
I think you may really like this 4 part music/art video series.
Filastine - Abandon
From the description: Abandon bridges video art, documentary, and music to explore how we sell our time on earth, and how we could imagine to get free. Each of the four episodes profiles a unique personal revolt against low-valued work: an Indonesian miner, a Portuguese maid, American office workers, and Spain’s scrap metal salvagers.Thanks for sharing that! I confess dance is not really a medium I appreciate enough, but the music and filmography and overall sentiment were great. It reminds me of my favourite movie, Baraka.
If you haven’t seen it, it’s a beautiful collection of global footage with music, and arguably more optimistic than I am. But it was from 1992 when things did seem a little more hopeful. It’s in a similar vein to the Qatsi trilogy, which is more famous.
This is just one “Chapter”/song from it, but it’s something I think about often. It’s probably the saddest part of an otherwise emotionally varied film: Baraka: Dead Can Dance - Host of Seraphim (7mins 14sec) Unfortunately none of the people here are actors or performers though, except the Japanese Butoh dancers at the end of it.
I can’t help but wonder how many of these people have survived the last 30 years since this movie.
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Step parent. While not entirely thankless (depending on the kids involved) it’s tremendously underappreciated.
So much expectation that you do things for kids that aren’t yours.
Don’t get me wrong - it can still be rewarding in many ways, and my stepkids and I love each other like blood. We have a fantastic relationship.
But it gets under my skin every time I think about how little their own father has done for them, and I’ve had to pick up the (financial) burden, yet that prick will be the one who gets to walk my stepdaughter down the aisle.
That depends in her because it would be HER wedding.
If she is grateful enough, you’ll get to walk her because you would have been her real dad all her life.
There is no written law that the bio that most be the only one who can walk her, its all just stupid wedding traditions.
If she grows to be a brat, and makes her bio dad walk her, then she doesn’t see you as her real dad, and would be something for you to reflect on.
I hear you, but it’s not quite as straightforward as that. It’s hard to explain (as family dynamics always are).
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I’m sure that’s true in plenty of families, but sadly not ours. My stepkids’ dad is a entitled and materialistic, and he’s married someone just like him. They even try and “teach” the kids that you don’t have to thank wait staff at restaurants, because they’re paid to do the job.
It’s funny - my wife and I were each originally married to the same type of selfish arsehole, then found each other after our respective marriages broke up. Our exes, however, didn’t wait that long. Kinda says everything…
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Parenting is absolutely a job. It’s a full-time job on top of whatever other job you have.
My wife is a school based therapist. The parents routinely cancel without notice. The kids have behavioral problems and trauma that makes interacting difficult and stressful. Not to mention that she has to read through the kid’s trauma history that requires them seeing her in the first place. Not a lot of thank yous for that kind of work.
There are several jobs that are frequently mentioned in discussions like this that are actually thanked all of them time.
Nurses, teachers, fire, EMTs and police are always mentioned. They are hard jobs and mostly under paid. However they are constantly thanked, businesses give discounts and commercials and politicians thank them endlessly.
Grocery store workers, butchers, plumbers, electricians, custodians, truck drivers and most “menial jobs” are completely thankless. Think of the last time you saw a 10% off for nurses and if you’ve ever seen 10% off for overnight stockers.
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Nurses, teachers, fire, EMTs
I,too, wanted to become fire when I grew up. Turns out it’s not a real job. Instead I became disappointed.
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Farm labourers. There is a reason that such a large percentage of them are trafficked.
Social media moderator
God I cant even imagine the shit they see. I saw a podcast episode of one and it just made me sad, think the podcast was other people’s lives
They don’t get thanked, they get PTSD.
It’s a long read, but very much worth it. It goes into detail about the types of material these people have to spend all day watching and reviewing, and talks in length about some of the unhealthy coping mechanisms these teams develop for themselves. Lots of drug use, sex in the office, and suicidal ideation.
While the article focuses mainly on Facebook moderators, I used to share an office with YouTube’s content moderation team around the time this article came out, and a lot of the article rings true for YouTube, as well. I imagine it’s similar across all the big platforms.
There was that whole fiasco with the CSAM issue very recently on Lemmy. All of those poor moderators had to deal with all of that.
I hadn’t heard about this, is there any posts about it?
It’s certainly thankless but is it a job if you don’t get paid?
Yes, definitely - being the caregiver for a child is often unpaid but still very much a job. Many volunteer positions are important jobs which are unpaid.
If you’re a public moderator (eg. on reddit) you get thanked if you’re doing a good job.
But not nearly as much as you get verbally abused or defamed.
There are (or were) definitely some subs that were harder to moderate than others I’d imagine.
Gaming subs: Easy
Ask subs: Intermediate
Location-based subs: Hard
Political subs: Ironman
Domestic work.
Raising children, feeding families, and cleaning up a household are staggeringly underappreciated labor tasks that are paid very little (or nothing at all when it’s just family obligations).
I remember it was something like people who clean hospitals, according to some study.
Tankless water heater installer.
Tank you!
No, that’s a tankless job
He’s talking about ultrasonic-cleaning those little gold things people hang around their collar
Most public service workers who take their job seriously. In my country, those include military personnel, teachers, actually competent politicians
Being poor. You pay the bills of the rich.
Thankyou for your service
Poor persons credit card interest pays for the points rich people can easily gain and spend.
I’d imagine the margins on many cheaper products are better than the luxury version. Disney+ comes to mind where they want people to take the cheaper ad version because it earns disney more money.
Hell, the whole point of a credit score is so that poor people pay higher interest rates, allowing for interest rates for the rich to become more competitive.
All customer and/or low level jobs
Being an undercover loss prevention officer.
I have never thanked one of those snitches.