I’ve possibly mentioned it here a time or two before, I hav moderate emphysema, and moderate asthma. As such I am in the elevated risk group so I get vaccinated when needed.
Yesterday was a couple of vaccinations, pneumonia, flu, COVID booster and second round of hep A/B vaccine (occupational exposure hazard of plumbing).
This morning I was handing over my doctors excuse. Typically I don’t give information when I visit a doctor- here’s my excuse go fuck yourself please. For some reason I told the office manager why I went - vaccinations, blood work, and a referral for my twice yearly endoscopy.
You’d have though I told her I kick puppies and steal old folks disability checks, the fucking look she gave me.
She started out with this ‘have you done your research…’ bullshit, so I asked her why her medical degrees weren’t hanging up if she knew better than medical professionals and left for my first service call. Then, I got to listen to my 17 year old apprentice (the owners dipshit son) explain to me how I really need to do some research and I’d probably change my opinion because I’m smart and I just need to be shown the right info, and that the other guys at the shop agreed about vaccinations. He then tried explaining to me that his grandpa who died last year of complications from esophageal cancer was really complications from the covid booster two years later.
Told him I’m dropping him with his daddy because we can’t justify the labor for an apprentice and a plumber for the service calls I had lined up today.
Ain’t fucking doing it anymore. I’m sixteen hours into overtime already and I’m paid double time so I’m not fucking this week up. I will finish my week at one shop and I will have another job by Friday this week if worse comes to it.
I’m not arguing with assholes anymore in the year of our lord twenty twenty five.
How was y’all’s day?
17 year old apprentice (the owners dipshit son) explain to me how I really need to do some research
I feel this in my bones - every time i talk to someone who’s a vaccine skeptic it feels like i’m talking to a child but they’re always older than thirty
Any time I hear ‘do some research’ it’s always a right winger fuckhole, and I immediately dismiss anything they have to say from then on.
My apprentice (hopefully former) is going to grow up to be a small business tyrant like his old man. I only got stuck with him because I’m the least likely to run him off a job site, and probably the most technically proficient plumber at the shop.
We will see what happens tomorrow. I’m def bringing a few edibles w me to ease the day along.
the last time I allowed myself to get down in the muck with this type of guy he kept texting back “hold on let me do some quick unbiased research” when I’d tell him some irrefutable fact of history he didn’t know about
edibles are definitely the way to go
Yeah dude I feel that fully. I’m not sure whether to just cringe or immediately just scream ‘fuuuuuuuuuuck youuuuuuuuuu’ as loudly as I can when I run into someone like that.
I am once again asking working class people to get some fucking class conscious and stop fucking themselves and others over.
I think that’s what we are for unfortunately
Fucking bang up job we’ve been doing lmao
Today i got into a yelling match with my boss because my tenured ass is disabled and i asked for a 2 hr late start to accommodate my disability.
You’d think the world ended. My boss insinuated that i was lying abt my condition and had the gall to say he allows me to take my FMLA leave.
I am pretty sure his ass is grass. Im gathering my documentation and am fully ready to sue his ass off if my goodwill with the district doesnt do it.
man I hope you get something good there. Bosses can eat a bag of dicks.
Thanks dude. I am flabbergasted. I actually had the nerve to tell him i’ve had my fmla longer than he’s had his job and that was kinda satisfying. He certainly wasnt prepared for me to know my rights which is kinda funny if it wasnt so sad
Being a head taller than everyone is always fun. The young guys aren’t allowed to let the Andrew Tate shit fly. I can out “masculine” most guys, I have the blue collar background. You work my crew, you follow my rules. Greenhorns are malleable to a point, but a hammer (ideology) is a hammer.
My supervisor told me that i’m both a dream and nightmare for HR. People who start off with me tend to stay with the company longer, which is why they usually give me people who aren’t straight, white males, making them look good for the company DEI intiative. But, i also tend to tell off shitheads to their face, making me have a higher hr complaint rate than other shift leads. Always like to read back the hr guidelines whenever i get called in. Also, even when i’m away at meetings, my second in command is also a bullheaded leftist, so they can’t even say shit when i’m away. Win-win, i say.
sounds pretty ok, for the most part. It’s always good to have another person there who holds the same line of thought as you do.
That’s what I believe as well. It’s heavy industry work, so having a level headed crew was my first concern as soon as I got the job. People have to be at their best, so I end up having a fairly friendly crew. We’re the people who have to fix and repair other peoples mistakes and damages, right?
I’m an apprentice electrician, and I definitely feel you. Just yesterday I had to talk to my journeyman for something like an hour about DEI just because I slightly pushed back on what he was saying. Before I started, I expected that being in the union would at least weed out some of the worst reactionaries, but unfortunately it is not the case at all
Turns out pieces of shit can be in unions too
-j Sakai
100%. I felt like I understood that before, but seeing it in person really made me get it. It ranges from people who are reactionaries except for being pro-union, to people who constantly talk shit about the union even though they’re dues-paying members. I guess it’s all really just different levels of self-justification from people who are just in it for the better pay and benefits. I really need to go back and read Settlers all the way through lol
I’ve been plumbing a long fucking time and I have never met a more generally CHUD-like group of people who are disturbingly anti-union.
I mean it’s almost like tradesmen are good with their hands but don’t possess much in the way of critical thought or solidarity for their fellow working class.
I told someone ‘show a little solidarity’ a month or two back when it was a management vs one of my coworkers and the guy responded with ‘fuck that’
It’s honestly disappointing. I enjoy what I do, but I would never associate with the majority of the people I work with outside of work. I have met some good people though. I know at least two other communists, including one I met through organizing before I even started the job, as well as several other leftists of different kinds. but for every one of them there’s 100 chuds. I’ve been to meetings where I’m talking to a communist, and someone with a three percenter decal on their truck drives by to park in the same lot
Nah it’s all like that. Most tradies are shit people (just like office folks and the rest of humanity) that just happen to have a little more work ethic, skill, and the intelligence to use them.
I support the highest paid union in my district, higher than teamsters, longshoremen, and stevedores, and for every 3 earnest good folk, there’s 10 asshole drama queen privileged trouble causing Trump supporting losers.
People with active restraining orders from their baby momma, that get apprentices horrifically injured and weasel out of accountability, waste hours making the office explain that their own fuckups are in fact not according to company and union procedure, fuck an entire job site by running new mechanics out of town that were just trying to put down roots (in the same union), etc.
They’re just people. And this is why a vanguard is needed to educate them. Frankly some of the rhetoric I see makes me wonder how looped in to reality some folks are, as if these people that struggle against their own interests would ever spontaneously assist the glorious revolution.
I have a friend that used to work at morgues and the morgue techs would laugh at you for getting vaxxed and wearing protective equipment. They would also regularly do shit like eating in the morgue room and even placing plates on the bodies. My friend even described them eating with blood all over their hands from numerous dead bodies. Always shocked when they get diagnosed with mega death plague and die at 45. In fact one was diagnosed with like 6 different diseases and HIV to boot. People still deny germ theory I guess
Got that 15th century mindset (miasma theory).
If people really believed in miasma theory they’d mask! It’s more like worshiping the right idols will keep illness at bay.
It’s more like licking the idols that everyone else rubs for good luck.
Jesus Christ, I read Master and Commander recently (surprisingly fun book, would recommend), and there’s a scene where the ship’s doctor is on shore leave, doing some cadaver dissection. One of his doctor friends comes over and they eat lunch next to a dead body, using the dissecting knife to cut their lunch (don’t worry, they wiped it on a cloth first). That scene made me laugh because I’m like “wow, no one would do that these days, because we understand germ theory”. How wrong I was, apparently
Good god. Thats macabre, and bizarre all in one.
doxxing ur ass right now, i found this picture of you
‘have you done your research…’
aka listening to deranged grifters on Youtube
Exactly. I will not engage, period. I’d rather shove my arm into hot coals than engage one of these assholes.
I love your work stories. You’re such a fuckin chad
Damn
Hell yeah fuck those people.
Today was good, went to an anti ice protest, left before it (apparently) got violent. Starting to work with that homelessness org on Monday, and tomorrow its gonna be 87 out so im gonna take the dogs to the park and lay on the concrete and be a lizard in the hot sun
That sounds extremely enjoyable. I’m a bit jelly. Doing something to benefit those who need it most, and a day of just lazing in the sun?
Sign me up.
I was pissy last week and am still coming around. Worked a lot of overtime and then got the classic complaint of me racking up too much overtime. My manager chatted with me, saying he didn’t want to lose another person to burnout out.
Still, way better than what you’re dealing with. I’m just feeling alienated from everyone around me. I at least don’t have to deal with antivaxxers.
Its alright. I’m mostly left to my devices really. I’m the senior plumber so I get away with a little more than the other guys, I get to do most of my work by myself which is what I prefer- I really am a good plumber but I’m a terrible teacher so I’ve always had a hard time conveying what I know. Nobody questions me for the most part. I don’t really have to justify much of what I do to anyone. Most of my days are smooth enough that I honestly can’t complain too much.
I really only have days like today every once in a while, thankfully. Otherwise I’d have hit the road a long time back. I can be treated like shit anywhere, really. My license is my resume at this point.
I’m a bit of a loner naturally, so I’m already a bit alienated but I definitely have times where I need some companionship at work. Many hands make light work, misery loves company, whatever cliche you want. Sometimes it’s just nice to talk to someone.
Can you start your own thing? If you like working alone, do you really need them?
I’m ten months out from my hours requirement for a masters license. I have all of my requisite classes completed, now I’m just burning thru another 1,500-ish hours remaining of my 10,000 hour requirement.
I’m close. I’ll open my own ‘shop’ eventually but won’t take on any employees beyond my son when he comes of age to apprentice. I really want my son to get a j-man license that way he always has something he can fall back on until he finds his way.
Hell yeah. That’ll probably feel so freeing.
where do they get this shit.where do they get strength of conviction more like, i know wherebought some new led lamps, now i’m very lit in warm 3k light
is this America? from these stories (and some from people I know) it always sounds so much worse and more right-wing
America. Texas. Southern Texas around the border area
shit sounds crazy there. like people would kill me where i am for being trans but they would never say stupid shit about vaccines, but over there you’ve got both that’s kinda wild
Bought myself a bike
It’s nothing too special, just a cheap Schwinn mountain bike I got at Sierra
Good cheap Schwinn is still a bike.
City riding? Actual trail riding? I live sorta near some trails, way out in the boonies but there’s a pack of dogs that live out in the brush and I get worried about being mobbed by actual wild dogs. I ride w a pistol when I do ride, but that’s not really a solution so I just skip it, or take my bike to a hilly area and bomb some hills.
Have a nice little trail not too far from the house, been wanting to ride it for a bit
Finally took the plunge because I’m trying to get more active
Bought a new heavy bag there too
