This documentation through the ages of the lazy, discontent working public starts to show that this isn’t exactly the epiphany that Subway franchise managers seem to think it is. My favorite of the above is the one from 1937, from an interview with “orchardists” which is not a word I’ve heard before. Apparently it means people who run orchards, even though it sounds like a back row instrumentalist in the Philharmonic Orchestra. Just another example of my sheltered millennial mindset! Regardless, if you ever needed an example that this imagined struggle is constant, orchards complaining that no one wants to pick apples in the middle of the god damn Great Depression feels pretty apt.
Parallels can further be drawn from this specific situation to today. Again, we find ourselves in an economically perilous period, that, according to everything I’ve read and the general anxiety levels of economists smarter than me, seems like it’s only going downhill. Once again, the people in need of labor for incredibly unrewarding jobs have pointed their finger at a willpower-less public. After all, they’re talking about fruit-picking, a job that is literally often used as a punchline or example of undesirable work. One that is now the go-to example of the work taken by desperate and less-than-documented migrant workers because, well, the job f**king sucks.
Nowadays, “burger flipper” has become the de facto nomenclature for a terrible underpaid job. One that was weaponized as an insult for a non-zero portion of my life and used as a boogeyman-style threat for those considering missing out on college.The same college that has resulted in insurmountable debt hanging over the heads of most people I know. However, now that their fries don’t come fast enough, young people’s aversion to what was described to them as basically the most dishonorable profession in the first world is a fault in character.