> It acts like there's some nice low-risk generic "baseline job" you can
>> get with just a high school degree in the US, there isn't.
>
> Waiting tables? Fast food counter-person? Here, they are: landscapers,
> swimming pool cleaners, etc. Your total "investment" is the means of
> transportation you use to get to the gigs.
Old "joke" is that waiting tables is what the US has instead of a first-world healthcare and social support system.
Part of why it's described in the popular imagination as the worst thing that could happen to you, rather than another type of hospitality-trade someone might voluntarily want to be a part of.
MA has a ballot question to raise the minimum wage of restaurant workers, should be interesting. All the big money restaurant lobby groups are against it which is ample reason for me to vote for it; it's crazy that there's one particular industry that thinks it's so special that it shouldn't have to do what every other business does aka pay their employees.
> You can do about one of three things (unless work for your Daddy is an
>> option): go into the trades,
>
> Tradesmen tend to have trouble as they age and their bodies can't
> keep up with the demands of their trade. So, you have to aspire
> (and work) to become a "Master" so you can have "Apprentices"
> in your later years *or* stash a lot of your earnings (after
> union dues) and hope to retire early. Nothing sadder than some
> carpenter, roofer, automechanic, etc. doubled over with back
> problems from advanced age.
I have a relative in a unionized trade (engine repair for a large logistics company) management actually tends to be relatively supportive of older employees and the healthcare benefits are rather good by US standards.
But lot of the day-to-day stress doesn't come from the top it comes from younger co-workers and management tends to turn a blind eye for that, they prefer to let infighting and hazing do the work for them, eventually older employees get sick of the abuse and depart of their own accord.
The non-unionized trades like e.g. the railroad industry tend to have more overbearing managements, as one employee in that field quipped to me "There's no industry that will offer you more of the world for signing on, and then spend more of their time trying to fire you once you're in."