
“I did spend 9 years as a manager at a pizza place” - DyslexicAtheist
https://twitter.com/nomedabarbarian/status/1232922661740613634
======
mabbo
When people ask me why I moved back to Canada from the USA, knowing I'd be
paid less and have higher taxes, I often have a hard time articulating what
the difference is between the two countries. Why I prefer to live here.

This thread sums it up nicely.

No matter how down-on-my-luck I get back in Canada, I will always have a
safety net. I can always walk into a hospital and be treated. I can take time
off when I'm sick. I get time off if I have a kid. It's the _law_ here and not
just best effort by employers. It's for everyone and not just the rich.

~~~
strathmeyer
Is it is big thing in America now to claim we don't have things we do like
time off when we are sick or hospitals to treat us? What on earth is this post
about??

~~~
jamroom
Looks like around 40% of the US work force has no paid sick leave:

[https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-
content/uploads/issues/2...](https://www.americanprogress.org/wp-
content/uploads/issues/2012/08/pdf/paidsickdays_factsheet.pdf)

~~~
hef19898
Damn, that's hard. In Germany we have six weeks per illness. Meaning you get
up to six weeks for your broken leg, another six for arm and so on. Insurance
to cover up to a year isn't to expensive neither if you start early. Sounds
like paradise.

------
geofft
This is the big reason I think we need to figure out as a society how to make
it possible for everyone to keep a roof over their head and food on their
plates even if they don't work at all.

The question of whether lazy people will take advantage of the system is not a
life-or-death question. The life-or-death question is whether highly motivated
and desperate people will take risks they shouldn't because we make them take
those risks.

~~~
donatj
I am a highly motivated person, yet if I could keep my home and health without
working I would stop working day 1. I would target my motivation at things I
personally care about that don't help the economy in the least. My art,
woodworking, finishing my stack of books. I am certainly not alone.

This is why I think there needs to be some level of threat of destitution to
keep society functional. Without it, this all falls apart.

~~~
geofft
What sort of things would you target your motivation towards? Would they be
valuable for humanity? Is "the economy" really the right barometer? (edit: I
see you added this - I think those are valuable for humanity! I wish you could
spend your time on art and woodworking!)

Personally, I spend a lot of my time keeping a hedge fund's computers working,
because they pay me well for it (and I want to not only avoid destitution now,
I want savings to avoid destitution in the future). I spend about zero time on
any of my open-source projects, which would be more valuable for humanity as a
whole, but I can't figure out how to get paid the same amount (or really
anything) working on them. And I know my projects are valuable to the economy
too - I arrived at this job to find that another team was doing a big
migration onto a project I maintain (and haven't had much time for). I didn't
know this in advance, and they didn't know I was joining their company.

Besides - it's okay if many people lose their motivation to work, as long as
_enough_ people still work from intrinsic motivation. And you'd still have the
motivation of needing to earn money for luxuries. Once you finish your stack
of books, the survival stipend wouldn't cover buying any more books.

~~~
richk449
You are payed well to do X. You can’t get anyone to pay you to do Y. Yet you
believe that Y is more valuable to society than X. Why?

Isn’t society’s willingness to pay you for something a decent signal that
society values it?

~~~
geofft
No, because as I just demonstrated, they use my open-source work - society
just has no mechanism to monetize it.

It is possible that I could charge support contracts for the software now -
but it's just about done, and it's pretty well documented, and if anything I'd
have _less_ incentive to write public docs. And I have no mechanism to get
people to fund the next thing I want to work on and think is a good idea.
(Well, I could continue working at a high-paying job for a few years and then
quit, of course... but the logical conclusion of that loophole is that nobody
should be paid enough that they can afford to quit, else they'd be able to
ignore the market, right?)

------
Ghjklov
I vouched for this post, as it's something that people need to be more aware
of. While many people here can remote into their tech job, there are many
people who simply do not have such privilege, and those are often the people
who make your food and drinks. I too have mostly worked food service jobs, out
of a job and looking for one now, and as soon as coronavirus hit the news, I
knew that I would be eating out a lot less now because what the Twitter posts
describe are completely accurate from my experience. I lived it.

~~~
DyslexicAtheist
thanks for vouching :)

not sure what happened here. I stepped away and this blew up, so I was also
unable to change the title into something better. no idea though why this gets
flagged (several times).

------
ApicalDendrite
There are a lot of regional differences within the US. In Massachusetts, it's
a lot better than this:

* MA has 40 hours of mandatory paid sick leave a year

* Assuming that your employer doesn't offer health insurance, if you're a single person making minimum wage in MA, working 40 hours a week, you qualify for ConnectorCare, with $15 co-pays for primary care visits and no deductible. There's a $82/month premium, but you'd also qualify for a $276/month tax credit.

There are still plenty of situations where a person making minimum wage
wouldn't be able to afford a doctor's visit. For instance, if you miss paying
your premiums your health insurance can be canceled. Or you could be working
for an employer that offers health insurance, but with a high deductible.
However, the situation here is a lot less bleak than the thread - for many
people here working in the fast food industry a doctor's visit and a week's
time off are affordable.

~~~
wasdfff
Sick leave should be unlimited. Have the employee skype a nurse for 10 minutes
if you think they are faking it.

------
ethanbond
This title could be better. Maybe "I spent 9 years as a manager at a pizza
place... Nobody in the restaurant industry goes to the doctor when they're
sick"?

Or just the latter half? Much more informative than the first half.

~~~
SilasX
Ditto. [1] HN seems to have a bizarre tolerance for cryptic headlines. (And
the low character limit doesn't help.)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22519541](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22519541)

------
wwweston
Don't miss the re-tweet down farther in the thread:

"I'm an epidemiologist. For 5 years I was specifically a flu/respiratory virus
epidemiologist. I was asked on multiple occasions what I thought was the most
effective thing we could do to improve the severity of flu season.

That's an easy answer. Universal paid sick leave."

[https://twitter.com/Just_Eleanora/status/1233030130345246720](https://twitter.com/Just_Eleanora/status/1233030130345246720)

------
heartbeats
The incentives really are not in place. He's just scratching the surface of
the rabbit hole. If quarantines become compulsory, the situation will be _even
worse_. Imagine people actively covering up their symptoms and lying to
doctors. It would be complete pandemonium.

The title is not great. I would suggest "I spent 9 years at a pizza place, and
I'm terrified of COVID-19."

------
remote_phone
It’s in the best interest of restaurant owners to keep their customers safe
and to monitor employees of sickness. Unfortunately I doubt they have the
foresight to do this, because they’re probably living on the edge as well.

But one incidence of coronavirus at their restaurant and their traffic will go
to 0 immediately. The owner will go bankrupt almost overnight. Word travels
extremely fast these days, especially over social media.

For example I just heard that Stanford hospital has a dozen confirmed
coronavirus patients there. If a restaurant has a worker diagnosed no one will
go there immediately.

A lot of restaurants are going to go bankrupt over the next 2-3 months
unfortunately.

~~~
heartbeats
No, it's in the best interest of restaurant owners that there are no
_documented_ incidences of coronavirus at their restaurant.

To spell it out: if a manager knows someone has the virus, they will fire
them. Therefore, the infected will try to cover it up. This will be the case
even if healthcare is free.

------
WilliamEdward
One of the things that will shake up the US elections and put the entire
country at risk is the fact that healthcare is so expensive. If you cannot get
treated for coronavirus, you can expect the number of cases to spread and
skyrocket.

~~~
Consultant32452
I don't want to downplay the financial concerns but in the US we expect every
hospital bed to be full by mid May. Many of those beds lack proper isolation
for infectious disease, and we'll have run out of proper PPE supplies for
healthcare workers, meaning many of those workers will cycle out of
commission. Unfortunately every country is in a similar situation. People are
going to go without appropriate care regardless of copays. Helping people
cover out of pocket expenses is the easy problem to solve.

[https://twitter.com/LizSpecht/status/1236095180459003909?s=2...](https://twitter.com/LizSpecht/status/1236095180459003909?s=20)

~~~
heartbeats
> Undeserved panic does no one any good. But neither does ill-informed
> complacency. It’s wrong to assuage the public by saying “only 2% will die.”
> People aren’t adequately grasping the national and global systemic burden
> wrought by this swift-moving of a disease. 23/n

Isn't the best approach then to do nothing? To be blunt here: if what she's
saying is true, most of the vulnerable groups are going to die anyway. So why
not just ignore it completely, and spend the healthcare resources on other
stuff?

I mean, if the choices are:

1\. 2% of the population dies and the healthcare system and economy collapses
completely

2\. 2 + ε% of the population dies

Then the second option is arguably preferable.

~~~
Consultant32452
I believe the unspoken plan is to let it happen but try to let it slow roll
through the population at a rate I would describe as a controlled disaster.
That's why planes are still flying except to the worst spots.

------
sysbin
USA taught me how little people can have as basic rights and because they
think of "equality" without factoring in financial status; since they think
everyone earns what they get in life. Majority of US is religious. So, I can
see why people aren't demanding basic necessities for a decent quality of life
and when that would make them feel they haven't earned success.

Knowing the forgoing makes me believe something like loss of life from the
coronavirus could possibly be what's needed to get people rallying for change.
Otherwise the mentality will continue of I will get mine some day and before
then I don't want things to change because I'll get rich eventually.

------
Waterluvian
I feel that events like this are the "time to pay the piper" moments with
what's wrong with American society. But don't expect to see the price paid. I
expect to see a bail out in one form or another to kick the can down the road.

It also reminds me that "Canada is like America put through a low pass
filter." We have pretty much the same situation, but with milder extremes.
When I worked in a kitchen I did see injuries and sickness get handled more
properly because a doctors visit is free and employment insurance is a thing,
so they still got paid for being off work. But I also saw the same issues with
"you don't get paid if you don't show up" so people worked through short term
illnesses. I saw someone step in a pot of scalding chicken broth/fat because
they were so fatigued and the idiot who placed it on the floor was sick and
fatigued and was skipping steps.

To each their own opinion but as I get older (and indeed pay a crap ton more
taxes) I'm becoming increasingly convinced that we need more socialism. This
twitter thread is a great example of how we can all suffer when the most
vulnerable of us suffers. I say socialism because I believe we need a baseline
safety net where, "if you're not conributing, at the very least you're not
doing harm." I've met a lot of people where I think "honestly I would rather
you just stay out of the way." I think that's the hardest part. We have a
culture of absolutely despising the idea of free lunches and free loaders.

~~~
lapnitnelav
I think America is anything but a society, more a bunch of folks that happen
to be sharing the same tract of land, compared to other cultures.

Hyper-individualism has its shortcomings and as you framed it, the piper has
come to collect the money and there's been a lot interest owed.

Hope we are wrong but wouldn't hold my breath.

Disclaimer, haven't set foot in the US yet so I'm only extrapolating from what
I have been able to observe from far away.

~~~
wasdfff
Pretty spot on, actually.

------
SilasX
How did submitter conclude that "I did spend 9 years as a manager at a pizza
place” is a relevant excerpt that could be used as the title?

The thread is about concerns about health care policy and food service labor
practices encourage the spread of viruses, if you want a heads-up.

------
foogazi
After reading this I think I’m going to skip restaurants & fast food for a
while

------
aerovistae
I used to love the US and I came out of the 2010s hating it instead. Sigh.

~~~
pstuart
It is an insane asylum, but we're not all crazy here. That said, it is crazy-
making watching it crumble from the inside.

------
blartdfdsfsd
You are all complaining about the system in the US but don't realize it is
INTENTIONAL. A pure capitalist society doesn't want Sick Poor People who cant
work. You are a drain on the wealth generation engine. Old Sick Poor people
are even worse. Check out the Stanford Study
[https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/11/geography-income-
play-r...](https://news.stanford.edu/2016/04/11/geography-income-play-roles-
in-life-expectancy-new-stanford-research-shows/)

------
alexashka
This will boil down to the cost of a human life at the end of the day, not
unlike the speed limit debate where we know cars kill a bunch of people every
year, and yet people want to get places 5 minutes faster.

Historically, the cost of a human life has mostly been low but was offset by a
sense of community. We've gotten rid of community by allowing people to
migrate in large numbers. Migrate from state to state, from country to
country, from job to job, from marriage to marriage, from casual sex partner
to casual sex partner.

All this migration makes it difficult to create lifelong bonds and without
those, you really are screwed in the ways the twitter thread describes.

It's uncomfortable and our current political and mass media setup makes it
impossible to have long form conversations on these topics - so I just don't
know how things can possibly get better for the average citizen. Sad.

~~~
geofft
On the other hand, allowing people to migrate from marriage to marriage lets
them _create_ lifelong bonds that actually help them when their first partner
turns out to be callous and uncaring. And there's nothing forcing people to
migrate if they're happy with their current community.

It's true that the old system was better for some people - e.g., callous and
uncaring partners got to have someone obligated to keep taking care of them. I
suppose it's a tradeoff.

