To really dislike the expression "I've worked hard all my life"

[Kendodd]

So what, haven't most people, and what do you expect, to be able to put your feet up all your life.

I don't equate how hard one works with how much one earns.

It does tend to get used by people who also like to claim that they went to the university of life. To which I always want to reply: Oh, that's funny. I went to the university of life too! And I attended a real university.

That's all well and good but when the NHS services are being rationed, care services cut, public amenities closed etc etc, pensioners living in Spain for example shouldn't be claiming winter fuel allowance.

Ah yes hackmum; I did my degree in my thirties, quite what do they think I did before then? lived in a cupboard?

'Doesn't matter what job anyone does as long as they are working they are working harder than anyone sitting about jobless when they could be working'

Ah but you put a caveat in there about could be working.

I KNOW I work as hard now as I did when I was employed. In fact, I have three kids with special needs (damned genetics) and frankly it never stops.

In fact I am looking for work but having been a Carer seems to put people off, a bit of a shame because whilst I have been out of work a decade I have managed to acquire a degree and almost my MA in that time. Is amazing what you can do at 2am when needs must. But a good part of my reason for work is that I need a break; I certainly won't be working harder, just differently (and for more than £59 a week!).

However when it is used by Tory types and older people to write anyone who needs state help off as lazy it's unfair. And if it upsets me imagine how it might feel to someone with a painful or life shortening disability!

It's the downside of Work Ethic: when you can't work, you really do start to loathe yourself for it at times.

Ah but you put a caveat in there about could be working

It doesn't have to be someone in paid employment.

Indeed. And that's fine, I guess; but this is a phrase hijacked for abusive use, in many cases at least.

Kellyelly: In the context I posted hard work is more than putting the hours in. It's all about perception I suppose, but a routine job without stress and responsibility just doesn't carry the same burden, I think.

That's true nomama, although paid employment is just one part of someone's life so they may well go home and care for their aged mother or whatever.

My last full time paid job was for a kid's charity, working with families under huge amounts of stress. In terms of physicality, it was nothing but emotionally it destroyed me for a long while, and that was hard slog. I enjoyed it, but hard.

I hate it.
But I have to admit, that if I'm honest, the reason I hate it so much is that I have not in fact worked hard all my life. For some of it I've worked quite an average amount (and I suspect that many of the people saying it have too).

ime the people who bang on about that most are idle feckers

The majority of people who say it are the much older generation I'm only 36 and I'm not entitled to say it!

My nana brought up 9 kids,
my papa was a drinker and gambler and would spend his wages on a Friday,my nana had to work or her kids would have lived on porridge!
She retired at 76 from her wee cleaning job, I'm pretty sure she can say she worked hard all her life!

I don't like it in the context bandied about as a justification for wastingspending money on over priced tat. 'I've worked hard all my life I deserve a handbag that costs £4000'. The insinuation being if only the poor plebs worked harder, we to could afford such things.
My dad worked from age 14 down a coal mine then on a coal hauling lorry until he was 64. He worked hard and still has no money to show for it.

I have it on good authority that for the first 6 months I didn't do a hand's turn.

LOL PerplexedPirate!
I didn't even help much with the washing up when I was a teenager.

Sorry Sanctimoanyarse (love the name), I included unpaid in my first post, just forgot to include it in my 2nd response.

I have never met anyone in my whole life that has a problem with that statement.

Depends on the context. Pensioner having worked fron school is fine but its only used to justify a period of not working nowadays. Quite often those on benefits claim they have worked all their life so are just taking some back out, when you work out there age and when they left school its usually very few years.

The University of Life, where you end up when you can't get into a real university! Or so a good friend of mine ended up saying when she got sick of people denigrating her academic achievements, presumably through some kind of envy or bitterness that theirs were not as good. Not that what they did had no value but they seemed to think that having no or few qualifications gave them the right to rip people who do to shreds.

There are some people who do work hard all of their lives and others who don't. I am firmly in the latter camp and think that hard work is overrated.

I have a very good standard of living and know plenty of people who work harder and have less than me.

Sometimes it is said in an arrogant way, i agree.

Sometimes it is defence because some people see you with anything more than baked beans and they start calling you 'lucky' and 'posh' so i suppose they go on the defensive mode.

Sometimes it is true. Like my brother who studied and worked all his life and he deserves his success.

I don't mind this phrase much. The one that winds me is 'i know about poverty, i have second hand car, blah blah' from people who have no idea about poverty.
Or when they say 'i saved hard' as in 'i didn't go to Bahamas every six months. You don't make 2m by switching to lidl, you made it because of the crazy rise in some London areas.

YANBU but what I hate even more is when well off people look down their noses on people on benefits or people in low paid jobs and say that they're where they are because they worked hard and deserve it. They may have worked hard, there may also have been a large amount of luck involved but it's the assumption that someone working in Tesco isn't working hard. Someone has to the low paid jobs and just because a person has a low paid job doesn't mean they aren't working just as hard (or harder) than the well off person.

Yabu....many people feel like they have and get practically zero back. Sounds like something my dad might say....he has worked really hard all his life is a wonderful person who has watched generations of lazy scroungers who let others and the state provide for their families.

I am, I guess, a baby boomer. I am 70. I have been divorced and widowed. I brought up two dc and I worked as a teacher for 30 years and I am lucky to have lived when I did. My generation had the best of times. Free university with grants for us and our children, affordable housing and plentiful employment were there for the taking. Now we own our house and have decent pensions. Between us we have 5 dc who also own their houses albeit with mortgages. All of them have children too and all are saving for the future. If you work hard all your life and have something to show at the end then good for you. Not everyone is that lucky but it doesn't minimise the achievements of those who are. As for houses if they are paid for then the owners have the right to live in them till they die when their dc will inherit.
My own parents lived in council houses. When they were infirm they moved to sheltered housing owned by the LA. They worked hard all their lives too and they deserved it. Life may be difficult for many and some will always struggle. It is hard to see others seemingly having it easy and rubbing your nose in your lack of privilege but criticising won't help at all.

Interesting point about the factory worker doing back breaking work, as opposed to sitting in an office tapping at a keyboard. I've done both.

I'm 48, and spent the first 22 years of my working life on a factory floor, doing a back breaking, repetitive job, sometimes working 12 hours a day (mainly for hols and nice things at home). Near the end of the 22 years I went to college in the evenings and did some computer qualifications, and landed an office job (admin and clerical job with the NHS). And I find it mentally challenging. Might not be on my feet as much, but my head hurts with the stress. I feel both job roles have their own challenges in different ways. But anyway.....

"But if they are saying "I have worked hard all my life " then that's fair enough, now if they were saying "I have worked harder than everyone else" then that's bang out of order".

Totally agreed, Rufus.