To think that if working full time still equal grinding humiliating poverty then crime is not only to be expected, it is to be welcomed as a sensible career choice.

[scaryclown]

I.e. when conforming perfectly to the system gets you nothing at all, then it is your duty to take things from the system..
?

WHat I did find amazing the other night is that I went to a late night supermarket - tescos I think - and had this weird feeling of what someone from another planet or time would think - 'so there's aisles and aisles of food and drink, wonderful potions and delights that the poor can walk around, touch and feel and even pick up, but if they consume any, any at all, or try to leave with any, they will punished and humiliated and not allowed to visit this temple again?'

unnecessary food and drink too - that is not being used by anyone..

Okay so let us help you and I don't mean by sending cash.
Do you have children?
I think you said not and that you don't have enough time or money to date so that makes things much much easier.

Second thing can you get a second job? I earn a fair bit. Quite often even with small children we both had a weekend as well as week day job. It's very hard work but necessary for some of us to make ends meet.

You won't want to give identifying detail away but where roughly do you live - North, NW, South Coast, Midlands? I just need a feel for whether you are in an area where there might be good second jobs to top up the income.

If you are a single person living alone do you live on a full time minimum wage from which you pay rent on a room in a shared house for example? Knowing if you receive housing benefit or other benefits is necessary as it could affect the economics of taking the second weekend job.

By the way eating just two meals a day and no snacks is pretty good for you and I only drink tap water.

All these facts will help us help you.

By the way if you have friends who make silly comments about why don't you pay for a car to be serviced they are living on another planet! I am not badly off but I certainly don't get the car serviced and waste money on non essentials such as those you mention the friends mentioned higher up on the thread.

It would also help to know roughly what qualifications you have eg A levels or a degree or whatever.

OP has a very valid and important point about the way poor people are screwed over and over by society when it comes to payments. Utility meters, council tax, tv license , all
Unfairly penalising the poor

OP, I was judging you harshly before, but while I still disagree with much of the things you've said (even in jest), and I still think you have over-reacted to very reasonable comments on here, I have been thinking back to my own thought patterns when hungry.
It sounds daft, but when hungry many of us do not think straight.

How rude you come across OP. For all your supposed education you have no manners and a seriously unhinged attitude to life.

This thread is a massive wind-up.

No, it's really not.
I find it sad to see people on here with so little empathy that they refuse to believe there are people who once they fall onto that hamster wheel of playing catch up so to speak, will be forevermore (barring a lottery win) doomed to run like hell and find they are not even standing still.
I use everything to destruction. Have no sky and just use catch up. Broadband I need for my job, so can't ditch that. Phones are pay as you go. Any jewellery or heirlooms I had are long gone. People often say oh just eBay things and you will be fine. Well eventually you do run out of things to sell and if your situation hasn't improved, then what? There are food banks and while they have relaxed their limit of 3 visits, they do still have a finite limit.
I see here a lot of the attitude of deserving and undeserving poor. If someone comes on here cap in hand and wringing their hands. They are given support, even when it is clear there is nothing left they can sell or any other resource they can access. However, god help you if you get angry at the situation, acknowledge your helpless position, rage against the blind disbelief you encounter and rant about it, considering in your own rhetoric behaving like a member of the undeserving poor..
Once everything has been cut to the bone and you truly have nothing left, you aren't just going to lay down in the gutter and die. You will instead do whatever is necessary to survive and that includes breaking the law. Morals are very easy to stick to when your belly is full and you are nice and warm. At the very least you will access the black market where someone else has stolen the items you buy even if you do not steal yourself.

I agree - its very weird that you can physically see poverty in huge swathes, see homelessness on the streets increasing, hear about foodbank use skyrocketing, see foodbank collections popping up in every supermarket, hear that employers are paying below minimum wage and being prosecuted for it and then when someone says 'oh that's happening to me' its all 'well you must have done something to deserve it' and 'this is a wind-up' etc etc etc. Its an absolute masterclass in delusion!

The thing that's sad in my case is that my potential contribution level is very high, and also that I am aware of it, so it magnifies how ridiculous it is, as well as my logic seeing it both as preventable, but also just senseless - why we have a productivity problem, but also a system that can allow really capable people to be acting virtually as poor schoolkids in terms of how much we say society wants to pay and use them - its really ridiculous.

Of course the people who aren't as capable but have managed to get paid more are going to want to eject people like that from the workplace I suppose, but that still doesn't make it sensible, or reasonable that I shouldn't be angry. The problem I have is that I have one life, and that's it, and its being spent propping up bad businesses with bad managers who really don't deserve propping up, and agreeing with systems that aren't doing anything for me at all - I can't even go on a wee day trip so I'm trapped in a crap town with crap people when I know that given a go I can out perform city executives.. I just can't get the permission to give it a go, because they think I cant do it because I'm poor. Its totally mental.

But back to the original point, the overwhelming drive to take money when being good and subservient gets you nothing is palpable, and logical and ethical even - if I were watching my life in a film and there was a heist that stole money I would be rooting for me, and people like me, not crap people who manage to keep their jobs by not allowing good people to play with the ball. Sometimes you have to take the ball.. Would someone like David Beckham playing in a club where no-one passed him the ball damn well take it and score? YEs he bloody would,

Anyway, luckily the roasting hasn't been worse than being really poor already feels.

The thing is that all I have wanted for about 6 years has been a job where I can just work, eat, sleep and feel a bit less precarious, so that I can build a bit of savings and reach for where I think I should be, but I can't get even a tiny bit of that, and its been 6 years without going to the theatre, having a TV, eating properly, going to see a band, dating, anything- its like retiring on state pension in what should be my most financially and family productive years.. its really really horrible. I find myself bullied or fired all the time, and I just want to go 'hi' to nice people, do the job well and go home, but noone will let me, and I'm living like the 'broken biscuit' kids from school despite being a prize winning student and really really highly capable - I've interviewed some big media types in the past and got them really pinned down on issues, and other things, so its sooo odd to be finding it impossible to eat properly. I can TOTALLY see how people hold up banks and steal 1000s off wealthy pensioners, or embezzle funds off employers who treat them like shit, but can't manage their money... etc etc.. so the question is, how low do I personally, or others generally need to go with this one life before they say' fuck this, give me it'

I am solutions person hence my questions above.
I don't go to the theatre - it's very expensive or see bands.

The bottom line to your very interesting questions is that if people do steal they get locked up so that tends not to be a good route to go down and it is most likely to backfire on you not the rest of us.

So better to think of solutions - a weekend job or a better job, particularly moving if you can't get high paid work where you are (as I think you have no children moving could be done) or a job which is live in with food provided and board.

Yes, thinking of solutions isn't hard, its the getting others to join in with them/let me. I am applying for loads of jobs, people won't give me them no matter how much I want/need them. moving isn't an option as a. um I can't afford it, and b. my living expenses are so low here, moving will definitely increase them. c. I am actually workoing on a food provided accom provided job, but will still have stuff, so not sure if it has any advantages - problem is its a 2 year fixed contract, so I will be another 2 years doing something which takes me away from doing the things I am going mental about not being able to do because I have no money like have a family or relationship.

THe issue is, I keep doing crap jobs to feel safe whilst I can develop moves to a job more commensurate with my ability, but whilst others seem to get crap jobs where they are treated like a human and can just do them indefinitely, I do ones where I am either forced to leave by someone who is threatened by me, just because I am doing the job, or am made to feel so uncomfortable it damages the rest of my life. I long for a 'hi ya how are you today' type job but I just get 'you're a bitch, do that, do this' type jobs, so I am always stressed out, hate my life and feel miserable at weekends - which would be fine if I were getting £500 a week, but I'm getting like slave wages. .its totally silly. I just want to quietly live, so I can get sorted, but I get fucked over continuously.

The wealthy kids solution is to do nothing and retrain, or parents pay bills for a year, and daughter gets a £50k job and gives back to the family. My family is poor on mum's side, but dad is mega selfish and happily goes on holidays, buys land, new cars etc whilst saying 'you need to learn how to work' to me. Sensible families seem to help offspring be rich and contribute to family wealth and happiness. My family seem to be of the ilk of some posters above 'you are not real until everything's shit for you, but we don't apply that thinking to us' (my dad's new wife is a total daily mail reading 'youth are all stupid and wasters' type person).

I get where you're coming from op. I guess we live in the real world. It's shit though.

Crime should be punished in a civil and just society. But we live in a divide and rule society, where the real profiteering criminals run it by proxi. The law abiding citizens pay the price, and even maintain the status quo.

I see some of the points raised on the thread. Like the aliens looking in aspect.

I think people are going to get very fed up if they are getting less and less for more work. But it does baffle me how they don't mind people like George Osborne earning silly amounts for little work and footballers earning 300,000 a week for kicking a ball. Bizarre that in such inequality the bottom of the pile are the target.

I reckon 60 hour weeks will soon become the norm. Retiring at 75. That's if you're rich.

I've been aware for a fair few years that whilst they used to pay more for people working nights, they haven't done for agency staff for a fair few years.

Surely with your experience OP you can look to get a job elsewhere, that pays properly and doesn't mess you about?

Also were you to have children you'd get CB, CTC, WTC, so your income would be a lot higher. I think for people earning low wages you get quite a bit from tax credits, £65 for the child element, way over £100 for the working element. There's a calculator you can use, you just need to figure out weekly payments from the lump sum.

There's a chance as a single person you're entitled to tax credits & housing benefit. I think it's if you get the working element you get an NHS exemption card, so dentists, prescriptions etc are free.

I wish I was able to make your situation better, in my mind check your eligibility for benefits, then look at getting another job with an employer that doesn't mess you about. Or if you have a dream job, consider retraining.

I truly believe that we as a society have the ability to make a better future. If we make that our goal. Constant improvement.

So your employer pays for accommodation and meals?

A lot of people who have parents that could help, don't receive anything extra as the school of thought is, you have to learn to cut your coat according to your cloth. In extreme situations parents might step in, but I wouldn't feel like you're hard done to because your Father won't give you pocket money in adulthood.

If you were to retrain you'd get student loans and bursaries, but if you are able bodied, it's expected that you will get a part time job for extra money.

It's not looking at your situation and then looking next door, who hypothetically have major holidays abroad, weekend breaks, nice flash car. They wear designer clothes, go to the salon every week to have hair treatments, beauty treatments. Thinking I want that, I can't have that, so I'm going to have to rob a bank.

Work honestly sounds awful if I'm honest, you're applying for jobs, getting no where. Your life outside of work is what you make of it though. That's important to remember. Also I'd consider noting down grievances and contacting ACAS to make sure everything is right and above board.

You sound very angry at life, angry at your job, angry at your Dad for not helping. You need to work out a plan to make it better. Whether that be college in the evenings, volunteering to get experience when you're not working. You've got to figure out how to sort this out by yourself.

Life is never what you dream it to be, it's what you make it.

I'm reading the thread a bit more, it can't be the case where a succession of jobs have led to the same treatment by different staff. I know what you're talking about as I've experienced it a few times in my career. But you learn, ok you can do better than everyone else, but maybe rather than achieving double your KPI, work to the same level as others.

I don't know the answer to your dilemma, but I know the answer isn't crime.

If things are that bad, you need to really figure out how to change the outcomes to your goals, in a legal way.

It's ok saying I'm super clever, I could do open heart surgery better than any surgeon. At some point you haven't applied yourself and your abilities, thus you're stuck where you are now. That is probably what your Dad is stuck on. DD could have been this & that, how did she get to where she is today?

Sadly the problem is when i do apply myself i outperform people, and they hate it and damage me.

It sounds like your main desire is to be in better paid work. You say you don't have the money to move. Some jobs will pay your transport both to interviews and to the job itself. Even if you just do a season working in a holiday resort it might give you a bit of a break and a chance to think about what you do whilst accommodation and food is provided. You would not then be rooting around for the cheapest things in the supermarket.

If you live in a deprived area it can be harder to get second jobs as the people around do not have much money so tend not to be able to pay for things elsewhere.
Do you have qualifications such as A levels, GCSEs or a degree?

Work on your people skills.

You are saying that everyone always turns against you because you are good at your job; they always block you from going into management training. That does smack of you having poor interpersonal skills.

I have worked with many people who are great at their jobs but my god they should never be managers, they have awful relationships with colleagues, cannot do the people thing at all.

Now, I'm pretty sure you are going to tell me I'm totally wrong. They are all assholes. You are brilliant. However I refer you this well known saying...

If it were just one job, you'd have a point but with several words speak for themselves.

If you are as good as you claim, you'd be applying for higher level jobs in the first instance.

It's true, there's only one bad minimum wage employer in Britain, with one workteam. My bad.