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AIBU?

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Original poster

Snowflakes picking cabbages

87 replies

Skustew · 05/02/2018 08:48

www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5351133/Eastern-Europeans-10-times-faster-farm-work-Brits.html#comments-5351133

Aibu to question the motives of this?

People that aren't used to manual work or working outdoors during winter are much slower on their first day compared to people that have been doing the job day in day out. I fail to see the actual story Hmm

The URL gives away the full story pretty much!

OP posts:
Slartybartfast · 05/02/2018 09:37

@kalapattar Grin

Slartybartfast · 05/02/2018 09:37

Perhaps they hate the farmers today?

TrollTheRespawnJeremy · 05/02/2018 09:38

As farmy types, the only local staff that we have are the ones that we inherited 15 years ago and they're invaluable and like family to us.

By and large, the younger locals who have worked with us have been rude, unwilling to do early starts, always looking for a skive, expect everything, call in sick willy nilly.

We have had no problem with European workers. They're great. The only problem is that you train them and they move up the ladder with more expertise and then they move back home.
The locals complain that they aren't promoted/aren't allowed to drive the tractor etc but they don't show the work ethic to be promoted and quit because they're not getting their own way.

We thought that our eco farm would be a great boon to the local village population because unemployment was so high. But no matter what we do they're just not interested.

There has definitely been exceptions to the rule either way- but this is the general state of things.

Hissy · 05/02/2018 09:38

Sorry I should of made it clearer the title was me trying to encapsulate a daily mail reader.

There are plenty of things you should have done. Read more? Read better? Read?

Tanith · 05/02/2018 09:41

I want to know how fast a journalist & a newspaper proprietor can pick cabbages.

They’d be far more usefully employed!

Original poster
Skustew · 05/02/2018 09:42

There are plenty of things you should have done. Read more? Read better? Read?

I will always have learning difficulties, but I'd still rather be me than a rude dick.

OP posts:
crunchymint · 05/02/2018 09:43

I have a nephew who works in a farm. He is very valued and a very hard worker,but he grew up doing farming work. And he now drives the tractor and does other more complex work. Has been brilliant actually as he has SN, and his parents really worried about him being able to get and keep a job.

ShowMeTheElf · 05/02/2018 09:44

The daily mail have put a slant on it because of who they are. The documentary showed a group of British volunteers who had a first hand taste of hard manual labour that they weren't used to and struggled, unsurprisingly, but stuck with it and met their quota in the end. If they kept it up they would get faster and fitter, as a pp said.
From the article the only snowflakey thing was someone saying that they couldn't manage for a single day without makeup...I'm sure they would get over that after a couple of freezing cold days in the outdoors.
Our local fruit farms employ a lot of migrant workers too: anyone can apply, and work a piece rates. All wages are made up to minimum wage, calculated daily, and those who still have to be supplemented by the end of one week are let go as the farms can't afford to pay them that rate for less work. My eldest lasted 3 days before realising they weren't going to make the minimum standard (it was a great life lesson though, akin to what those in the documentary will have had). I don't think that you are a snowflake for not being able to do hard manual labour at the same speed as someone who is used to it. Neither are the farmers greedy for wanting the best people for the job.

WaxOnFeckOff · 05/02/2018 09:48

Funnily enough DH and I were talking this weekend about the hard physical work that the population used to do. More specifically we were talking about coal mining and how miners would be dropped down and sometimes walk 3 miles, stooped over, underground before even getting started on hard physical graft all day and then doing it all back again to get out. Going home and living in poverty on top of that. Whilst I am aware that there are still hard physical jobs in the UK, they are much smaller in number than they used to be and the vast majority of people in this country wouldn't cope anymore.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 05/02/2018 09:49

These jobs will be forced upon the out of work feckless population who scrounge on benefits. They’ll be fine at it.

Absolutely! Serves the buggers right for living in areas of high unemployment, poor educational opportunities and shit housing, and being stupid enough to be born to parents that don't leave them massive inheritances.

They don't feel cold or pain the way real people like the rest of us do anyway. They aren't highly enough evolved.

Angry

(There's a part of Tess of the D'Urbervilles, where she is digging turnips in the icy rain and frost. It is heartbreaking. I swear I got frostbit just from reading it.)

WaxOnFeckOff · 05/02/2018 09:50

I mean wouldn't cope straight of the bat. Of course people would get fitter and faster.

kalapattar · 05/02/2018 09:52

Whilst I am aware that there are still hard physical jobs in the UK, they are much smaller in number than they used to be and the vast majority of people in this country wouldn't cope anymore

I think that's unfair. If people had to cope, then they would. The human body will do what it has to do to survive.

kalapattar · 05/02/2018 09:53

*wax

Sorry - just read your next line.

SchadenfreudePersonified · 05/02/2018 09:53

miners would be dropped down and sometimes walk 3 miles, stooped over, underground before even getting started on hard physical graft all day and then doing it all back again to get out.

AND - their working day didn't start until they were at the coalface.

crunchymint · 05/02/2018 09:55

Of course they would cope.But when you are unfit, it would be very hard at the beginning. Those miners were muscly and very fit.

kalapattar · 05/02/2018 09:57

And in the meantime, the wives were doing all the physical house work manually (or getting the servants to do it), or doing physical labour in the factories or the fields. And there was no welfare state.

Very different times. But a reality still for many people in the world.

crunchymint · 05/02/2018 10:00

I have to admit that I would not want to pick cabbages for a living. I would do it if I had to. But I know I am not fit enough and it would be hell at the beginning.

TheFairyCaravan · 05/02/2018 10:11

What a surprise! Experience workers work faster than inexperience workers. I don’t think any of us needed the BBC to do a program to prove that did we?

I’m sick of people calling the younger generation snowflakes.It makes them sound like a right dick. I’ve noticed it creeping in on MN a lot recently but if anyone dares say anything about pensioners ageism gets screeched from the rooftops and the post gets deleted. It should work both ways.

TerracottaAmy · 05/02/2018 10:12

I'm so tired of this "snowflake" description. Just another group of people to have a go at along with stay at home mums, work out of home mums, overweight people, pregnant people, people with bad dress sense etc etc etc - how about we all just support each other and stop criticising

Blackteadrinker77 · 05/02/2018 10:18

The endless circle of hate and ignorance...

Perfectly put

WaxOnFeckOff · 05/02/2018 10:21

I agree, I wasn't saying the wives weren't also doing hard labour but it was about a program DH had seen and the presenter tried the walk to the coal face and got less than half a mile before he had to turn back.

ShutYoFace · 05/02/2018 10:23

I don't think its about newbies being slower than experienced workers. I think its more about them not even trying, or being remotely interested in these jobs.
The industry is going to be destroyed by Brexit. Hope you are happy paying 4 times as much for a cabbage!

crunchymint · 05/02/2018 10:23

The reality is that young adults are used to being treated better than young adults in the past. That is largely a good thing. So jobs that many young people did in the past, they now won't do. I know I did jobs when I was a teenager that I doubt my younger relatives would do.

Soubriquet · 05/02/2018 10:23

I must say, I hear from a lot of manual labour managers, they prefer to hire people from EE rather than the UK because EE will generally work harder.

The youth of UK are prone to walk out at the drop of the hat and happy to rely on benefits. Not all of them true, but enough that the managers are choosing foreign over native born

Beetlejizz · 05/02/2018 10:25

It depends what you mean by 'cope' too. Humans are certainly capable of doing harder physical work than most British people do now, without it killing or doing too much short term damage to most of us. But it has an impact on people's long term health (which is not to say that a sedentary lifestyle doesn't cause problems too). Most of us could cope with picking cabbages in the freezing cold after we'd got used to it: that's not to say our backs won't go a couple of decades earlier than they might otherwise.