To think that SOME high earners don't work that hard?

[Usernamemcname]

I'm a domestic cleaner. The people I clean for are usually quite well off, five bedrooms in a posh suburb of an expensive city. They are often in whilst I clean, sometimes they come back whilst I'm here.
I see a lot and I know they are in quite high paid jobs. Yet they always seem to be 'working from home' also known as fannying about the kitchen a lot and playing X Box. A lot of them either start late (10am so they miss the traffic) and finish early. One dad picks his daughter up from school every day even though his wife is at home!
I was always told that you have to work hard to get what you want in life, so why do I have to work two jobs whilst my partner works 45+ hours and we just scrape by? What have these people done to be so lucky? They're not old, seem around my age, what jobs do they do and why can't I do them, I have a degree.
Life just seems unfair sometimes. Unless it's a doctor, I'm sure I could have a crack at it.

Some people work hard, some people don’t.

I know plenty of low paid workers don’t work particularly hard either. Being in construction, I see it all the time. E.g The digger driver who insists they will only do digger work and often that means, digging a bit then sitting for two hours til the next bit needs done, refusing to do any of the other work they are capable of doing but “isn’t my job mate”

And lots of high paid workers work hard too. I often work 50 or 60 hour weeks when deadlines are tight. The last deadline had me working 12 hour days for 3 weeks, including weekends. My mate works offshore. Earns an absolute mint but works bloody hard for it. Sweeping generalisations help no-one.

But we all know MN loves to have a go at higher earners, how dare they earn money.

@Pistols69 I’ve not seen a single person bragging. It’s a fact that plenty of people are high earners. I’m not overly interested in people posting about their husband’s 6 figure salaries (no offence to them, in just neutral about it) but I have a big old when women here mention their 6 figure salaries or business earnings. Love to see the balance changing. It’s nit bragging - good for them!

The hours a person puts in is a very simplistic way to look at how hard they works. I'd wager, too, that most of the folk that have a cleaner have kids and have hit that arc in their careers where the crazy hours are done. I have a cleaner. I'm sure she thinks much the same as me. I'm usually in my robe still when she gets here as DH does the school run on that day. I work 10 hours a week while my youngest is at nursery and make £60k because my hourly rate is really high. The value I bring is that I saved a major fuck up by the team that would have cost a good £10m to fix so no one thinks I'm high paid on my team! It's all relative to your industry and how much money is in it. I watched my mother took away as a teacher for decades and it nearly broke her. We went on holiday once. No way was that for me! But she absolutely worked harder than me in some ways. She shakes her head in disbelief when I take calls at 3am because that's when the fuck up fairy has visited Australia. I have a huge amount of freedom but I'm 20 years into my industry. If you applied for graduate schemes and didn't get any why do you think that was? What stopped you from continuing to apply while working in the cafe?

If you go into the NHS, unless you are going to be a consultant, you won't make much money. That's known and that is unfortunately taken advantage of - that people will do it for altruistic reasons.

Depends on what you consider ‘much money’ though, surely? I grew up in a poor area, on a council estate, and the default assumption was that you’d leave school and work retail on NMW. I spent the first decade of my working life on £10-13k. Now I work for the NHS, my role tops out around £44k, and I consider that to be excellent money (especially with a spouse earning similarly). Compared to many, many jobs, the NHS pays well for a lot of roles. I’ve never bought into the whole ‘NHS pays peanuts’ thing, and I’ve been an NHS employee for several years in roles from band 4 and above. Some of the lowest band jobs don’t pay well but neither do equivalent jobs outside of the NHS, someone doing a cleaning job or a very basic admin role is never going to be earning as much as someone in a job that requires a degree, professional qualifications (and annual fees!) etc.

I’m not overly interested in people posting about their husband’s 6 figure salaries (no offence to them, in just neutral about it) but I have a big old grin when women here mention their 6 figure salaries or business earnings. Love to see the balance changing. It’s nit bragging - good for them!

here here. It sucks that on MN a woman talking about her career, income or professional achievements is always looked down on as ‘bragging’, even though someone has started a thread specifically about that topic.

Someone always comes on moaning about people bragging on these threads.

As though you cant tell from the title what it's going to be about.

It bad for women to be told to shut up and not talk about their earnings, or be accused of bragging. Women talking about careers, how they achieved it's what they earn is a good thing

ellisandra

Excellent point, i agree completely

I think it’s all about skill if I’m honest.

Carers/cleaners/shop workers (and other low wage workers) are some of the hardest workers going! My parents worked day and night to put food on the table but these jobs (debatably) can be easily learnt/done by anyone who is enthusiastic and willing.

Take a cross section of 100 keen workers and 99 of them could do most minimum wage jobs. However, maybe 1/100 could perform life saving surgery or have an in depth enough understanding of global economics to consult for a multi nat law firm!

I work in an office as admin (just graduated) its ok pay but nothing special - I do consider myself reasonably bright 😂
My DH is a Dr (intensive care) and I recently tried to help him study for a professional exam. I learnt 2 things;

• I’m an utter moron in comparison.
• There is a level of maths/science that I honestly didn’t know existed.

But if I was on deaths door I’d want him treating me...not me! He frequently has days off during the week (due to working crazy long weekends) and is often in when our cleaners come- pottering around in the garden...etc I do wonder if they think the same! 😂🙈

I totally get the resentment that builds between low and high income workers but when I hear ‘I could do that’ I do often think ‘great well go on then’, train to do it, get the experience and redirect your life. I went to uni as a mature student - it is possible

I think you cant always see the work that goes in early on, but also alot of people dont recognise the privilege they have. My DH was at the very beginning of being a high earner and became disabled. He worked really hard to get the opportunities but he had the luck to be clever and have a good family support network, and he was healthy. I'm now the working parent and he is a SAHD. He's brilliant at it but we live on a fraction on what we would have had. I have the privilege of good health and a vocation so we live a nice life but with far less in material terms. We're really happy and the only thing I would change is to make DH well again, not the work or the money. Some people are lucky but just dont realise it because they worked really hard and cant see the privilege they've had at the beginning.

OTOH, isn’t saying how you’re not interested in the views of partners supporting higher earning spouses just another form of misogyny? I’ve not read a thread about high earners without someone sniping.

I think the thing people miss out of the whole "work hard=success" is intelligence and natural talent. Yes, it is stupendously unfair that some people are born smarter than others, but it's a fact. Obviously rich family/good education etc is just as important, but if you look at the folk who fight their way up from average backgrounds it's the clever ones.

isn’t saying how you’re not interested in the views of partners supporting higher earning spouses just another form of misogyny? I’ve not read a thread about high earners without someone sniping.

Genuinely interested to understand how this is misogyny? I find it rather sad when women come on threads to say they had children so early on that they never had a chance for a career but their DH has a super high flying one instead.

Women talking about careers, how they achieved it's what they earn is a good thing.

Not for quite a lot of people on MN unfortunately where so many seem to buy into the poverty is a virtue bollox and are convinced that anyone earning more than £25k is 'the elite'. Oh and of course for some reason there appears to be this belief that what nurses and teachers earn should be the benchmark by which all other salaries are measured .

If the OP wasn't being so coy about why she's working two low paid jobs despite having a degree and speaking two languages, posters just might be able to give some practical advice.

Don't forget that a lot of high earners depend on the unpaid or underpaid work of others. Like all these high-flyer DPs whose wives have been making their lives easier for years: looking after the children, doing all the domestic work, not being able to put in long career-building hours. If they are lucky, the man acknowledges their contribution and shares the proceeds, but if they are unlucky, the man replaces them with a younger woman and they are left with very little money and few prospects of earning much due to having been out of the workforce.
And then there's all those CEOs who have earned their bonuses by holding down the wages of their employees and building a company culture of unpaid overtime every week...

If you go into the NHS, unless you are going to be a consultant, you won't make much money. That's known and that is unfortunately taken advantage of - that people will do it for altruistic reasons.
Simply not true.
Many consultants, in fields where there is limited private work additional income, don’t earn that much by comparison to others in NHS. Most NHS trusts have at least one higher earning nurse, a higher earning company secretary, higher earning finance and IT bods, a higher earning pharmacist and a few others besides.

Medium c.£80k - you might see me feet under my bum on the sofa seemingly scooting on my phone with the tv on in the background. I've been there since 7am - working. On the phone 7-8.30am then doing the follow up. I've been on that sofa all day. Apart from loading the washing machine and making a coffee or two. I'll still be there at 7pm. At 7pm I'll be on the phone til about 8.30pm. The tv is on a particular American programme that I've watched every series of over and over and their familiarity reminds me of the colleagues I never see. I lie awake worrying about work some nights.
But to you, I'm on the sofa dicking about on my phone. Doing nothing. 🙄 My 13 hour days under house arrest don't count as work because I'm not digging or scrubbing.

Britain has appalling social mobility, though. Coupled with the fact that around 50% of the judiciary, politicians, and media is in the hands of the 7% of the population that was privately educated. It’s anything but a meritocracy in any meaningful sense of the word. I don’t have many answers, but I’d probably start by scrapping the Royal Family as they embody the concept of pointless, undeserved privilege and encourage people to stop voting Tory to stop making a bad situation worse. That’s the easy bit, the rest is a lot harder!

YANBU - I’m very lucky and am now a high earner and I have never worked so little. I appreciate life is very easy for me and I’m not really entitled to it.

If the OP wasn't being so coy about why she's working two low paid jobs despite having a degree and speaking two languages, posters just might be able to give some practical advice.

I asked on pg 2 what her degree subject was and what jobs she has been applying for, but unless I missed it she hasn’t answered, so it’s hard to offer advice as to why ‘they’ are in high-paid, cushy jobs but she isn’t.

So I guess this thread is primarily an ‘it’s not fair’ whinge, rather than a request for practical advice.

I heard somebody say once that if hard work paid then African women would be the richest people in the world.

Anyone making a decent wage, decent enough to be free from financial worry is extremely fortunate. For virtually all of human history such a state was unachievable, and it is still virtually unachievable for a massive chunk of the world’s population. Without the blood, sweat and painstakingly achieved knowledge of countless previous generations we’d all still be in the mud plowing a small bit of earth and praying for a passable harvest. I always consider this when casting my vote!

My jobs:
babysitter
washing glasses in the pub
Bar maid
Waitress
Care assistant
receptionist
Shop assistant
factory line worker - packing bog brushes in boxes
low level management
middle management
Now senior exec management

Physically hardest was care assistant in a nursing home,
mindless was bog brushes
fun was bar maid
work life vs monies - middle management
financial - senior exec

Noone gets to big monies without some effort along the way!

My job can be stressful and I was put at risk of redundancy this year which brought all the stress of the unknown.

When I went back after mat leave I had a nightmare trying to claw back the credibility and responsibility I had before. With a new manager.

But years down the line, I still work for that same manager, in a different role. And am completely and utterly trusted to do my job whenever or wherever. This might mean I spend two weeks solidly working from home, I do condensed hours so am part time but paid nearly full time, I'm well paid for my grade.

From the outside it's easy to see how someone could dismiss me as not working hard as I'm often able to fit appointments in and am at home. But appearances can be deceptive outside of a traditional structured work set up. I know I'm lucky but I also know the company gets their pound of flesh.

I have friends in minimum wage jobs who wouldn't be prepared to travel, be on call 24/7 for a week or two a month, take calls at 5am, stay in the office until midnight, meet a deadline at 2am.... its swings and roundabouts.

They don't work that hard, but they run the system. Many of the high earners would never handle the hard work of cleaning, factory work, looking after small children at a nursery etc. etc. They are also completely non-plussed if you try to explain to them that their highly paid work might not actually be as valuable as some lower paid jobs.

I would say that as I’ve risen through ranks I now earn more and have more responsibility and the stress that comes with it but I don’t work as ‘hard’ as I have done previously. In more junior roles I was crazy busy but didn’t have the stress of decisions to be made that affected other people.
As others have said it’s not just hard work that pays, it’s skill, experience, responsibility.