AIBU about people who say ‘they worked hard to get to where they are’?

[MessyMissyMe]

Generally these are highly paid people who were able to go to University (support from parents/inherited intellect/confidence and self belief built up by secure, happy childhood) or had the resources to start their own business and were lucky enough to get remunerated by employment that they enjoyed and were good at, didn’t have outside influences or stressors that made things harder/took up time they needed to study or build a career.

They basically are just LUCKY and don’t deserve their success anymore than a cleaner or a care worker living hand to mouth in social housing deserves their lack of.

AIBU to get annoyed at people who say this?

Successful people are rarely down to luck but years of consistent (not necessarily hard, but consistent) work.

The harder you work the luckier you become.
True some people have less challenges.

@Pootle40

Interesting.

I was raised in a single parent / disabled / below poverty line household. I didn't go to university. I now have a £70k job where almost all peers went to university. So yeah hard work got me where I am.

No. Hard work was a factor.

You could equally argue that anyone born in England has basically won the lottery of life in comparison with those in Yemen or Afghanistan.

Malcolm Gladwell writes about this in Outliers. I found it so interesting and it has slightly changed how I approach parenting.

Why would you assume "I worked hard." meant anything more than "I worked hard." though? Is there a context that hasn't been expressed?
Because on here at least it’s often a chippy defence from the ones with two homes, or are being a bit tight-fisted, and it comes across bleaty: “But I worked hard for this!” with a clear implication of “and that poor person didn’t”.

The reality is if you work your behind off in public service - nursing, teaching, prison service, police etc you will never be well off. Yet these are the people we all need to perform well to keep us and our children safe and well.

I've worked since I was 12 years old I was not only the first in my family to go to University I was the first in my village I worked evenings and weekends as my Dad didn't see why I shouldn't pay keep whilst doing A levels. I lived in squats and slums to get by. I saved hard often working 2 jobs I never had holidays or nice cars and clothes. My phone was incoming calls only and my TV a tiny black and white one.
I bought my first house with interest rates at 17%. I've watched every penny survived homelessness, domestic abuse, single parenthood and severe ill health. I've gone without to make sure my mortgage was cleared by the time I was 55. My current financial security comes from hard work, good choices and sacrifices. I'm happy to pay my taxes for the NHS, for the benefits safety net etc but your bitterness is ill founded imo. Jealousy will only hold you back on life as long as you believe that it's luck and only luck you'll have no motivation to graft. If you want to buy start saving and move somewhere cheaper like the rest of us. If you're not happy at work then retrain.

You have social stability free education and health care - but you need to pick that advantage up and run with it. Why immigrants often very successful.

There is a chance that working hard without luck will not make you successful. But it’s guaranteed that without hard work, there is no success. So you cannot just look at other people and say they ‘just’ got lucky.

@StoneofDestiny

The reality is if you work your behind off in public service - nursing, teaching, prison service, police etc you will never be well off. Yet these are the people we all need to perform well to keep us and our children safe and well.

No ones forcing people to do these jobs. If no one did them, pay would be higher.

YABVU.

People aren't often 'lucky' they usually have to work really hard for years to be in a position to take advantage of all that so called luck.

I know a woman who ran away from school before taking her A levels, was a teenaged single parent working a shitty job, had another kid & lived in a council house where she looked set to stay forever - she always worked, never signed on.

She worked her full time job, looked after her kids, got in one terrible relationship with a money grabbing man after another who left her in massive debt then turned her life around completely over about 5 years.

Got a different job, started to study while working full time & being a single parent & in the end completed a degree, sometimes working a second job to help cover the bills eventually got a better job, then a better one & is now loaded.

People all say to her "Oh you are so lucky" now she owns her own house & takes multiple holidays a year and is debt free.

It's bollocks.
The things they think are luck she worked her arse off to be able to do with no real help at all.
No family funding her, no partner (or financial contribution from either of the fathers of her children)

In my personal experience, I've most often heard this phrase from people who thing anyone claiming benefits of any type - whether working or not - are 'workshy layabouts' or 'deadbeats'. This type of person will also talk about people 'having kids they can't afford' and go on about immigrants as if they think I might, somehow inexplicably, be interested in their small-minded, xenophobic opinions and repetitive regurgitation of well-worn right wing media tropes.

@legoriakelne

I do think pretty much anyone with enough grit and ambition can get to anywhere they want to.

Of course you do. Because that is how you reconcile your life experiences to yourself and feel secure.

It's still incorrect.

By your logic trafficking victims who cannot escape brought it on themselves and the Afghan women who have just been blocked from education, employment and governance all aren't trying hard enough. Disabled people in the UK living in poverty because their care fees exceed their income are just lazy. People who die from cancer instead of going into remission were too negative.

If only they were all more like you the world would be a better place ...

Our society's structure is a pyramid. It literally cannot accommodate everybody being given resources and status in exchange for their grit and determination, never mind all the other factors as to why your silly statement is false. You can only have a tiny number of people rise to the top, otherwise who does all the grunt work beneath them or buys their services? If all the warehouse cleaners rise to the top of the business who is cleaning the warehouse?

This. And this is why I would never poke fun at anyone in a so-called ‘dead end manual job’. Covid has shown us we need them a lot more than they need a business consultant or something with an equally wanky sounding title.

I think enjoying feeling superior over anybody in such a job shows a lack of class.

@Tabitha005

In my personal experience, I've most often heard this phrase from people who thing anyone claiming benefits of any type - whether working or not - are 'workshy layabouts' or 'deadbeats'. This type of person will also talk about people 'having kids they can't afford' and go on about immigrants as if they think I might, somehow inexplicably, be interested in their small-minded, xenophobic opinions and repetitive regurgitation of well-worn right wing media tropes.

So you don’t believe in hard work at all? You don’t believe in some people making more effort than others? Do you think people just accidentally do a days work on autopilot with their limbs acting involuntarily? That they make no conscious choice to put the effort in? What a bizarre attitude.

Willing to say i dossed for years, drank, took drugs unemployment etc, got some luck with some writing and crafting early 30s and do ok out of it so i can do 24 hour weeks in day job.

Such a generalisation there OP. I went to university and worked hard to get a hard degree (long course, and yes I studied hard). My first few jobs weren’t well paid but we saved hard and managed to buy a house. We also bought into a business, in the days of 17% interest rates, so business loans were 19%. We have had some very hard years, and have not given ourselves a pay rise for 15 years or so. I also went back to work part time when my children were only a few weeks old as we needed the income.

We are now finally reaping the rewards, owning a business that is worth quite a lot of money. But we have both given it our all and hopefully we will enjoy any healthy and long retirement before too long.

@Snugglepumpkin

YABVU.

People aren't often 'lucky' they usually have to work really hard for years to be in a position to take advantage of all that so called luck.

I know a woman who ran away from school before taking her A levels, was a teenaged single parent working a shitty job, had another kid & lived in a council house where she looked set to stay forever - she always worked, never signed on.

She worked her full time job, looked after her kids, got in one terrible relationship with a money grabbing man after another who left her in massive debt then turned her life around completely over about 5 years.

Got a different job, started to study while working full time & being a single parent & in the end completed a degree, sometimes working a second job to help cover the bills eventually got a better job, then a better one & is now loaded.

People all say to her "Oh you are so lucky" now she owns her own house & takes multiple holidays a year and is debt free.

It's bollocks.
The things they think are luck she worked her arse off to be able to do with no real help at all.
No family funding her, no partner (or financial contribution from either of the fathers of her children)

... but does she trot out the 'I worked hard to get where I am' phrase? For me, it's always very telling when someone wants to punch that fact through a wall as though it's a sort of measure of their great worth as a human being compared to the apparent lesser worth of someone else who they feel hasn't worked as 'hard'. There are plenty of people who work extremely hard for everything they've achieved.... but they don't have to use a cliched soundbite at every opportunity like some kind of badge of honour.

There are also plenty of people who'd love to have the opportunity to 'work hard', but have been prevented from doing so by illness or disability or accident. I know a partially-sighted woman who is desperate for a fulfilling job and has been trying to find work for years. She'd make a brilliant asset to any employer, but hasn't been able to gain employment in anything other than call centres - the workplace where happiness goes to die. She's demoralised and frustrated and yet she's never said anything along the lines of; 'If only I could work harder, I'd get where I want to be'.

Media narratives where its all 'i worked in a shitty shop but now im famous' wind me right. Read some shite earlier where some south African music woman 'had' to work part time in rough trade records before fame, poor love.

@Glasstabletop

No.

I worked really hard to get where I am against some pretty shitty odds.

I was also incredibly lucky. When people hear about my background I often get comments on how hard I have worked etc etc. It fucks me off no end.

As if my friends who ended up dead or addicts or in dead end jobs just didn't have the gumption to pull themselves up, no they just were not as fucking lucky as I am.

I know people who work way harder than me by every metric and have fuck all to show for it.

I agree with this.

I think a mixture of work with quite a bit of luck thrown in. Luck starts with the country you were born. Luck continues with the family you were born into (I don't necessarily mean wealth). Housing and early education depend in the main on luck due to your family background. So it goes on.

It's easy for a person with many lucky breaks to chat about hard work but not accurate.

I don't think it's either really.

I stated a dead end job, saw what other people in the company were doing who earned well and set out to do that. Didn't go to uni.

I earn more now than what my friends do who went to university.

Lucky I'm in good health. Lucky my family is.

Graft has been the rest of it and a clear goal.

I'm wrapping it all in shortly to re train.

It doesn't make me happy each day and I'm at an age where I want to be happy in my career. Not just chasing the money day in day out.

YABU. My dad came from a working class family, left school with no qualifications and never went to uni, was a dad to 3 at 19, he now has 3 successful businesses, mortgage free house etc (he’s 50) and he worked fucking hard to get where he is today, working sometimes 3 jobs, 7 day weeks and long tiring hours to save enough money and still afford to live and pay for his children, making sacrifices, no luck involved just hard work.

Yabu, I know plenty of people that have been to university and got good careers that have had a huge amount of bad luck in their lives. Even when I think of people who seem to live charmed lives, I’m not small minded enough to think that those people have never had to show resilience or overcome their own personal struggles.

Those people that bang on about wanting successful people to acknowledge their luck should probably also acknowledge how many people waste opportunities that they are given, and accept that actually, not every adult can be arsed to work hard.

I think phrasing the question like that will result in a slew of people rushing tell you how hard they worked to get where they are. Everyone likes to think they are where they are because of their especial virtues. The fact is, there probably isn't that huge a variation in how hard most of the haves work compared to the have nots. There's only so many hours in a day after all. A better question might be why do people assume less successful people are less hardworking than them, rather than just less lucky.

@SkinnyMirror

It's a combination of luck and hard work.

However, I've seen threads like this before and there are some people who take great offence at the suggestion that luck has played any part in their success!!

I always found that the harder I worked, the luckier I became.
We were a working class family with parents who both valued learning and we were able to go to a grammar school before the politics of envy got rid of them because they were successful, rather than making the rest of the tri-partite system work.