We work hard.

[Meili04]

I keep seeing this on threads about Middle income families having to make cutbacks. The hardest job I ever had was when I worked in a care home as a care assistant doing 12.5 hour shifts for minimum wage. I now do a different job I have more paperwork to do and responsibility but I earn lots more and it's less tiring work. Same with my OH he works from home and his work is a lot less hard then it was when he started out and gets more pay.

AIBU to think if you are earning more money sometimes it's down to luck/personality/ rare skills more so than simply working hard?

I would like to see one example of a manager being jailed that wasn't a very clear case of managerial criminal and willful neglect.

Then you weren't taking your responsibilities as a carer seriously.

Getting someone dressed can cause hideous skin tears. A tiny bit of pressure can cause bruising, you can be prosecuted if you don't do your job properly, people can die from being given wrong medication. If someone dies and you made a clerical error you can end up in court.

Try being asked the same question on a loop for four hours straight with no respite for mentally draining.

I could go on, and on, and on...

The vast majority of high paid managers are not in that position
Oh they are, they really are, but as you say, it doesn't happen often because training us given, but managing the risk is a huge part of being a senior manager.

Surely there’s a range on both sides of this. Some minimum wage jobs are hard and some are easier, same for higher paid jobs. However I put a lot of work in to my career, doing an intense 4 year degree (and working in the holidays to pay for it), putting in long hours and taking on extra responsibilities so that I could progress.

I've done minimum wage jobs in the past and whilst tiring from long and physical shifts they definitely weren’t as hard as the higher paid office job I’m in now as they weren’t very mentally draining and I could switch off after the shifts finished. I sometimes dream of going back to those jobs if I’ve had a particularly stressful week, I wouldn’t though as I want the money.

I would like to see one example of a manager being jailed that wasn't a very clear case of managerial criminal and willful neglect
My uncle, years ago. He was a site director. All staff had received training about security, wearing correct boots, helmets etc...one guy decided to go up a ladder without his helmet, fell and horribly passed away. My uncle was made responsible, even though witnesses said that the guy was told to wear it and he said he would only be a few seconds. All because the supervisor had called in sick and my uncle was deemed responsible for not ensuring cover that afternoon. He got 3 years, thankfully not served in prison.

Thankfully it happens much more rarely now because manager do spend a lot of their time assessing risks and ensuring incidents and accidents don't happen.

Getting someone dressed can cause hideous skin tears. A tiny bit of pressure can cause bruising, you can be prosecuted if you don't do your job properly, people can die from being given wrong medication. If someone dies and you made a clerical error you can end up in court
But that's the point, if you follow what you are told and trained to do, things won't happen. If you make a big mistake and you've been perfectly trained, but somehow your training was a month late because the trainer cancelled, it's your boss that will be deemed responsible.

As a manager, you accept responsibilities and risks that can be beyond your control and blamed for incidents that are really not your doing. That's normal, that's the role of a manager but the reason why you are paid more.

No, not for a staff member making a mistake. Managers are only criminally liable for their own mistakes and only if they have gone rogue and not acting under the direction of their managers.

In most scenarios the worst that can happen is a corporate manslaughter case in which the company is prosecuted and if guilty of negligence (very hard to prove), fined by the courts for compensation for the victims’ families. The manager involved may be sacked (and often have a severance package known generally as a “golden parachute”) , but so too are the staff members but they don’t get a golden parachute…

YANBU. I am a lawyer. Piece of piss compared to being a Carer.

Executive stress is nothing compared to actual poverty.

I think it's like an incantation, reassuring people they are worthy of what they have,but more importantly,that they are in control and outside forces can't turn their life upside down:like illness or disability

Sometimes

Sometimes its a different kind of "work".

Sometimes its that hardly anyone simply has the mental ability to do what needs doing, and therefore they can demand high pay. In this case the luck is having the mental ability for tasks that our economy attributes financial value to.

I am in that bucket currently. I don't work long hours. There's nothing physically demanding about my job. I don't deal with difficult people or disgusting stuff. But sometimes its so mentally hard, that getting my head around it is a total brain fuck. Its complex, subjective, and cross disciplinary.

All i do is individually negotiate the best pay i can for myself. The shortage of people able to do what i can, combined with the financial value associated with it, mean i can negotiate a high pay (6 figs).

Yeah it’s true ! I worked in retail and restaurants for years.
it was low pay and bloody exhausting

my current Job is really well paid - it’s fast paced and hard and sometimes involves working late in the evening and overtime etc but I get to sit down all day at a desk and drink coffee and go to the gym on my lunch break. It’s definitely not as hard as other jobs I’ve had

I've also done a 4 year integrated masters degree. I would not say doing a dissertation was as tiring as washing/bathing /feeding/changing /repositioning 15 people on my own.

Hmm I think middle earners generally have had to work hard at things like their exams, hard at getting seen within their careers, worked long hours to get a decent career carved out. I don't know anyone in my fields who just walked into an above average paid job.

In a minority are those that come from privileged homes that had parents who set their course very early for them and accommodated their success but they are not middle earners.
I know I worked bloody hard and made sacrifices that aren't for everyone (abortion as needed to complete exams) delayed having dc until I'd established my career, got married before dc as believe two earners are better than one, the minute my dh became abusive I made changes in my life to turn that around, I didn't recognise it but I knew it wasn't right and researched on the web what I could do about it and actually made a change.

Lived in a hovel renting as cheap as possible and wore the same clothes Monday to Friday for 4 years to save for a deposit on a house. Was laughed at a lot for this. Moved jobs regularly to help get payrises between payrises, something that takes a lot of energy to do!
Bought mainly second hand clothes (still do this)
Regularly ate little and worked extremely long hours, again this is where delaying dc helped a lot.

I'd say in a vast majority of cases, those that don't earn well and have grown up in the U.K. and gone to school here (and are not disabled or become disabled in any way) have made some bad choices along the way.

Bad choices or different ones?

That's the attitude that I disagree with, I'm actually not that unhappy with my life as it stands, I have made different choices, I'm where I am, and I don't resent that, what I resent is the notion I made bad choices because I haven't achieved what you have. (Broadly speaking).

I have however worked hard to overcome different challenges to yours and do consider that I have achieved more than I would have had I not done that. But because I'm not where you are doesn't mean I have automatically made bad choices. There are very likely completely different circumstances and challenges at play for both of us. That doesn't mean I haven't worked just as hard as you, or you haven't worked just as hard as me.

I often think the reason that people respond with comments about luck, privilege etc is in response to the attitude that if you haven't achieved what someone else has it's because you've done something wrong. That financial achievement is the only yardstick by which to measure the whole person.

I may well have contributed far more towards society with the jobs I have done than you have (I'm not saying that's an absolute, just a possibility) but because I haven't earned as much (and by extension I find the implication of not having paid as much tax) then I am somehow lacking as a person.

I don't resent your earnings, success or status, I do resent the implication that I've made bad choices that have led me to somehow be 'lesser' - especially as for much of my working life I have done jobs that benefit people (and made people a lot of money) and it's not valued.

@Maverickess yes different choices but they become bad when you can't afford to live don't they? And in the U.K. is not an easy place to get by in if you can't afford accommodation, which imo is a massive stumbling point to 'choosing' not to have a career unless you have someone or something else in place to support you financially.

Yes, lazy, silly people in their low paid jobs 🙄

Maybe if we’d all starved ourselves and bought second hand clothes we’d have saved up enough (from our NMW jobs caring for the most vulnerable in society) to own a three bed semi detached in Surrey now…

I agree OP.
Some people work hard, some not so much. Plenty of people on the lower end of hourly pay rates work really hard. Physical jobs often literally wear your body out.

Working conditions are usually worse for the lower paid in my experience.

It's a combination, for sure.

I think confidence is a big factor. I worked as a care assistant for a few years and decided that the vast majority of people either did the job because it was convenient for them for a short time (students, those with small children, part time hours etc.) or because they lacked the confidence to do anything else.

@fluffylittlesoandso
Im not denying you or anyone hasn’t worked hard and made the best choices available to you through opportunity and circumstance.

But if you can’t afford your mortgage because interest rates are drifting up to levels they used to be not that long ago, then wouldn’t your perspective that all inability to afford accommodation is due to “bad choices” not apply to you and by extension every MC homeowner demanding government help for this very reason? Would not your theory of “bad choices” then mean everyone who cannot pay a higher mortgage payment has therefore made a “bad choice” to buy a home they cannot afford in the long run?

I agree it may be down to bad choices, but not always the choices of the person in the low paid job.
I made the choice to get out of social care and into something that pays a bit better and where my work is a bit more valued and therefore I'm treated better. I actually liked the job and was good at it. Did training and had pride in my work, I also worked hard.

Thousands have done the same, across not just social, but healthcare too for the same reasons. That's why we're facing a crisis in terms of staffing for some of the most relied upon and needed jobs we have. Where does that leave society?
That is the result of choices by many, many other people who put money, and more of it above anything else.
There's people waiting months if not years for treatment, people getting substandard or no care - because there aren't enough people to do it.

I did exactly what you say everyone should do and got that better job, probably still not good enough by many standards, although I can afford to live, I don't notice people being adverse to getting the service I provide, but quite willing to slate me for doing it.

We shouldn't be encouraging people out of these jobs, we should be ensuring that it's feasible to get them done by ensuring people can afford to live while doing them. Not just writing them off as a failure that didn't or doesn't work hard enough, that's been the attitude for so long we're seeing the results now with labour shortages in these areas.

We shouldn't be encouraging people out of these jobs, we should be ensuring that it's feasible to get them done by ensuring people can afford to live while doing them. Not just writing them off as a failure that didn't or doesn't work hard enough, that's been the attitude for so long we're seeing the results now with labour shortages in these areas.
👏👏👏 very well put

Good point.

I do feel though that in the case of the middle earners starting to struggle the narrative is that it's not fair........ Because they work(ed) hard.

While still insisting that lower income workers make bad choices.

Cognitive dissonance.

i think there are certain complaints that people in a certain income bracket are being given hardly no support from the government yet those in NMW jobs or part timers get access to various things.

after everything is taken into account most have the same sort of disposable income

usually because one set of earners take out mortgages and other pay social rent

I agree completely. Many MC earners only now struggling are quick to excuse their situation as unfair/out of their control, but unable to give the same allowance to lower earners who are always financially struggling and are now being pushed to the brink/destitution.

It is cognitive dissonance as you say because to admit the situation of the lower earners is also unfair/out of their control is to face the reality of how much of their status as MC/middle earners is due more to good fortune and only partially due to hard work/good choices.