Fancy spending your days cleaning sewers with no protective clothing, letting mosquitoes turn you into a human pincushion for medical research, or popping up a chimney with a brush for a spot of cleaning? Then The World's Worst Jobs is the book for you. From Victorian toshers who sifted London's sewage for treasure, to Roman gladiators who fought to the death on a daily basis, find out all about the hardest, most revolting and most hilarious jobs in the world through history. Fantastically funny and delightfully disgusting, this is an eye-opening look at historical and modern day jobs that will leave young readers entertained and astounded.
Whether it's swilling out the crotch of a knight's soiled armor after the battle of Agincourt, risking his neck in the rigging of HMS Victory, or as "Groom of the Stool" going to places where none of Henry VIII's six wives would venture, Tony endures the worst jobs imaginable to get to the bottom (sometimes literally) of the story. From the Roman invasion to the reign of Queen Victoria, Tony has met the challenge of seeking out the worst jobs of each era. The Gunpowder Plot drew Tony to the role of the Saltpetre Man who collected human waste because its nitrate content could be turned into gunpowder. In the same vein, he has revealed some of the worst jobs behind the building of the great medieval cathedrals. With Tony we discover the dire conditions of Nelson's Victory, where the most common form of retirement was being sewn into a hammock with a couple of cannon balls and dropped over the side. Then there's the impact of the Industrial Revolution, a source of wealth and power for the few, but a cornucopia of lousy jobs for the many. Packed with disgusting yet fascinating professions, this book really gets into the grime of how life was for ordinary people, and provides a vivid alternative (and fairly disgusting) history of Britain.
Retail is now the largest employer in the United States. For the most part, retail jobs are “bad jobs” characterized by low wages, unpredictable work schedules, and few opportunities for advancement. However, labor experts Françoise Carré and Chris Tilly show that these conditions are not inevitable. In Where Bad Jobs Are Better, they investigate retail work across different industries and seven countries to demonstrate that better retail jobs are not just possible, but already exist. By carefully analyzing the factors that lead to more desirable retail jobs, Where Bad Jobs Are Better charts a path to improving job quality for all low-wage jobs. In surveying retail work across the United States, Carré and Tilly find that the majority of retail workers receive low pay and nearly half work part-time, which contributes to high turnover and low productivity. Jobs staffed predominantly by women, such as grocery store cashiers, pay even less than retail jobs in male-dominated fields, such as consumer electronics. Yet, when comparing these jobs to similar positions in Western Europe, Carré and Tilly find surprising differences. In France, though supermarket cashiers perform essentially the same work as cashiers in the United States, they receive higher pay, are mostly full-time, and experience lower turnover and higher productivity. And unlike the United States, where many retail employees are subject to unpredictable schedules, in Germany, retailers are required by law to provide their employees notice of work schedules six months in advance. The authors show that disparities in job quality are largely the result of differing social norms and national institutions. For instance, weak labor regulations and the decline of unions in the United States have enabled retailers to cut labor costs aggressively in ways that depress wages and discourage full-time work. On the other hand, higher minimum wages, greater government regulation of work schedules, and stronger collective bargaining through unions and works councils have improved the quality of retail jobs in Europe. As retail and service work continue to expand, American employers and policymakers will have to decide the extent to which these jobs will be good or bad. Where Bad Jobs Are Better shows how stronger rules and regulations can improve the lives of retail workers and boost the quality of low-wage jobs across the board.
From bestselling writer David Graeber—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).
Your paper round will never seem as bad again!The Worst Jobs in History takes you back to the days when being a kid was no excuse for getting out of hard labour. This book tells the stories of all the children whose work fed the nation, kept trains running, and put clothes on everyone's backs, over the last few hundred years of Britain's history. No longer will you have to listen to your parents, grandparents, uncles, neighbours, and random old people in the Co-op telling you how much harder they had it in their day. Next time you find yourself in that situation, ask them if they were a jigger-turner or a turnip-picker in their young day. No? An orderly boy, perhaps? A stepper? Maybe they spent their weekends making matchboxes? Still no? Then they have no idea about the real meaning of hard work. With profiles and testimonies of real kids in rotten jobs, this book will tell you things you probably didn't want to know about the back-breaking, puke-inducing reality of being a child in the past.
Quick -- what's the worst, most mind-numbing, humiliating, horrendous, horrific job you can think of? They're all here. The worst jobs in the world. Firsthand accounts of one hundred horrible jobs guaranteed to make you groan, laugh, and maybe, just maybe help you feel a teensy bit better about your own place in the rat race. Painstakingly assembled by the geniuses behind the British humor magazine The Idler, this collection includes the gloriously gory details of such occupations as: hospital launderette, gas station worker, weed sprayer, bank teller, janitor's assistant, and telemarketer. It's a hilarious romp through the stinky cesspool of employment hell, with helpful commentary from those who speak of crap jobs from hard-won personal experience. So curl up with this guide and be grateful for the job you have...or grab the want ads now!
Guaranteed to make you grateful for the job you have and thankful for the one you don't. From Saddam Hussein Double to Telemarketing Script Writer to the guy who operates the "It's a Small World After All" ride, satirist Justin Racz has spanned the globe to find fifty jobs worse than yours, so we can all feel better about our own. Featuring fifty color photos of the awful, the pitiful, the hysterical jobs out there, and all their undesirable employment details, Fifty Jobs Worse Than Yours is the perfect gift for anyone stuck in a nine-to-five grind who needs to remember why it could be a whole, whole lot worse.
A groundbreaking, urgent report from the front lines of "dirty work"—the work that society considers essential but morally compromised. Drone pilots who carry out targeted assassinations. Undocumented immigrants who man the “kill floors” of industrial slaughterhouses. Guards who patrol the wards of the United States’ most violent and abusive prisons. In Dirty Work, Eyal Press offers a paradigm-shifting view of the moral landscape of contemporary America through the stories of people who perform society’s most ethically troubling jobs. As Press shows, we are increasingly shielded and distanced from an array of morally questionable activities that other, less privileged people perform in our name. The COVID-19 pandemic has drawn unprecedented attention to essential workers, and to the health and safety risks to which workers in prisons and slaughterhouses are exposed. But Dirty Work examines a less familiar set of occupational hazards: psychological and emotional hardships such as stigma, shame, PTSD, and moral injury. These burdens fall disproportionately on low-income workers, undocumented immigrants, women, and people of color. Illuminating the moving, sometimes harrowing stories of the people doing society’s dirty work, and incisively examining the structures of power and complicity that shape their lives, Press reveals fundamental truths about the moral dimensions of work and the hidden costs of inequality in America.
A research-backed clarion call to CEOs and managers, making the controversial case that good, well-paying jobs are not only good for workers and for society--they're good for business, too.
The shocking images of neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, North Carolina in the summer of 2017 linger in the mind, but so do those of the passionate protestors who risked their lives to do the right thing. In this stirring graphic non-fiction book by the acclaimed author of The 500 Years of Resistance Comic Book, Gord Hill looks at the history of fascism over the last 100 years, and the concurrent antifa movements that work fastidiously to topple it. Fascism is a relatively new political ideology and movement, yet in its short history some of the greatest atrocities against humanity have been carried out in its name. Its poisonous roots have taken hold in every region of the world, from its beginnings in post-World War I Italy, through Nazi Germany, Franco’s Spain, and the KKK in America. And today, emboldened by the American president, fascism is alive and well again. At the same time, antifa activists have proven, through history and again today, that the spirit of resistance is alive and well, and necessary. In The Antifa Comic Book, Gord Hill documents these powerful moments of conflict and confrontation with a perceptive eye and a powerful sense of resolve. This publication meets the EPUB Accessibility requirements and it also meets the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG-AA). It is screen-reader friendly and is accessible to persons with disabilities. A book with many images, which is defined with accessible structural markup. This book contains various accessibility features such as alternative text for images, table of contents, page-list, landmark, reading order and semantic structure.
