Screw The Gigs, Form A Union
April 7, 2018 10:59 AM   Subscribe

 
Upon first seeing the ads, the writer said they thought, “This is bullshit.”

There's a writing prompt for you.
posted by GenjiandProust at 11:19 AM on April 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


I sort of wonder if the advertising people assigned to Fiverr and Handy and the rest have tried to sit their clients down to be like, “so public mood has taken a turn” and the start up assholes just start shout-splaining about how they’re changing the world with their assholery?

I really can’t imagine how completely insulated you’d have to be to think these ads are a good sell that you should pay money to display in public places.

Baffling.
posted by schadenfrau at 11:54 AM on April 7, 2018 [16 favorites]


I think the ads are great. They're designed to appeal to the desperately unemployed -- the only people who could rationally accept the kind of offer they're making -- and they make no bones about exactly how shitty their offer is. I mean, in comparison to like Blade Runner's "choose a new life in the offworld colonies" that makes it sound like some kind of resort with palm trees, dancing all night and hot & cold running booze, and you get there and you got palm trees made out of nerve poison, the dancing is more like desperately running from the latest truck-sized predator, and when they said hot and cold they meant 50C during the day and -20C at night because the atmosphere is just 40% earth normal, oh and the supply ship is very, very late so everyone has to draw straws. You know: late stage capitalism.
posted by seanmpuckett at 12:11 PM on April 7, 2018 [28 favorites]


I never thought much about unions, until I saw the adversarial relationship between UFCW and a really big So. Calif. grocery chain.

Anyone remember Magnificent 7 or Samuari 7? My bosses all act like the villagers. "Oh, they're all going to steal from us; no one is honest or has any honor." BS, of course.

So, my advice: form a union or alliance, show them you support each other, and you have plenty of honesty and honor. Just because they can't see it, doesn't mean it's not there.

posted by pjmoy at 12:36 PM on April 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


I've always found "straphanger" to be a curious word. I get the impression it was invented by journalists and is never spoken out loud by actual people.
posted by gngstrMNKY at 12:49 PM on April 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


There used to be actual straps people hung onto and the subway riders advocacy agency is called the straphanger alliance
posted by The Whelk at 12:52 PM on April 7, 2018 [23 favorites]


Wide-stancers doesn't have quite the same ring to it.
posted by theora55 at 1:00 PM on April 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


Thank you, the Whelk, good and encouraging reading.
posted by theora55 at 1:01 PM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


I cut my retail teeth with UFCW local #1500 in the eighties working at Bradlees. They made sure I got my 2 x 15 minute breaks + 30 minute lunch during an 8 hour shift. Anyone notice their co-workers eating at their desks?
posted by mikelieman at 1:02 PM on April 7, 2018 [10 favorites]


I never thought much about unions, until I saw the adversarial relationship between UFCW and a really big So. Calif. grocery chain.

You mean that pointlessly adversarial relationship? Seems once a year UFCW threatens once again to go on strike against those really big So. CA grocery chains, because they were so successful in the last strike? The one that screwed anyone with the temerity to be a new hire? There was the distinct feeling that the union had to rattle the chains about once a year to make a show of doing something. Sure, they make more than minimum wage. Something close to 50 or 60 cents more. There is no longer a viable career track to be found unless a worker transitions into management. But yeah, it's us agin' them all the time.

They made sure I got my 2 x 15 minute breaks + 30 minute lunch during an 8 hour shift.

Last I checked, it was 2 x 10 minute breaks + 30 minute lunch during an 8 hour shift. If you were fortunate to get an 8 hour shift.

Sure, form a union if you have the stomach for it. It's hard work and risk with no guarantee of success. But don't be under the illusion that you'll be anything but toothless unless you have something to bargain with.
posted by 2N2222 at 1:48 PM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


I've always found "straphanger" to be a curious word. I get the impression it was invented by journalists and is never spoken out loud by actual people.

I had to look it up, never encountered it before.
posted by rodlymight at 1:48 PM on April 7, 2018


I've always found "straphanger" to be a curious word. I get the impression it was invented by journalists and is never spoken out loud by actual people.

This post is the first time I've ever seen or heard of it, but I'm pretty sure it's a place in Norway surrounded by numerous fjords.
posted by kersplunk at 1:50 PM on April 7, 2018 [14 favorites]


Once my dude said the word out loud and pronounced it "strafanjer." I almost didn't correct him, it was so cute.
posted by lauranesson at 2:14 PM on April 7, 2018 [32 favorites]


Now you're on the trolley!
posted by thelonius at 2:22 PM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


If you listen to the news in the NYC area, you hear "straphanger" all the time. and I am old enough to remember the actual straps in the subway cars when my aunt took me to the city as a kid.
posted by mermayd at 2:58 PM on April 7, 2018 [11 favorites]


Straphanger is a good word to know if you write NY Post headlines.
posted by Stonestock Relentless at 3:00 PM on April 7, 2018 [4 favorites]


"Straphanger is a good word to know if you write NY Post headlines."

I keep writing them, but they never print them.
posted by el io at 3:15 PM on April 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


1) This Fiverr thing sounds awful.

2) Unions are necessary, but don't expect them to be a magical panacea especially if it's a large union working with a large corporation.

3) A lot of places around the world still have straps, more often metal rings or odd-shaped ovals these days.
posted by madajb at 3:22 PM on April 7, 2018 [6 favorites]


Boston has straps but no straphangers. Strange. And—for the love of all that is holy—that word grates on me like few others...
posted by smammy at 3:39 PM on April 7, 2018 [1 favorite]


Straphangers over bootstraps
posted by The Whelk at 3:43 PM on April 7, 2018 [20 favorites]


It doesn't excuse them at all, but I will say I was a bit pleased to see that Fiverr does seem to have gotten better than I used to be. The last time I visited the site, $5 was just the default price for everything, so you'd get an artist who'd give you a $5 quick sketch and then there were add-on charges for a ton of things to get the average commission to something that was still a lowball offer but at least not insane. Now, the first page of logo design options with the default sort settings doesn't have anybody at $5 on it. Sad that this counts as improvement, admittedly.

But I still don't see how they expect to make this work, recruiting people from one of the most expensive places in the US to compete on a service where a substantial number of the existing service providers are overseas in lower-cost-of-living countries. They don't provide a way to sort by the service provider's country, and selecting for English does not seem to select people who ONLY speak English. And I'm sure plenty of those people do great work, I don't mean to say anything about that. But I don't know how you recruit for service providers in NYC and think yeah, sure, they're going to be able to make even a substandard living on a service already heavily populated by contractors in markets which are literally lower-rent by an order of magnitude.
posted by Sequence at 4:04 PM on April 7, 2018


Straphanger is a good word to know if you write NY Post headlines.

I learned it from David Letterman.
posted by MrBadExample at 4:06 PM on April 7, 2018


But I don't know how you recruit for service providers in NYC and think yeah, sure, they're going to be able to make even a substandard living on a service already heavily populated by contractors in markets which are literally lower-rent by an order of magnitude.

As a freelancer (though not one who uses Fiverr particularly) I can attest that they definitely don't think that their recruits will make even a substandard living; like Uber, they depend to some extent on churn, and on the few high-performers who somehow make it work for a while until burning out.

In Fiverr's case, I suspect they're advertising not just to potential freelancers -- desperate types with a few other hustles going who are trying to stitch together an income across multiple platforms and hope that Fiverr could perhaps be a supplement -- but primarily to people who would use the service to find workers. Advertising in NYC suggests to NYC-based companies that some of the freelancers they'd be getting from Fiverr are hungry NYC-based strivers, even though, more than likely, they're going to be getting contractors based outside the US. It makes Fiverr look community-engaged and vibrant and dialed into local art scenes and lets companies pretend that hey, maybe they really *are* supporting local freelancers when they bid bottom-dollar for work.
posted by halation at 4:13 PM on April 7, 2018 [17 favorites]


I've always found "straphanger" to be a curious word. I get the impression it was invented by journalists and is never spoken out loud by actual people.

The epitome of this is "temblor". (As a regular BART rider, I hope I am not a straphanger at the moment a big temblor strikes.)
posted by aws17576 at 4:18 PM on April 7, 2018 [7 favorites]


In Fiverr's case, I suspect they're advertising not just to potential freelancers -- desperate types with a few other hustles going who are trying to stitch together an income across multiple platforms and hope that Fiverr could perhaps be a supplement -- but primarily to people who would use the service to find workers.

I've silently hated on these ads every time they've appeared, and this is so obviously the case to me that I'm a little surprised everyone else seems to be assuming the opposite. The text is clearly aimed at the would-be small entrepreneur, not the person doing the would-be small entrepreneur's scutwork.
posted by praemunire at 4:19 PM on April 7, 2018 [7 favorites]




I admit a peculiar fondness for Fiverr - it has let me build a database of past lives for cheap. For five to ten bucks a pop, I have learned all about the various adventures and exploits of my reincarnated self - such as I have fought on both sides of, was freed by, and was made a widow three times over by the Civil War.
posted by robocop is bleeding at 6:42 PM on April 7, 2018 [3 favorites]


I miss Dr Zizmor.
posted by retrograde at 7:41 PM on April 7, 2018 [14 favorites]


The text is clearly aimed at the would-be small entrepreneur, not the person doing the would-be small entrepreneur's scutwork.

This is so obvious based on the ads I've seen that I'm confused by where the other messages come from. Like, these are some of the ads:

"Thinking Big Is Still Just Thinking"
"Actually, it hasn't all been done before."
"Got an idea? Isn't that cute"

"Freelance Services for the Lean Entrepreneur"
posted by XtinaS at 7:47 PM on April 7, 2018 [2 favorites]


I clicked the link before I looked at who posted it here and my first thought when I saw the graffiti was "Lol I bet The Whelk did it."
posted by Jacqueline at 4:37 PM on April 8, 2018 [1 favorite]


Fiverr is great when you don't know how to make Photoshop do the thing and you just need one photo edited so you hire someone in Pakistan who specializes in that type of photo edit and thus can do it really fast while you're asleep. You then give him/her a 100% tip and a great review and now you've saved yourself hours of frustration for $10.

I can't imagine buying anything much more complex than that through there, though, and I'd be surprised if a substantial number of people earn enough to afford NYC's cost-of-living.
posted by Jacqueline at 5:11 PM on April 8, 2018


Re: "Straphanger" possibly being somewhere in Norway with fjords: I would suggest doing an image search for the view from Hardanger, which sounds a bit similar. Your theory seems to hold water.
posted by Harald74 at 12:44 AM on April 9, 2018


I've always found "straphanger" to be a curious word. I get the impression it was invented by journalists and is never spoken out loud by actual people.

it strikes me as like, old-timey Damon Runyan slang, like it came from subway busker argot or something in 1922.
posted by vogon_poet at 3:18 PM on April 9, 2018 [1 favorite]


I clicked the link before I looked at who posted it here and my first thought when I saw the graffiti was "Lol I bet The Whelk did it."

Well, I did see this
posted by The Whelk at 6:04 PM on April 10, 2018


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