What is the biggest lesson that employment has taught you?

I think we can all guess the country. I wish you all the best, wakkawakkawakka.

North Korea?
- In communist North Korea, over a million died from COVID, 45,000 die a year from lack of health insurance, and 200,000 die annually from poverty.
  
  Hey wait a second…
- Jesus Christ, you need help
  
  North Korea has the world’s worst human rights, so when they made it sound like only one country had this issue, that was my guess. I’m in North America and never experienced what is described. Unless I’m wrong to have even the amount of faith required to believe there are no North Korea denialists here.
  
  North Korea has the world’s worst human rights
  You understand propaganda like a fish understands water
  
  When I say that, I'm going by every regular source that ever existed, plus satellite images, its near-impossible standards for leaving or entering, its lack of internet access (who here has seen anyone who is actually from North Korea), and the fact that the average North Korean adult is only five feet tall, with height being an indicator of health (the taller the healthier). What do you weigh against it that inspires you to posit it's all just propaganda and hearsay? Other hearsay (as opposed to a conflict within the narrative you oppose)?
  
  I say that, I'm going by every regular source that ever existed
  "regular source"
  
  its near-impossible standards for leaving or entering
  did you know these are imposed on them externally? their policy is that they love tourists. here's a video of a couple of australian tourists enjoying themselves there. the reason americans can't go there is because the US forbids it.
  its lack of internet access (who here has seen anyone who is actually from North Korea),
  it's a country under brutal siege for its entire history. yes, they're poor. whose fault is that?
  
  Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=2BO83Ig-E8E
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.
  
  Regular sources as in MSNBC, CNN, NPR, Wikipedia, etc. sources that are the most established, enough that they're among the top 500 websites and that they show up on the first page of a Google search. Not to mention a random source is going to have random origins, trust in a source has to be earned and even with trusted sources you must compare and contrast them sometimes.
  The restrictions for leaving and entering have not been imposed on them externally, this attitude of Korea predates even the Roman empire so external factors wouldn't have been possible as a cause, even though it's undeniable there are nations that have restricted anyone from going there. Japan used to be the same way at different points in history, though for the time being they're open to everyone.
  
  sources
  Wikipedia
  
  The restrictions for leaving and entering have not been imposed on them externally, this attitude of Korea predates even the Roman empire so external factors wouldn't have been possible as a cause
  
  come back when you can form a coherent thought
  
  Regular sources as in MSNBC, CNN, NPR,
  Which often repeat unproven stories without fact-checking them, or spinning stories to suit their agenda.
  How to make a story on North Korea
  
  According to who?
  Could it be, the United States? The most vicious and bloody empire the world has ever known?
  That aside (like, wow, holy fuck)
  If you could not recognize the earlier comments as an indication of western capitalism, you are rich or otherwise so privileged you cannot comprehend the struggles of the average person
  
  Or maybe you're overreacting a little. I don't deny struggles such as those by the average person, but being unable to take care of one's health is not one of them. That's also why I answered "North Korea" to someone's assertion that there's a place where this is an issue. America allows people to take time away to recuperate, even for mental health, and has this thing called SSI for the chronically unhealthy.
  
  America allows people to take time away to recuperate, even for mental health
  
  It’s the basis of whole traditions.
  
  Yeah tell that to the overworked service worker, or the many other people with two jobs. The fact that a comfortable white-collar dickhead can take time off, doesn't really mean much to me when every teacher, every driver, every railworker, every barista, chef, roadworker, janitor and every other prole is fucked
  
  source:
  
  The federation aspect of Lemmy is acting up again, the image won't show up for me except as a transparent block (I assume it's supposed to show something).
  
  dang, unfortunate. it was an emote, a picture of famous North Korea liar/grifter Yeonmi Park, inventor of many truths such as: "North Koreans don't have a word for depression", "the word for friend is banned in North Korea", and (my favorite) "the trains in North Korea don't work so people have to push the trains wherever they go".
- Sounds more like North America
  
  North Korea had none of the pandemic protocols as America.
  
  Your whataboutism can't deflect the fact that the US policy on COVID put the prerogatives of capital ahead of public health, doing the most half-assed lockdown procedures without contact tracing, pretty much guaranteeing that this apex predator would continue to stalk the streets and mutate indefinitely, enabling mass social murder on a historical scale, pushing the most precarious workers back into contact with the public to get sick over and over, pushing kids back to school without vaccinations under the pretext that they were low risk (false), allowing infections to rebound through the population endlessly through the vectors of families, workplaces, and schools.
  We're now at the point where the most at-risk, especially the immune compromised, continue to die quietly in the background while the country's leadership declares the state of emergency to be over. Officially over a million dead here and it's sure to be a mass underestimation because states are no longer reporting, and regardless it's a major risk factor of other diseases, especially cardial, one of which claimed one of my closest family members after they caught COVID multiple times before being vaccinated despite performing all these supposed protocols to the extreme (doesn't matter how much you isolate if the workers delivering your groceries bring the virus with them).
  Oh yeah and, the pandemic never went away, "endemic" is a weasel word that really means "the weak shall suffer what they must," hardly a word about long COVID in the media any more even though we don't yet understand its full extent. US COVID policy amounts to enabling a mass death and disability event. Guess our burgers and haircuts are more important than the lives of the elderly and immune compromised. America's COVID policy is neglect and eugenics with more steps. As for North Korea, who's deranged enough to give a fuck about their supposed lack of protocols (also false) when the real disaster is still unfolding all around us?
  
  You say that like it's whataboutism to mention a country had it worse when the original commenter meant to make it sound like there was a singular country with the issue. I never said America's response was great, but I responded asking if they were talking about North Korea because they had it worse, even going so far at one point to say covid didn't exist in a practical sense. They ignored the virus and it almost decimated them because North Korea has such bad health. They fit the commenter's allusion to a country that handled it badly better than America even if America handled it badly too.
  
  America had a larger infection rate and mortality rate than North Korea.
  I know what you're gonna say "oh they lied about their numbers". Why would I trust the US to be honest about theirs? Why would I trust the US media in their claims about North Korea lying about its numbers?
  The US had several whistleblowers like Rebekah Jones getting arrested/abused/harrased for their reporting on the state of the US obfuscating data.
  The american media has been shown to lie time and again, especially when it comes to foreign matters - Most famously about Iraq. What reason do I have to trust it?
  The United States has the largest prisoner population in the world and has a history of persecuting minorites and political dissidents like leaders of black lives matter. These dissidents are dissapeared at secret police blacksites where they are tortured. This prisoner population is used as slave labour, which is still legal.
  Why would I trust the lies peddled by this authoritarian regime about a country whose population they relentlessly bombed until they'd murdered 20% of it.
  
  Even if giving your sources the benefit of the doubt, you say that as if the US is the only place that talks about things going on in North Korea.
  
  Ah neat you failed to engage with the central argument, instead moving the goalposts to now being another weirdly general discussion.
  You were referring to American media and American claims, so this is the framework. Instead of either accepting your sources are flawed, that you have a bias, that they have a bias, that you might not be entirely correct, you choose to shift the discussion to one where you yet again take another incredibly broad position that is so vague it is nigh impossible to disorove. I don't think you do this on purpose, I think it is reflexive, but I encourage you to interrogate your actions upon encountering data that conflicts with your worldview.
  
  I’m not moving any goalposts, I’m simply stating the observation that there are other nationalities who not only might serve as a spark or derivative for whatever the American media says but also that info is shared enough that it can amount to a confirmation. Some other countries and their media, such as the BBC and Russia Today, report on both America and North Korea as much as America does. Never did I imply I was only talking about things because America was the one doing the narrating though.
  
  m simply stating the observation that there are other nationalities who not only might serve as a spark or derivative for whatever the American media
  What does this have to do with a discussion about North Korea as presented by American media? You are not engaging with the argument or the points, you are not even relating it to your own, you are instead reframing the discussion to be about something else - You are moving the goalposts.
  Never did I imply I was only talking about things because America was the one doing the narrating though.
  dawg your alleged sources were all American media.
  Oh hey you managed to find one whole article! Good on you! Is that article the sources you mentioned? I just wanna be sure that I'm not missing out.
- Did you get your cardinal directions mixed up?
  
  At least South Korea and North America shut down for the pandemic, North Korea did not. I rest my case.
  
  North Korea was shut down anyway, it took a long time for them to have their first covid outbreak and I think when it finally did happen they did shut down.
  Also, I am glad you have come out so strongly in favor of the PRC approach, or so I must convlude.
  
  Being so close to China, North Korea couldn't be in a position to escape being one of the first to suffer. Kim Jong-un spent the first part of it saying it didn't exist. What's worse is health in North Korea is poor, so there were more casualties. Any true response was too late.
  
  one of the first to suffer.
  It didn't outbreak until 8 May 2022 according to your source, so they made it until after Omicron evolved.
  
  What they meant was there wasn't an outbreak reported, not that there wasn't one. Here's a clearer source (same one as well) as long as someone else asked for one too.
  
  The NPR article also has no evidence for an earlier outbreak. They just report what the North's government stated, and add that the reader shouldn't believe them.
  Sure they share a border with China, but China had COVID pretty well controlled for a significant portion of the pandemic. That combined with the DPRK's survival strategy of self-reliance make it seem plausible to me that they were clear of it until the vastly more contagious variant became dominant.
  So far, there doesn't seem to be any evidence to the contrary.
  
  It's always the same bullshit. If they are handling covid well "they're lying about their numbers". If they report high numbers it's "evidence they're incompetent."
  What reason do I have to mistrust their numbers? They're not the ones having lied to me for decades.
  And it's not like the US wasn't lying about its own numbers
  Why would I trust the US to be honest about theirs? Why would I trust the US media in their claims about North Korea lying about its numbers?
  The US had several whistleblowers like Rebekah Jones getting arrested/abused/harrased for their reporting on the state of the US obfuscating data.
  The american media has been shown to lie time and again, especially when it comes to foreign matters - Most famously about Iraq. What reason do I have to trust it?
  The United States has the largest prisoner population in the world and has a history of persecuting minorites and political dissidents like leaders of black lives matter. These dissidents are dissapeared at secret police blacksites where they are tortured. This prisoner population is used as slave labour, which is still legal.
  Why would I trust the lies peddled by this authoritarian regime about a country whose population they relentlessly bombed until they'd murdered 20% of it.
  
  You're gonna need a better source than Wikipedia, which has a ridiculous level of slant against the DPRK (look up "Propaganda village" if you need convincing)
  
  Wikipedia, the neutral website that also somehow happened to protest with a Reddit-style blackout when Donald Trump tried passing those internet bills, has a slant against the leader's party? Alright, I'll humor you.
  Also, completely unrelated question about that, how does one square someone having a slant against a political party, being on good terms with the political international that party is in, that party being in said political international, and that party being in a nation that works against anything about itself being publicized?
  
  I'm confused, can you elaborate? The DPRK is North Korea's name for itself. WPK is its majority party. Are you claiming they're part of a political international that wikipedia is on good terms with?
  
  Wikipedia, the website that according to itself is biased https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ideological_bias_on_Wikipedia
  One of these biases being nazis https://www.wired.com/story/one-womans-mission-to-rewrite-nazi-history-wikipedia/

An American job

I'm in America and this isn't an issue. I don't know anyone where this isn't an issue, in fact there's this thing in America called SSI designed specifically to help the chronically unhealthy without even a need to work.
- it's a means tested program it's really difficult to get onto especially if your disabilities make it hard to correctly sort out all the paperwork
  
  It depends on the state, but it's not like it's not there for people, which debunks the idea the American system doesn't care about health, as poorly prepared as the healthcare system might be.
  
  yes it is exactly like it isn't there for people because it isn't there for a significant proportion of people that need it
  
  I didn't say it was able to help everyone. No stipend can do that. But the comments that led up to this conversation claimed America "doesn't care about health" (hence why my first guess about what country they were alluding to was the one most people first think of when talking about human rights abuse).

You've genuinely never seen a job promote their "5 sick days a year" BS like it was generous lol? You also must not work construction. Being sick in construction means even your co-workers will be mad at you, for some reason.

Lineman for a major telecommunications corporation. Just tested positive for covid. The unspoken rule is show up, if you are dead they may send you home. Got lucky since I actually interact with the public. Sent pic of the positive test to manager. Don't know what is going to happen.
- Yes murica
- Not surprised at all. Companies love to offload their losses to everyone else. If you come in regardless, they don't lose the value your work brings them, while their sick employees spread their crap to everyone and costs society thousands in perfectly avoidable healthcare costs.
Kind of. I work in the humanities industry, so there is a limit to off-days (as with most jobs) but nothing like a set number like five days and definitely nothing like a prohibition like I thought the original commenter was talking about, you just can’t drag it out. However, it wouldn’t be humanities if there wasn’t a human element, and it’s a red flag in the industry if there wasn’t a willingness to accommodate, like I see posts about that all the time like here for example and wonder what anyone saw in them.
- Either you're lucky that your field is pretty flexible, or I was unlucky that all the jobs I had, my current one being an exception, were the opposite ¯(ツ)/¯
  Honestly, in my experience it's a crapshoot and wildly varies from company to company, or even manager by manager basis. But some industries have it really rough. I used to work retail, the exploitation over there is insane. This thread you're linking pretty much lines up with what I know about service too - OP being angry at his colleague for falling sick rather than his employer for guilt tripping him is pretty much par for the course too.
  
  Isn’t it inscribed in law that if you have a perfectly good reason to call in sick, even exceeding five days a year, that it will be granted to you? Even grade school allows something like at least fifteen days a year, as that I think is the maximum time someone can be temporarily suspended. Someone can correct me on that.
  
  I mean... Yeah, sure. The law also says I can't sit on non-chair public infrastructure around here, but is it really being enforced?
  Retaliation and abuse from an employer is hard to prove. Fighting back takes energy and time, a thing your average middle-class and lower don't have in large quantities once they're done working. And it can be hard to explain to your next employer that you're in legal proceedings against your ex employer over your working conditions without hurting your chances to be employed in the first place. There's a world of difference between what's in law and what actually happens.

I'm not OP but this is true for a Railroader.

It's a big part of why they were near striking recently.

I worked a job in health insurance where I couldn't take time off for doctors appointments until I had been there for 6 months. My health got super fucked.

When I worked in construction they didn't give a fuck lmao.

Was this occupation recent?
- I got out of construction this year. I was on jobsites for basically the entire shutdown for Covid.
  Outside of disease, there are a lot of physical health hazards in construction that you're just expected to work through. Working at all on a coal-fired power plant, you're going to breathe in coal dust all day long for your shift, which for me was up to 16 hours a day not including travel time.
  
  Edit: I originally wrote this when I first woke up, and was more combative than I should have been.