Comment by biocomputation | Hacker News Reader

Comment by biocomputation | Hacker News Reader

From a white, middle class background. I am one of six children, and while my parents made a decent living, six children meant that money was always tight. Still, my Mom taught us the importance of good manners and being able to speak properly. She did this because she thought it was the right thing to do, and because she knew we didn't have the same financial advantages as other people.

I learned an important lesson about this in my very early twenties when I applied for a summer internship at a local firm. There were only two interviews: one with engineering and one with the owner. The owner gave me the internship on the spot not because of my qualifications, but because he liked the way I dressed and spoke. His words to me were something along the lines of "I feel comfortable putting you in front of our clients."

One of the reasons poverty is so disabling is because it changes the way a lot of people ( but not all people ) carry themselves. People from wealthier backgrounds often present better and get first crack at opportunities as a result. Note that when I say "present", I am talking about mostly superficial qualities, not level of education, skill, or other deeper qualities.

Anyone can learn to present themselves the right way, with respect to speaking, dressing, and credentials - although it's extra work and extra cost for those who have already fought very hard for their chance to climb the ladder.

For better or for worse, you're so right.

Shift-work during university. Hiring was a cattle call; just a long line of people my age.

Sat down. Interviewer told me I was hired because I was the only person wearing a tie. Wrote down first shift, stood up, left. Sixty seconds.

In dining services we'd half jokingly use phrases like "throwing bodies at the problem" because a pulse was our primary qualification for employment. It's mind boggling that they didn't make money hand over fist when ~50% of their employee costs were returned via work-study reimbursement from Uncle Sam.

Yup. That sounds about right.

It means that even knowing how to iron a shirt and pants ( so they look good with a tie ) can be an important distinction in terms of accessing opportunity.

Sad but true!

"And they may face discrimination based on race, class or other factors."

In urban areas, where access to transportation and availability of jobs is better, this is really the crux of the issue. Employers (often unfairly) view middle class kids as more reliable. So even if they think working class kids will work harder (another common view in my experience), they see the middle class teenagers as less of a risk.

Isn't middle class also a working class? I was brought up as middle class, not especially wealthy would even classify it towards the lower end, but highly educated as both parents were academics.

I worked every summer since I was 13, and 16ish to 18 also during the school year now and then (17/18 was fairly lucky early it was really early 2000's and I mastered PHP rather well so made actually decent money building websites when web2.0, CMS and dynamic content were still meaningful buzzwords).

Well no. The working class is the bottom end of the middle class (historically factory workers, currently teachers and clerking jobs). The upper end of the middle-class are people making 150k+ a year. The middle-end have jobs within the 80k to 100k range.

In the academic, Marxist sense, yes. But I was using the term "working class" rather as a synonym for minimum wage, blue collar workers, or in this case teenagers whose parents have those jobs. The point really is that middle class kids (like you were) can get jobs (like you did), whereas poor kids often can't.

Middle class kids are unreliable because they don't "need" the work. They want it to buy things for themselves or to feel a sense of independence, but anything 'more important' that comes up will cut infront of work. If they need to go to school, or camp, or have a family event...they'll do that instead of work because work isn't a necessity.

The poor on the otherhand will go to work over all else, and they'll never have their parents give them a choice between going to work next month or going on vacation in Hawaii.

This is absolutely true. People, especially people in the position to be hiring others have some truly classist concepts of "values." Many think poor people are dishonest, likely to steal, lazy. Total rubbish.

Hear hear!

No, it is not absolutely true. I came from a middle class family, but from the time I started working summer jobs, that was it for the family vacation. The employer got two weeks notice at the end of the summer--I didn't always get two weeks notice from an employer.

Yeah, meant the bit about poor teenagers being reliable, because they need the jobs. Didn't mean to agree with the sentiment that middle-class kids are unreliable. Most probably aren't. Though I myself once flaked on a job in college to spend the summer in the city my boyfriend lived in. So guess I'm anecdotal evidence they can be. I found another job in the other city, but likely wouldn't have given up a sure-thing to take that risk if I hadn't had a safety net.

I'm not saying that middle-class children are flakey, but you have to consider how most low-paying employers treat their employees.

They offer X hours per week, and constantly juggle the scheduling to suit themselves so workers don't neccesarily know when they will be called in. They do things like require long hours on one day (e.g. a 12 hour day), then cut short the hours on the next day to avoid the worker being classified as full-time or overtime pay.

It's these kind of annoyances that a middle-class kid will just ignore. They have other obligations and can get away with leaving money on the table if necessary. They don't really care if they work 25 hours a week or 20 hours. To a poor worker though those 5 hours can make or break the budget, so they'll come work a 12 hour shift if the boss requires it instead of dropping the whole day and thus getting less hours per week.

You're absolutely right about the dichotomy with respect to perception.

In my original comment, I was going to post "perception is reality" because perception, default thinking, and other heuristics underpin so much of what constitutes discrimination.

This is, of course, absolutely unfair, but most of us at least have a chance to shape how others perceive us. In the end, it's surprising how much the "little, superficial" things matter in that respect.

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