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Comment by snarf21 | Hacker News Reader

I agree that school is challenging for kids. However, isn't work also "a prison like setting with strict rules and little freedom, and you're forced to interact with a huge number of immature people of similar age"? I agree we need school reforms but kids also crave schedule and interaction. I'm not sure how they get those while their parents are away at work. We can argue about what the perfect interactions are for kids. People can also decide to do home schooling if they don't like the existing systems. In the end, life is complicated and anxiety inducing. We all need these life skills to deal with these stresses. I think we need more classes specifically around teaching coping skills and learning how to interact with others. I think that will be more beneficial than kids just staying in their bedrooms everyday.

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> However, isn't work also "a prison like setting

I've never worked anywhere that I needed permission to use the bathroom.

Controlled bathroom breaks are very much a feature of some work environments.

https://theconversation.com/companies-target-toilet-breaks-t...

You're lucky. Most of us have, at some point.

"Most of us"? Really? I absolutely acknowledge that some jobs do this as other commenters have noted. But "most" sounds like an extreme stretch. I've he;d plenty of low-paying, manual labor jobs and never even heard of the practice until the last few years. It's the overwhelming norm at schools and - as far as I've seen - fairly exceptional at a job.

It's not so much the low-payingness as much as the corporate-behemothness.

People that work at Walmart, Amazon, major grocery store chains, etc. (i.e. the major employers in America) are expected to man their post until it's time for their legally mandated scheduled bathroom break.

I suspect most people did have a job like that once in their lives. Then again, the last time I actually had a job like that I was actually still in high school, so that sort of policy didn't seem too strange to me at the time.

You think you can just take a bathroom break every time you like when you're working retail? Most people I know have worked a retail job or service industry job where they have assigned break periods, and bathroom usage outside of those would be impossible, or very frowned upon.

I guess some people in this industry had parents with enough money to avoid ever having to do a non-tech industry job? That would surprise me.

Some manual or skilled labour jobs would permit random breaks, I guess. But most people I know worked service industry. You don't get to just leave a cash register unattended because your bladder says to.

My original comment certainly didn't have much nuance in it, but I would certainly draw a distinction between a reasonable need to schedule bathroom breaks around job duties and the need to raise one's hand and ask someone's permission, which they can arbitrarily deny.

I worked various crummy retail jobs for 4 years.

In my experience, the problem of needing to go to the bathroom while also needing to man a register was overcome by a quick "yo, could you cover me for a sec?" to a coworker.

You're right. giant companies like amazon don't make you ask permission to use the bathroom. they just fire you for not performing at a pace where you fail if you use the bathroom, so then people start peeing in water bottles.

https://nypost.com/2018/04/16/amazon-warehouse-workers-pee-i...

In some situations you can pee whenever you want, but you might miss your quota as a result and get fired. Weren't Amazon warehouse workers having to pee into bottles to keep up, or was that just exaggeration?

Hell my job is a lot like staying in my bedroom everyday.

At work, you're by and large subject to the laws of the country, not a mix of arbitrary "policy" dreamed up to keep administrators out of trouble and the law of the strongest and most violent.

For example: If you are assaulted on work grounds, you have a right to self-defense which will be respected by the police, who will show up, as opposed to being punished the exact same as the person who committed the assault by a school administrator who has decided that Zero Tolerance/Fight-Free Schools means everyone who is involved in an altercation is automatically equally guilty.

> I think we need more classes specifically around teaching coping skills and learning how to interact with others.

This is a good thought, but it runs up against the fact it would involve teaching students to stand up to arbitrary and capricious authority, which is the strategy a number of teachers use to maintain class order. Being able to cope and interact with the world necessarily entails being able to push back against the worst abuses of many school systems, religious organizations, and, yes, to some extent work environments.

The difference is that work pays you and you are free to choose a different job/business/employer and if you are highly paid (or work on your skills to become highly paid) you are able to save money and not have to work at all for a certain period of time and live off savings.

School is a prison you're forced to go to, are not paid and are typically not able to change schools like you would change jobs (you could potentially go to a private school, but that would depend on your parents having and willing to spend the $$$).

You aren't required to go to work at a place where that is the case. School is a legal requirement for minors of a certain age in the US.

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