Hacker News Reader

Comment by pkdpic | Hacker News Reader

> remember that all across the world are millions of other people working the truly important jobs

Im going to assume this wasn't intenional but it came off as a little negative given the rest of the positivity in this sweet message.

It just got me thinking about underpaid educators and childcare workers who for the most part are off today. Really everyone, we're all in this together right? Keeping this whole crazy machine running for each other.

Regardless this was a nice thing to see bubble up today, merry christmas HN!

View on HN

Yeah I agree. This reads to me more as one of those folks who is always trying to one up. Oh, you're tired? Well I got less sleep than that!

Shout out to everyone who decided not to work today because of work life balance. You're the real mvp, in my opinion. We are humans, not machines.

> Im going to assume this wasn't intenional but it came off as a little negative given the rest of the positivity in this sweet message.

I’m not following your logic here. How is this a negative thing? OP is literally praising people for their dedication with good faith intentions.

Because it could be interpreted to imply that "even if your job isn't important, lots of us have jobs that are." I think it's the "truly" that makes it just slightly ambiguous. Maybe if they had said "also working" to make it sound like the audience was included in the statement, idk.

I don't think it was negative, but I can definitely see how someone could take it that way. I saw a glimmer of it.

I had the same thinking as you after reading the first part about it sounding negative. I didn't read it like that at all.

The last part makes it clear though. Child education is a truly important job.

I think emphasis also changes this subtly. I.e. did you read it in a neutral "truly important jobs" way or for example with emphasis only truly. "_truly_ important jobs_". Like "yeah yeah educator is important but not really. Only these other jobs are the really important ones, like burger flipper at McD". Well to be honest that does read quite negative to me!

It's so subtle, I am willing to give OP the benefit of the doubt. This level of pedantry in a rather innoucious post is kind of worrying though. Sorry to bring this up at all, since I was confused.

Happy holidays!

I think the key word that makes it perhaps slightly negative is "the". Take that out and it's totally fine. The "the" specifies it and implies the jobs that take Christmas off aren't as important.

just because OP stated jobs on Christmas are the truly important ones doesn't imply that other jobs that don't work Christmas aren't important. Your logic is the same logic as people getting offended by "Black lives matter" and them saying "all lives matter".

Reply on news.ycombinator.com