Yep. The 50’s was dudes working in the asbestos plants, chemical plants and automotive plants without any sort of PPE. I mean, folks in general were eating off of actually radioactive dinner plates made of (depleted) uranium and lead was in everything down to kids toys.

Health and safety for workers was better than the 1800’s, but certainly a far cry from what we have today.

This post was brought to you by people who have never worked a manual labor job in their life

We're not talking about an average man. We're talking about a man whose wife puts unholy things in jelly. There is something wrong with that man.

Drive technology and civilization into the future without killing a bunch of people?! That sounds like SOCIALISM!!!

Ah, I miss it. Just me, an offset serrated knife, a bag of onions the size of a child, a slippery floor, a nearby open flame, music that hurts my ears... And not an email in sight.

Are you describing cops?

I don't miss it at all. Physically I was busy enough, but it was excruciatingly boring.
That applied to my work, but I imagine that building, landscaping and other trades that require actual skill can be engaging, if one chooses to learn an improve.

It was because aspics were meant to 'contain' stuff, not just be gross, savory Jell-O. Like, a traditional aspic salad would have various fruits suspended in it.

I think when gelatin became common in grocery stores, people were just all about the novelty. If you read cookbooks from the 50s that have these recipes in them, you see a commonality — people were just chuffed as chips that they could make a cake that jiggles lol.

So. Much. Hot. Honey. Lately.

It is everywhere.

Extra Sour Flamin' Hot Jell-O.

You are correct that office jobs are less physically strenuous, but they come with their own unique mental horrors. Nobody at a factory spends a week working on a report, only for their boss to decide on a Friday afternoon that everything is wrong and needs to be redone by Monday with no overtime pay, or any opportunity to say 'no, I can't take that job.'

Especially with Work from Home, there is no separation between the stress of needing to perform and the relaxation associated with home. You are on, ALL THE TIME, and most people who work at offices for salaries are expected to be available to chat / meet at any time of day, including at 2 or 3 AM if you are working with Indians or Hong Kongers.

Yeah I am not destroying my knees, but my self-confidence and mental health are absolute dogshit.

Don't be classist, folks. If someone needs to work to survive, they are more alike you than they are not like you. Separating ourselves from each other only serves the wealthiest among us.

lol what

I’d kill to be at home with my kids instead of working.

Gelatin doesn't really have a flavor on it's own though, and I agree that the box-mix stuff is all kind of mid. This is why you make flaming hot and sour jello, instead.

Jello is just kinda… Meh.

Prior to the development of instant gelatin aka Jello, gelatin was extremely labor intensive and thus expensive. It was rich folk food that suddenly had a massive crash in price and difficulty to make. So it was in everything for a while, until it stopped being seen as this super high-class thing that the poors finally had access to.

Imagine the price of caviar suddenly plummeted to $0.01/oz, and what the next couple of years of cooking would look like as a result.

Don't forget there were a lot of war vets in the mix too, with a good proportion of them that lost comrades in D-day and Market Garden. Mental health, were it tracked like it is today, would have clocked somewhere between "uh-oh" and "abysmal." Everyone self-medicated with alcohol, more work, and motorcycles... if at all.

I think that's true of many people.

But I suspect that the numbers are pretty evenly split between "would thrive in either role," "would be miserable in either role," "would much prefer being in the paid workforce," and "would much prefer being a stay at home parent."

My wife and I are squarely in the "would much prefer being in the paid workforce," because we like our jobs, and because we want our children in an organized school environment (and paying for after care is fine for them and for us). Most of our social circle are in the same boat. But most of us are mid-career white collar professionals and have better than average flexibility over work hours and location (at perhaps the cost of a blurred boundary between work and home). So our jobs are easier to balance with parenting.

On the flip side, home situation matters a lot, too. How much you enjoy different types of household work (cooking, cleaning, home improvement/maintenance), different functions of a caretaker (feeding kids, scheduling out activities, being that first line as an educator or first aid or driver, etc.), how well your hobbies and interests fit into a lifestyle as a full time caretaker, etc.

One of my friends gave up his main career to take care of his kids, but now that they're in school he went back to personal training at a gym. He lines up clients and is only available for sessions between school dropoff and pickup (10am to 2pm). It's a good intermediate holding pattern for him, and he'll likely go back to his main white collar career once his kids are old enough to be latchkey kids. That being said, I know he wasn't super happy not working outside of the home, and this personal trainer thing has him in a much better spot than when his kids were too young for school.

I loved cooking in a professional kitchen. The job itself was great. Some of the coworkers were all over the place, but I fucking loved the good ones.

And there's something immensely satisfying about the teamwork behind turning a bunch of raw ingredients into multiple delicious meals, perfectly timed out with each dish hitting the table at the right moment. (The frustration of a kitchen that isn't doing this is a separate story.)

But the industry itself has so much toxicity. Bad managers, bad owners. Substance abuse problems. And the real reason I left wasn't actually the bad pay. It was the miserable hours. I was always a night owl but I couldn't deal with the isolating separation from my family and non-industry friends from working nights, weekends, and holidays when everyone else was building memories and reinforcing bonds.

Why limit yourself.

Both.

I mean.. I'd try it. I might not like it, but I'll give it a go.