this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2024
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It said make coffee at home. Can make some small but not insignificant savings that way.
Look if we can’t even buy a coffee then what is honestly the fucking point? I don’t personally drink coffee but the point still stands that it’s not a wholly unreasonable thing to be asking for yet we’re constantly told that it’s a moral failing to spend our money. Fuck even when we stop buying stuff they whine that no one is consuming anymore. I just want to contribute to the local economy for fuck’s sake!
Face it, we’re all severely underpaid and it’s not our job to save every single dollar we possibly can just so they can pay us so little that there’s basically nothing leftover anyway. Being frugal to get something normally outside of our means should be a choice we get to make and a daily coffee should not be considered outside anyone’s means.
It says make coffee at home to save money. You can still buy coffee to-go if you want to but you'll probably have to save that money from somewhere else. Yeah, being poor sucks, who knew.
It does suck, and it doesn’t need to be that way. Living with a knife lodged in your arm also sucks but a doctor wouldn’t say “yea of course it hurts, it’s a knife!”; they’d actually try and fuckin’ help.
The issue is that when you make something as simple as a daily coffee a moral issue then you can open up very small amounts to mockery. They’re not trying to help, they’re trying to make it so it’s not their fault that all you can afford is over-inflated rent and rising food prices. They want any savings to go to them, not to us.
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Forty years old working an office job you were educated for? Get a roommate because we think wanting to afford your own place at that age is entitled!
Working a physical job? We’re all gunna make you sound stupid so that even though you provide a great value and we demand a high level of quality of work we also won’t have to pay you as much. Maybe you should be roommates with the last person!
Want a cheap coffee to start your day? Booooo, that $60-75 a month could go into my pocket instead!
I’m sorry you said you wanted a hobby?! Hahaha it better be extraordinarly cheap!
Oh you bought a cheap thing and it broke? You should have somehow bought a more expensive thing that would last longer and cost less in the long run!
Oh you bought something that would last longer and cost less in the long run? Wow look at luxury pants over here, you should be saving that money!
You paid full price for that? Why don’t you be more like me and magically have enough disposable income to take advantage of sales even when you know you won’t need the thing for months.
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It’s all just bullshit to fuck you over and make people fight eachother. They give us raises worth less than even just the inflation of the previous year and then when we speak out they turn it into a moral issue. Somehow it’s always our fault even though they’re the ones overpaying themselves while underpaying everyone else.
It's not a moral issue, it's an issue of nothing having enough money. It's all fine and good to think how we can solve people being poor but it won't have very immediate effect for the person in question. A person with a knife in their arm doesn't benefit much from people starting a discussion about how to prevent knife crime.
What "person in question"? There is no "person in question" here. We are not talking about the financial problems of anyone specific. We are talking about the problem in general.
When a person comes to the hospital with a knife popping out, you want the medical crew to focus on taking the knife out while preventing the patient from bleeding to death. When there is a public debate about how so many people are getting stabbed, the debate should be about preventing them from getting stabbed, not about the specifics of how to safely pull a knife out of a living person's flesh.
The advice is directed towards people struggling with money. Any one of them would be the person in question.
You have a good analogy there but in this instance the people are already stabbed (struggling with money). At that point advice on how to stop the bleeding might have a more immediate and direct effect than someone telling them how knife crime is a solvable problem. One is more immediate and helps on a personal level and another might help on a societal level at some point in the future. Two different things, really.
The thing is that the people you tell to stop buying their coffee to-go aren't just bleeding. They are also being sucked dry.
The knife alone isn't the best metaphor, but with an additional leech it's closer to reality. And the doctor isn't removing the leech he's just removing the knife so you can still produce blood for the leech to suck out of you.
Also the doctor is paid by the leech to tell you how you can produce more blood but you shouldn't expect to actually have more of it in your system. You see how hard the leech is working on extracting that stuff from you right? That's basically a 24/7 job.
I don't think a leech is the best analogy since what you're talking about is a massive society wide issue that might never get properly solved. It's something to strive for but compared to the issue at hand (struggling to make ends meet), it's rather abstract. Meanwhile the advice here is pretty direct and could have near immediate effect. It's just two very different things.
The leech is the company you are working for. Companies are getting away with paying you so little because you are removing every little expense that is still left in your life. Fighting for better pay is very much practical.
A single person doesn't have much power in that fight. Not the same way they have over part of their own spending. I know I'm starting to sound like a broken record, but two very different things.
I agree they are different things, I just wanted to object to this being an abstract problem. It's a very practical one with very practical solutions. They do take time to implement though because it takes organised action.
I originally thought you were talking about the wider societal problem, which compared to personal spending can get pretty abstract.
Also, separate comment because it's a separate thing. The analogy is actually perfect. We should be worrying about both things, the knife and the leech. The knife needs more immediate attention because the leech is actually pretty good at keeping it's wound clean and not kill the host immediately.
The problem I have with the sentiment of the tweet of the bank is the very likely intended focus on just the one side of this issue. Part of why this is a long-winded social issue is because many people don't take the time to analyse the situation more broadly. Because they have to deal with all the knives in their arms, and get reminded of yet more knives, that the leech can't ever become the focus of the attention.
I agree with that we should focus on both, the immediate issue and the larger issue behind it.
The point being that tweets like the one in question are designed to do the opposite. They are designed to pull attention towards the knives and never to look at the leech.
I guess it's possible. I felt like it just wasn't well thought out.
The advice is directed toward imaginary people that the company conjured out of memes and stereotypes. Yes, there are people struggling, but how many of them fit the "takes a cab every day to eat out and drink coffee" template?
I know all too many people like that.
Dude, making coffee at home is not insignificant. I drink my coffee black and even that is like $2/coffee (which someone told me has gone up at Tim Horton’s since I was last there). Multiply that by the 3-4 coffees I drink a day and you’re looking at $30-$40/week which becomes becomes $120-160/month.
I can buy a can of coffee that lasts me two months and make it at home for $10. That’s a $370 savings every two months. (CAD)
Completely off topic but...
You're drinking 3-4 coffees a day? Is that normal for the people around you as well?
I only ask because that's an insane amount of caffeine for me. I think I'd be bouncing off the walls 😄
Yeah until recently I was drinking that much, but I never noticed a change in my energy levels from coffee. I could also have coffee quite late in the evening and not have trouble sleeping.
I recently cut back to max 1 a day (sometimes going days without) and haven’t noticed any change.
Doesn't sound that much for Finland at least. A couple of cups here and there.
I mean, not every day, but usually yeah. I don’t drink coffee on Sundays though because I’m aware that I drink a lot of coffee.
He said “but not insignificant”. That said, $185/mo($370/2) for something you get hot and fresh every single day should not be a big deal. The economy doesn’t function if little purchases can’t be made and it’s not like people are asking for a new pony every week. If you wanna be frugal to afford something else then that should be your choice and not just the bare minimum to be able to afford rent because your employer won’t pay you.
I do get it hot and fresh every day though.
I agree with you about the economy, but on a personal level - keep in mind I drink it black - I find the idea of buying coffee at a shop ridiculous.
I too drink 3-4 cups a days, which I make at home (or, much more often, at the office. Which means I save more money because I don't pay for the ingredients. At least not directly), but every now and then - say, once or twice a week - I buy a cup of coffee. Now, it's mostly a matter of convenience (I don't go out specifically to drink coffee, I buy it because I'm already out for other matters) but if I was financially struggling I could make that coffee at home (or at the office) and take it with me. But if wouldn't be that significant. If we use your numbers, that's about $2-$4/week - or about $156/year (I don't calculate the price of the jar because I already need it for the 3-4 cups I make myself, and yes I will use them up more often but at this point it's small change). Not much.
You drink 3-4 cups a day, and because you make them at home you imagine that these people who buy their coffee buy 3-4 cups a day. But is this really the pattern? I mean, I can say that I drink 3-4 cups a day and that I can say that I buy coffee, and both of these statements will be true. So maybe my pattern is the more common one? It would be enough to fill the cafes with people that only drink out once a week...
I don’t imagine people buying 3-4 a day. I used to do it. And yeah every now and then I’ll grab when I’m out, but usually I take two travel mugs with me to work and don’t need to.
Also, it takes less time for me to make coffee than I would spend in the Tim Horton’s drive thru in the morning. Just not worth it.
you can't fix an economy that banks have been fucking for decades that way though.
I took it as personal advice and not really as economy fixing solution
It's throwing stones in a glass house
Let's extrapolate their advice to something they can do, so as not to require bailouts from our tax money. If I have to tighten my budget and be fiscally responsible to survive, so should they.
You can take it as personal advice all you want, but they aren't taking any advice because the consequences don't lead them to homelessness. Instead, their consequences leave us holding the burden
Should, maybe. Doesn't seem like they do.
Okay, then shouldn’t we demand they do? Or at least criticize them when they don’t? We are criticizing them because they didn’t and then they told us we should.
I mean by all means. But banks and regular people aren't really in a comparable position, is what I'm saying. Maybe they should be but it's just not the situation right now.