RL professions? Options

[Kagetenshi]

Much the same as is found here—a person with no contractual or legal obligation to work for their employer, but without the reasonable ability to quit (whether to their own affairs or another job).

~J

[James McMurray]

Ah, I pay more attention to the "slave" aspect of it. Wage Slaves require an extraction and/or legal action to quit their job. Normal schmoes don't.

That definition would mean that two corporate employees, both working the exact same job under the exact same contract, would be classified as wage slaves based on whether they had a lemonade stand or not. I disagree with that interpretation, but since it isn't exactly an important matter, feel free to have your own ideas unmolested by arguments from me. :)

[ Spoiler ]

-- Lemonade stand is meant as a joke, replace it with stock portfolio if the choice bothers you.

[emo samurai]

That would include everybody, though, unless you're not counting people who live below their means and save up money.

[stevebugge]

That definition is pretty broad and open to interpretation. It could mean just about any non-owner in a company, up to and including non family executive officers in a family owned business. While this definition would satisfy a devout Marxist it probably is a bit too broad for society at large. It also seems to be a term only in common use by a certain subset of political radicals (which does make sense in the SR context of Captain Chaos being a neoanarchist) used (derogatorily) to refer to any employee.

[Kagetenshi]

Not at all. The "or to another job" is the critical part—we're not talking about people who can't go totally unemployed for five years with no financial difficulties, we're talking about people who can't afford to find another job—whether because their skillset is so specialized that there's only one employer, or because their job leaves them without the time to effectively seek other employment, or because they're bad at covering their tracks and they know they'll be fired immediately if they start looking for another job, or whatever.

If I have a lemonade stand, even if I don't make enough to live on off of that stand, that combined with my savings will allow me to live while unemployed for that much longer. At some point, that length of time becomes enough to allow me to safely look for another job, or train into a different field. As such, it is wholly appropriate that that lemonade stand should make the difference between wage slavery and not.

~J

[bustedkarma]

Wage Slave.

Pivot Tables, Pie Charts, Conference Calls, and Flow Charts.
I publish reports that go nowhere, but get nasty e-mails if they don't get done.
I write processes that will be cast aside every 6 months during a restructuring.
But I do get to troll forums all day, so thats a plus.

[James McMurray]

kage: I understand your pont of view. I just tend to focus on the more negative side of that phrase when looking through shadowrun goggles. In SR wage slaves don't even have the opportunity to go to another job without getting a corporate lawyer and/or a runner team to extractt hem.

[Calvin Hobbes]

I'm an ethics counselling consultant for a couple of companies in Canada.

[emo samurai]

What do you do, Calvin Hobbes?

[Kagetenshi]

[Lindt]

[FrostyNSO]

A wage slave is the guy who has a few years with the company and has gotten himself a position in which he can, with overtime of course, cover his overpriced rent, pay his child support, and make his car payment.

Though he is free to leave his job anytime he wants, he literally cannot afford to and still maintain the quality of life he is accustomed to. Essentially he is a slave to the wage his company pays him.

[Calvin Hobbes]

Emo: I help companies make decisions about things that have an effect on people, like what benefits to offer/how much should the company dedicate to environmental concerns/if this process harms townspeople, how much responsibility does the company have, etc. I also set up seminars for my partner to teach things like those annoying sexual harrasment seminars companies have, and other things, but since I am pug-ugly, I'm not usually the face of the company.

[James McMurray]

I guess it's just my view of Shadowrun then. I tend to focus on the slavery aspect of "wage slave." If you're not living in a state close to that of a slave, you're not a wage slave. BEing important to the operation doesn't grant you more freedom. If anything it will probably curtail it because the bosses will want to keep eyes and ears on you at all times.

Frosty: I'd say that's not a wage slave, that's a comfort slave. Anybody can quit their job at any time. Life becomes much harder, but still liveable. Obviously that disagrees with the general definition of the term as linked to above by kagetenshi, but I'm content to disagree with the masses. :)

[Tiger Eyes]

Hmmm... where's the stay-at-home parent option? :P I get to spend my days teaching two whirlwinds of destruction important things like how to count (using dice, of course), make cupcakes and do kung-fu. Just doing my bit to support Fanpro by creating future roleplayers. :grinbig:

[James McMurray]

Havig done the stay at home parent thing, I think that qualifies as a combination military / police / lawyer / service industry / professor. Depending on how you look at it and the way the day went the pay either sucks or is infinitely more valuable. :)

[emo samurai]

Yesterday on the Colbert Report, there was an article saying that, counting from corporate pay scales, stay-at-home moms deserve $132,000 a year because of the myriad things they do.

[James McMurray]

I agree. And stay at home dads deserve more. One, men make more money, and two, stay at home dads get no respect at all (which is just slightly less than stay at home moms, but still a noticable difference). :)

[Tiger Eyes]

And here I'm all happy just to find a quarter in the laundry! I need to ask for a raise!!!
;)

And yes, while the pay may suck (barring the occasional quarter), the benefits are grand. My kids don't even mind me reading Shadowrun stories to them... (with careful editing-drat those SR4 people for switching to real swear words!!!)

[James McMurray]

Really! What the frag is up with that drek?

[emo samurai]

It is NOT hard to substitute "Frag" for "Fuck."

[James McMurray]

Who said it was? However, "frag" has no social ramifications. Real world swear words do. What that means is that some poor kid somewhere is going to get his shadowrun books thrown away because his fundamentalist mom saw swear words in it. The pseudo-cursing had no detrimental effects on the game world or the game. Actual cursing could.

[Tiger Eyes]

Sheese! When you're reading outloud, it's nice to not have to 'edit' on-the-fly. :D And in our family, Sticks and his puppy lived happily ever after. :rotfl:

[emo samurai]

What else did you edit?

[mmu1]

None of the above - I'm currently a research technician in an HIV research lab / grad student to be.

(Took the job to figure out how I'd feel about a career in research and take a little breather after college - a good thing, it turns out, since I found out I hate research and the academia - unfortunately, enlightenment as to what I'd like to do instead has proven elusive.)