Wiring is not a hobby. Plumbing is not a hobby. Hanging windows is not a hobby.
Similarly, working on your own brakes is not a hobby!
11 Likes
My first landlord was the best landlord ever. His office was downstairs, and one of his specialties was tenant law, and he was nice. Learned what to take and not take from landlords (here in my liberal paradise home state). Learned how to be one responsibly as well, which may be a retirement job for me.
14 Likes
And of course, when the squatter rents it out you know he vets his prospective tenant well. He’s not going to rent it to someone who might also turn into some scurrilous squatter who tries to take advantage of the system!
6 Likes
I don’t understand what you mean by that.
Are you saying that self employed people who work piecemeal jobs are rude, or something? Like, they’re above integrating into the existing social/employment hierarchy?
1 Like
So, you were paid (thus a professional) in a trade that required knowledge of tool use?
Not your average academic!
I have no beef with people who stick to their skills, or even those who try to do things outside their expertise as a serious hobby, but it’s pretty scary to see how many people don’t register that there are reasons for doing things a certain way so as to not cause a fire or a collapse, etc. Those who are known experts in their non-trade fields seem to be prone to that hubris.
Guess I’ve known too many academics over the course of my life, huh? It’s clearly a sore spot with me. There’s an undervaluing of the knowledge and effort that goes into keeping a house/building up to code and fully functional. Somehow that’s just not as important as knowing which emperor during the Jade Dynasty was responsible for so-and-so’s banishment from the court. Anyone can build a deck or rewire a kitchen, right? That’s peon work. Why would I need to research how to do it properly?
10 Likes
I read it as dark humor. Very much supportive of freelance work, not prejudiced against it.
9 Likes
Agreed! At least in the sense that ‘hobby’ suggests ‘infrequent/irregular activity undemanding of a certain critical level of competency’. My closest friend fixes his own cars (and those of his friends) and does so very well.
His daytime job? Computer and electrical engineering.
I refer to his interest and talent in auto mechanics as a ‘skill’, 'cause it sure doesn’t fit the connoted meaning of ‘hobby’.
4 Likes
6 Likes
Agreed! And heat in the winter in colder areas. I can’t imagine working at a gas company turning off the gas in mid-February because someone can’t pay the bill. Though they probably have computers now that do it automatically.
2 Likes
FWIW, that’s actually a crime in Chicago. Landlords are legally required to provide heat – even if the tenant isn’t keeping up with the rent – during our winter months. In our weather it’s tantamount to murder, otherwise.
18 Likes
Then why position that landlords “only want a stable income” and that tenants rights to not be exploited are not a serious concern?
We all want balance. Sadly persons are persons and not all landlords are doing this out of the goodness of their heart. Exploitation from either party is worth serious concern.
Well, not very much, and I already had most of my tool skills before I took the job.
It used to be part of the American ethos that we should all be able to stand on our own two feet and perhaps build our own house. When I was young I had several years of mandatory shop class in both junior high and high school. This doesn’t seem to be so widespread anymore, but I don’t think that professionals should be any more necessary for basic household maintenance as they are for, say, basic household cooking. I’ll bring in a plumber or an electrician for any job which requires specialized skills (or specialized tools) or where I don’t have the time, but I often feel a little bit guilty doing so.
Our house was built by an architect for his own family, and he had his friends in various trades help him build it. All professionals. We’ve spent 20 years correcting mistakes they made. You don’t need to be an academic to screw up construction.
[quote=“Phrenological, post:51, topic:91993, full:true”]
Then why position that landlords “only want a stable income” and that tenants rights to not be exploited are not a serious concern?[/quote]
Pretty sure I never did that.
8 Likes
I wasn’t allowed to. Tracking, you see: I was an excellent student, and thus was not allowed to take any non-precollegiate courses.
But that reminds me of another example of how stupid tracking can be:
I had a friend who wanted to go into the building trades. She signed up for all the prerequisite classes as soon as she could, with the goal of being part of the senior year track of actually building a house (which was then sold, to make the money to fund the following year’s house). But then she figured out that there was no way for her to get there; she would be two courses short, with no way to catch up because each class had prerequisites to go to the next one.
You see, back in junior high (there were numerous junior highs feeding into this high school, so I don’t know what the rules were elsewhere, but she and I were together since then so I can confirm the issue with our junior high rules) the “electives” in 7th grade were set but in 8th grade you could choose what you wanted. In 7th grade, all girls had to take home economics cooking and sewing, all boys had to take shop and drafting, and everyone took art and typing. In 8th grade, she of course immediately took shop and drafting and went on from there. But the boys from our junior high were always two courses ahead of her.
Meanwhile, I wasn’t allowed to take elective art classes after 7th grade, or shop, or car mechanics (which I really wanted to do) because I wasn’t in those tracks.
Fortunately I had grown up doing various handyman, home improvement, and even some construction work so I was not as one-sided as they tried to make me.
Sorry for the OT tangent…
13 Likes
[quote=“anon67050589, post:53, topic:91993, full:true”]
[quote=“d_r, post:52, topic:91993”]
When I was young I had several years of mandatory shop class in both junior high and high school.[/quote]
I wasn’t allowed to. Tracking, you see: I was an excellent student, and thus was not allowed to take any non-precollegiate courses.[/quote]
We had serious tracking as well, but that didn’t mean anything as far as the shop requirement. However, you wouldn’t have taken shop because of the penis requirement, shop in my schools was only for the boys. (Likewise I didn’t have the opportunity to take home ec, so only learned to use a sewing machine 3 years ago.) Typing was co-ed.
5 Likes
It would be nice though if the whim of the landlord were allowed in cases where rent hasn’t been paid in months.
My impression is that a lot of the horror stories involve mom and pop landlords. Businesses can afford lawyers and treat things like a business. Mom and pops tend to be, I think, more trusting, and less likely to hire a lawyer last month already when things go crossways. Being decent human beings dealing with law meant for the abusive is part of the problem- tenant laws are fine, except non-lawyers might not cross every t or dot every i or miss a deadline, and every time that happens the tenant gets another free month. Meanwhile larger businesses that do treat treat tenants like a turnip to wring blood out of can afford lawyers so it barely affects them.
Have a buddy who rented his condo out and they got 7 months free out of him. Mostly because he’s not a lawyer. But I don’t think one should have to be.
I’m kind of curious if California is unique- I feel like I have the impression that our tenants’ rights laws are more in favor of tenants, but I don’t know if this is true or not. Whenever I hear stories like this woman it’s always California.
I can see how I could end up in a bad situation like this- after all, the first tenant we had sublet his place twice and I simply didn’t have the nerve to tell him no ( my rationalization was that he had plenty of valuable stuff and thus an incentive to be careful, which he really wasn’t). Luckily they all worked out fine.
2 Likes
My dad was an academic, and he grew up on a farm. He wired our back studio on our last house. He knows what he’s doing, but at the same time I think he’s pretty good about knowing his limits. At the same time, I’ve had licensed electricians completely fuck up.
I do worry that as our country has become less rural, a lower percentage of the population has the kind of broad range of skills that one acquires in that setting. I think it’s sad that that kind of passed-down knowledge is lost at a large scale, and I’m sad for me in particular as I have no idea how to butcher an animal, or do the kind of construction stuff he used to do on our house. I can’t really venture beyond the more basic stuff in the Home Depot book.
3 Likes
Not in the slightest. I think the “gig” or “sharing” economy (insert whatever coy phrase you’d care to find) is yet another crap deal that moves money upwards while doling out Packingtown rates to all the worker bees. Same as it always was.
14 Likes
A long time ago I lived on a small boat and worked a job that involved long stretches at sea.
On 4 occasions I gave other people a key to the boat while I was away, for one reason or another over the years.
- My sister. All went just fine.
- My closest friend, all went well.
- A girl that I liked. When I returned 3 weeks later the key had worked its way through 3 people to the point where I got home to find a random guy sitting on my bench, wearing my clothes and strumming my guitar. Not happy, but he did little damage.
- The friend of my closest friend. Who immediately had another person move in with him and started the party. I was away for 30 days - both of them cleared out about 8 hours before I returned, largely because my friend had gone on the warpath and thrown them out. It took me weeks to clean up the boat, and a long time to convince the wharf manager that I had nothing to do with the shenanigans. A year later one of them showed up on a rainy night, assumed I was at sea and broke into my boat to spend the night. When I got home later that evening he and his things were unceremoniously dumped out.
Sharing your home is fraught with hazard.
16 Likes
Yeah, I could do physics biology and chemistry, but not learn electronics, or how to make engines work, or how to get plants to grow. Cos that makes sense, right?
1 Like
