Yeah No

Trump's taste is an example of what a lower class person thinks looks high class. Wow, how fortunate for you. My husband would be jealous. He grew up in Washington Hts. in Manhattan. His father was born in Ireland and he has many cousins there. A few came to visit the US when he was still living at home but he never met most of them until 20 years ago when we visited Ireland.

The thing is that it never was a part time job but he was very happy with the hours before the daughter in MA decided to use him twice a week round trip instead of driving herself or taking the train. That's an extra 700 miles a week added to his schedule all by itself. If not for her right now this wouldn't be an issue. That put it over the top. It's also not just the time driving that is part of his job but the time waiting for his passengers at airports, restaurants, in front of hotels, offices, houses, etc. A lot of these jobs are what they call a "wait and return" which means it's not just driving, it's also waiting for them to eat, attend a meeting, shop, get their hair done, get off a flight, etc. And as a lot of this stuff happens in NYC it can take up a lot of time and be a lot of work all by itself. He has to find a place to park, deal with traffic, etc. And speaking of the traffic, the mileage doesn't even account for all the time spent sitting in traffic. NYC and CT traffic is often horrible as @EtheltoTillie knows. And then he has to be driving at odd hours because planes often take off and land either early in the AM or late in the evening. So we are talking about extra time being added to the jobs in waiting and traffic, which is why even a few jobs a week adds up to more than just a part time job. It's more than it sounds like it is. At least when he was working for limo. companies dispatch would keep track of how many miles and hours he clocked and wouldn't overburden him, but no one's doing that in this case. One family member doesn't know what the other ones are doing. They have no idea how many miles or hours my husband is working on any given day or week. So he has to learn to advocate for himself. But it puts him in an awkward position. I get it. He's a real road warrior, he doesn't shy away from any work and can handle it. He amazes me. He drives in weather that no one I know would ever drive in without batting an eye. Drivers half his age couldn't handle the workload he can handle. But drivers are usually either in some control over what jobs they take like with rideshare or they have dispatchers that manage it for them. In this case, though, he doesn't have either one. And I feel for him because I understand how hard this would be for him to bring up with his boss. He really shouldn't have to be in that position. Yesterday he ended up coming up here after that morning job in NYC but it turned out to be a good thing from his point of view. He got to the house just at the right time to meet with the electrician, which was important because he wanted to tell him where we want outlets, etc. Then he got a text from his second pick-up (the other daughter coming in from CA) that she took a later flight and wouldn't be arriving until 10:30 at night. So he was able to come back to the hotel and grab another 4 hours of sleep, then go back down to JFK. He got back here after midnight. Fortunately he was off today and took it somewhat easy. Tomorrow he works again but so far there's nothing on the schedule for Monday. Tuesday he works again. That's as much as we know. Everything is on short notice.

Of course they can both be true but that's not what that post said. There were a few insinuations and implications being made there that added up to it being more than just a "disagreement". The assumptions and presumptions about what I said weren't very true or very nice and I think I have every right and reason to not appreciate them and to say so.

I can't seem to say anything here anymore without someone calling me to task over it. Just because I said getting old sucks doesn't mean I'm also saying all the rest you read into my comment and assumed I meant! Beau Bridges will never look like that again but that doesn't mean I think he looks like crap for his age either! But I don't appreciate being told there's something wrong with me, that I'm unhealthy, alone, or incapacitated for the way I feel about getting older. And actually I HAVE been incapacitated recently for medical reasons due to a condition that I have developed in my "old age". Thankfully it was short lived but it was not fun. Thanks so much for reminding me of that....I was trying my best to forget. My friends and I often talk about how it sucks. All our aches and pains and medical conditions. At least we can feel better knowing we're not alone in that. And I think that's a pretty healthy way to deal with it.

Yes, on behalf of all the older people on this thread, we remember when Beau Bridges was young and cute, and definitely not the kind of guy I could see playing an evil meanie. More like the kind of guy you'd want for your boyfriend, LOL. 🥰 Beau Bridges is now 83. Getting old sucks.....😞

Yes he does have a rule. He risks losing his CDL license if he drives too many hours, but I forget what the limit is. I have told him to mention that to his boss so he can justify it. But like I say the problem is getting him to talk to his boss. I can just see the look on his face when I tell him "my internet friends" are worried about him. 😉 My RL friends are also worried. I will keep mentioning it. He needs to hear it. I'm not going to let up on it. He is an employee of his boss's company. So I guess that means the boss would get sued? Ugh. Another reason he should talk to his boss! CT traffic is horrible. When I used to visit my Dad in NYC I had a strict rule about leaving no later than about 2:00 p.m., preferably before, because if I left any later the traffic got insane. And it's even worse now than it was then, especially in the Summer. He does when he can, and does it often. There's a little limo. parking lot at JFK where he likes to go for that purpose. Today, though, he just wanted to come up to the house to see the construction - more on that later. I have news for you - he often leaves in the early morning and doesn't come back until late evening or even after midnight. And most of that time is spent driving. These are long distance jobs. Two of the adult children live in Massachusetts and the grandmother lives in NJ right over the GW Bridge, and the boss and wife live in Westport. Most of the time the destination is NYC or Westport. We live near Hartford which is about an hour and 15 minutes from Westport. It's a lot of driving. It might be easier if we lived closer to Westport but his boss knew we couldn't easily move out of our house for several reasons when he hired my husband. And now with the renovations it's even less possible. Plus we really don't want to move back to Fairfield County. It's a lot more expensive and we like it up here. My husband figures he's only going to work a few more years anyway. Well, he's on salary and if you added his working hours up for the last few weeks I'm sure he's working well over 40 hours a week. The family just bought a new luxury SUV for him to drive that's only been used for one week now and he has put 1,800 miles on it. This level of work has been going on for over a month now. Before that he was working maybe half that. This was not supposed to turn into driving the kids everywhere and anywhere they wanted on a twice weekly basis on a moment's notice (he gets no advance notice from the kids). They have a few kids and that would be a lot if they continued to use him that much. It's gotten to the point that he has to turn them down because he's already booked! He also has to drive their parents and the grandmother. Before a month ago the daughter near Boston drove herself to Westport. And the one in California only came to visit once every couple of months. Now he is driving her back and forth from JFK to Westport weekly. And don't forget, he lives an hour and 15 minutes from Westport before he even starts the job and has to come back here. It's just too much. And no one is coordinating this. It comes from every angle at a moment's notice. That's no way to live. He can't plan to do anything without risking having to cancel or ask for a vacation day, which he doesn't want to do just to go out to dinner. The parents at least give him some notice. He is up to the job but that's not the point. He doesn't charge them per job, he's on a salary and he's not getting paid more now to do do twice the work. And they should know that it's a lot to ask of a 69 year old. They never asked that much from him in 4 years - why all of a sudden now? It makes zero sense. That's a lot of miles on the car in one week and it's been like that for a month already. Of course he used to drive that when he worked for limo. companies but he wasn't his age then. His boss knows how old he is. It's a complicated situation because his boss hired him because he liked him so much. So we have to figure he knew what he was getting into and was willing to be flexible about it. And he never asked for this much before. But he's not even asking for it. He's probably not even aware of how much the kids are asking from him. He is not keeping track of how much they use my husband for travel. I think if he knew he'd tell his daughter to get her car fixed or take the train or an Uber.

Oh for sure most of the women I worked for were nice, but sometimes I'd run into a particularly insecure one. And I knew of others I thankfully never supported. I think it's difficult to be a woman in the corporate world, at least one that wants to climb the corporate ladder, so it breeds that kind of thing, unfortunately. I haven't worked in it for a decade but back then there was still the "good ol' boy" network for men so they didn't feel as insecure because they usually had connections. The women did not. HRs were always trying to get women to form one of their own but it was like herding cats, unfortunately.

If anyone is the poster child of what is considered "elite" it should be Trump. After all, he is Wharton school educated and comes from money and positional power. But he is proof that none of those things make a person an "elite" at all. It's attitude. Trump didn't have the attitude of a person with his education and advantages. And the intellectuals that would have expected it of him did not accept him as one of their own, that's for sure. But it wasn't because he was a "nerd". To them he was an unsophisticated, ignoramus that probably got all that thanks to the advantages that came along with his family's wealth and connections. A friend of mine (also from Queens) would say of Trump, "Oh, he has plenty of class. Too bad it's all lower", LOL. He wanted the intelligent intellectuals to accept him but he's a cartoon caricature and not that bright. And definitely not that self aware. So that's why he hates them and wants to pit "the little guy" against them. It's revenge. he felt snubbed by them. Well, sorry to say I understand why he was now that I know what he's really made of. And I'm not an elitist snob, either. As the old saying goes, "If the shoe fits, wear it"!

Yeah, I can't deny it, it was cool. Even when Neil was in my physics class I knew he was destined for greatness somehow. A lot of science types are shy and awkward but he has great interpersonal skills which have served him well. And of course he was cute so I took photos of him with my Minolta, LOL. 😉 i had that problem all through my career. Not from men, but from women managers and higher that were threatened by my intelligence. I was never in competition with them at all being an executive assistant but it bothered them that I was their subordinate and I somehow made them feel inferior. Meanwhile they just LOVED the barely educated, lazy and unreliable assistants. To be honest, I never had this issue with male managers because men are not socialized to be in competition with women that way while women tend to be socialized to see other women as competition.

I agree, I just can't seem to convince him of this and if I try too hard he gets mad at me. He keeps saying he'll say something to his boss and then doesn't do it. He was going to stay in a hotel down near NYC between jobs today. He's down there right now after a drop off, but he has another pickup in the evening. I told him he shouldn't come back up here - stay in a hotel near the airport and take a nap for chrissakes. But NO, he's so excited about this house renovation that he wants to come back up here just to check on it then drive back down. It's too much! And when I tell him that he gets mad at me and says he'll be fine! I'm here, I'll check on it and send him photos. I do that anyway. But nooo.....At least he's off tomorrow but then he's back down there for his regular Sunday job. He seems to think it's going to die down soon but he has thought that before and it hasn't happened yet. It's maddening!

Oh I saw that Miss Teen USA video, that went viral. Believing you're just as good as anyone else exactly as you are is fine but don't make that an excuse not to better yourself and act like anyone who thinks you might benefit from doing so is a snob who thinks they're better than you. It's flawed logic. And yeah, Trump is stoking that for his own purposes. We've often said here that Trump likes dumb people because he can dupe and use them. So of course he will encourage stupidity. And he wants to pit those people against the educated because he hates them and wants revenge. Oh I know people like that too even where I live. My husband would have loved to go to college if not for his dyslexia making that difficult (he's tried many times) so he was never taken in by that mentality. He always valued an education. I wouldn't have married him if he had not had those values. But he was taken in by that George Soros myth and even a lot of educated Republicans fell for it. Now that he sees what Trump, Musk and MAGA are doing the similarities are not lost on him and he is more skeptical about that. Thank goodness. I told him, "Everything Trump and the right wing pundits said the Dems. and Soros were doing is what he and Musk want to do and are trying to do with their own agenda". He can't refute that. He knows it. He just stays very quiet. That's terrible! I worked at my university after graduation in Admissions and that's the only way I could afford my graduate education. I took out student loans for my undergrad.

This is a very good point, but I don't know any so-called "elitist intellectuals" that devalue the knowledge of a builder or a plumber. They marvel at it because it's not their wheelhouse. And that's not what people look down on. People look down on ignorance, which incidentally as I've said has absolutely NOTHING to do with type and level of education and grades. Friends who met my father thought he was a freaking college professor, meanwhile he dropped out of HS to serve in WWII and was entirely self taught in many subjects. If the so-called "elites" look down on ignorance it's not because they're looking down on someone's lack of a higher education but the lack of common sense, which seems to be lacking these days. My mother's entire family was in construction when they first came to this country (some still are) and none had much of an education, yet they were not what elites would call "ignorant" by any measure. Most uneducated people used to see a college education as a way to better themselves and their lives in many ways. They didn't project this into an inferiority complex when comparing themselves to educated people. They wanted to be more like them, not rebel against them and blame them for looking down on them. I think we've written here about the culture of ignorance in the US these days. That's something that uneducated people have adopted. No longer is a higher education seen as a ticket to success and they look down on it now as if to justify their decision not to seek one. When a college education is available to more people than ever they need to justify their decision not to get one and find a reason to feel as good about themselves for making that choice. Yet no "elite" intellectuals I know of would look down on them for that if they didn't also have their heads up their asses and prey for the likes of Trump who uses them and their lack of self worth to his advantage. My family didn't so it's not a requirement. I never looked down on people without college educations and no one I grew up with had that attitude. But if people brag and act like being ignorant is a badge of honor and then believe and do stupid things, well that's something I can't respect. And THAT's the issue, not a lack of education.

Thanks for that tip, though. I just ordered them for when we get back home. If I get them before I leave the hotel I'll put them out to see if they help. Thankfully the smell isn't so bad in the bedroom here so it didn't bother me as I slept. And at least we were cool, too!

Thanks so much, ECM! On the up side the house is looking FANTASTIC! Tomorrow the new roof goes on and windows in. The old gutters are already off. Next week it's drywall and electrical. My head is spinning! Of course we worry about everything too much. Like of course on the news they're telling us about there being a "brush and house fire alert" due to the warm weather. So of course I'm worried that there will be an electrical mishap and the house will burn down. But we do have reason to worry. My husband just got here and told me he went by the house and the front door wasn't locked. He had to lock it himself and set the alarm. I don't know how many times I told these workmen to remember to lock it and yet if we're not there this happens. So this is why we're nervous wrecks... That's the thing, there are no deodorizers. I think they sprayed the carpet with something when they were cleaning the room. Maybe this room had pets in it so they gave it a more aggressive dose? This is a pet friendly hotel. The other room didn't smell of this at all. I've kept the windows open all day and the smell doesn't seem to be dissipating at all!

I think you're making some assumptions here that don't apply the way you think they do. I grew up in the Bronx along with a lot of other people who did not have much money, whose parents did not go to college and who may have worked in blue collar jobs. Just because we did well in school didn't some how make us "elites" in any way, shape or form. In fact we were the ones bullied and hated by the "cool" people and they were not punching "up" in any way, shape or form. In fact they thought they were better than us! Those are assumptions that don't apply in the real world. I know you think you see things that others don't see - well so do I and I don't see that. Yes it does change that. My parents grew up dirt poor in the Great Depression. Neither one went to college (my mother did as an adult but many years later). Neither one was ever "elite" in any way, shape or form. In fact they would be offended if anyone ever said that of them. They struggled financially all of their lives. Their intelligence and good grades didn't earn them any kind of elite status in this world in anyone's eyes. Being "elite" is a state of mind. It has nothing to do with education, social background or even income. Anyone can put on airs and be a snob and actually fool people into thinking they're "better" than them somehow. They have more "class" are "above" them or whatever. Elitists are poseurs, not genuine. Genuine intellectuals do not put on airs. Speaking of Neil DeGrasse Tyson, he's an example of the type of person I went to school with, because he actually was a classmate of mine in my year at Bronx Science. He communicates to the public better because a) he's an extrovert and b) he's at heart a Bronx kid and "regular" guy, not an "elite" in an ivory tower. And sure, he could have been, but the point is that his intellect and grades did not automatically put him in that category.