Thomas Blackshear II, Paintings.

Masterpieces from revered artist Thomas Blackshear II who lives and works in Colorado Springs, Colorado.

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like lmao one time I got hit by a car so i had to last minute call out from work at walmart, and i get there the next day, i looked fucked up as hell, and they’re like “so whyd you call out last minute without checking with us first? it’s a major warning gotta say”

and i’m like “well, as the call out said, i got hit by a car and was in the hospital. because you know. i was hit by a car and as you can see bones are broken on me and i am very scratched up and bruised.”

and they get the fucking most ridiculous look on their face like they’re broken or something and theyre like “will it happen again?”

and i’m like “will i get hit by a car again? I don’t know. Didn’t think I would this time either”

like they’re acting like they don’t understand what getting hit by a car is because their bullshit training doesn’t account for it lmao… as if they aren’t human enough to understand what getting hit by a car is

the whole time i was off my manager insisted i call in every single day to tell them i was taking the day off. even when i called them from the hospital, barely able to speak, saying they’d found another issue (Mono) and that I’d be off for at least two weeks the response was “Oh I’m sorry to hear that, let us know how you’re feeling tomorrow.”

talking felt like swallowing glass, and the only words i spoke for the majority of my time off was the hoarse croaking i made down the phone to let my manager know that yes, surprise surprise, i was still going to be off for two weeks just like i’d told her every time before.

I broke my foot on the job last Sunday. I work in a warehouse and my dumbass coworker Doug was fucking around and ended up tipping a heavy crate right onto my foot. It hurt like a bitch and now my whole foot is encased in a cast, and I’m going to be on crutches until August probably. And of course the various fucking managers all keep calling in. How am I doing? Could I come into work today? When am I going to be able to come back into work? Are you sure you can’t make it in? Why not? Isn’t there any way you can work around your injury? Like, morons, I sent you a copy of the fucking doctors report. I am out of fucking commission until practically the end of the fucking summer.

My boss has other ideas.

He walks over to me and says I’m not allowed to just close my lane without asking; I tell him I cut my hand and need to clean it, and he tells me that I already have paper towels, I don’t need to leave my post.  I tell him that I would like to clean it out with soap, and he tells me that there should be hand sanitizer under my register, so again, I don’t need to leave my post.  I don’t think anybody has ever gotten a flesh wound and thought “you know, I need to rub some alcohol on this, stat,” but this guy seemed to think that was the perfect solution.

I had to continue cashiering with one hand for two hours before my lunch break, all the while my boss is telling me to pick up the pace because my items-per-hour is substandard.

Manager told her “Yeah it’s hot water it’ll burn, finish your shift and you can go”

Her shift wasn’t over for the next 2 hours

Luckily a server happened to be waiting on a few nurses, so the server grabbed the burned lady and had the nurses look at her injury and they determined they were 2nd degree burns and she had to go to the hospital IMMEDIATELY

Only THEN did the manager begrudgingly allow my former coworker to leave the premises, and complained the whole time that she had to “pick up the slack.”

In Actual Reality, companies are outgrowths - theyre the mushrooming fruit that arise out of complex networks of underlying relations. If one company didnt do smth profitable, some other one would - as long as that nutrition (Potential Profitability) exists.

Everything around us is molded by Capital, but it presents itself as Natural & Intrinsic. This is what Marx meant by Fetishization - that the taste of your Tomatoes is the same whether the hands who grew them were freeman or slave. The motor that gets the tomato into your hands - the social relations of production & distribution - become invisible.

What counts as “social distancing”? The researchers define it as “All households reduce contact outside household, school or workplace by 75%.” That doesn’t mean you get to go out with your friends once a week instead of four times. It means everyone does everything they can to minimize social contact, and overall, the number of contacts falls by 75%.

Under this model, the researchers conclude, social distancing and school closures would need to be in force some two-thirds of the time—roughly two months on and one month off—until a vaccine is available, which will take at least 18 months (if it works at all). They note that the results are “qualitatively similar for the US.”

A general strike? On April 20th, 2020? To make an aid plan that would be permanent? To make healthcare a right? That’d be crazy to have happen on April 20th. Absolutely crazy for a general strike on April 20th. Nothing is going to happen on April 20th, 2020 in the form of a general strike. Nope, not on April 20th, 2020.