Malls were the symptom of dying manufacturing communities that could no longer support a downtown where local retail shops and services once thrived. People moved to the suburbs and malls were born. Now with the popularity of Amazon and online ordering, malls are dying.

Ringshadow: jake3988: I don't understand why this is constantly peddled on fark. Do you people just hate everyone on Earth?

Because it is literally the basis of toxic behavior on the behalf of the employer. If you're tricked into making friends with coworkers, your employer can mercilessly leverage you. But we're FAAAAAAMILY. Cover your coworker because you're FRIIIEEENDS. And so on and thus farking forth.

Not even adding in that managers and production level employees being friends will freeze out entire groups of employees. The facility I got out of last year had that problem. STRONG in crowd/out crowd behavior and favoritism to the point it kneecapped anyone in the out crowd's ability to get qualifications. And it can go so far as to cover bad behavior and create a massive safety problem.

Welcome to chilled work environments motherfarker, and your acceptance is making it worse.

jake3988: Work is #2 (behind being introduced by a friend) to meeting spouses and i know plenty of people who made friends at work too.

Does "do not dip your pen in company ink" mean NOTHING anymore?!

Holy shiat if someone asked me out at work I would immediately want to know if they found that to be appropriate workplace behavior and would warn them that if they ever asked again, it was an immediate HR report, and please speak to me about nothing but work moving forward. FARKING CREEPY.

I am at work to work and go home. That's it. I do not live to work, I work to live.

Fun fact MLMs will try to rope married couples into their scam simultaneously so it's harder for them to leave. So do churches. This is the exact same predatory behavior.

jake3988: Frankly its the one and only downside to working from home. Even more impossible to meet people.

Oh my GAWD. Have you considered having a hobby and joining an appropriate group? Textile groups? Makers events? Conventions? Festivals? Social media? Writers groups? Dungeons and Dragons?!

Holy shiat start learning a language and find a local language group or some shiat. It's not our fault you suck at being social. Stop expecting us to participate in Mandatory Fun.

Many employers discourage socialization in the workplace so workers have no layman's understanding of common needs, like health care, unionizing, salaries, benefits, finances and child care. By atomizing the workforce, employers isolate your grievances, viewing you as disposable and weak.

Ringshadow: Floki: Malls were the symptom of dying manufacturing communities that could no longer support a downtown where local retail shops and services once thrived. People moved to the suburbs and malls were born. Now with the popularity of Amazon and online ordering, malls are dying.

No. They weren't. And they aren't.

See that book I linked upthread? READ IT.

Malls have a lot of problems. Ingrained classism, racism, ageism. But they are not and were never a symptom of dying manufacturing communities. IN FACT ITS QUITE THE OPPOSITE. The mall was originally designed for white middle class young mothers whose husband was off working. Probably at a union job because this was the 1950s and 1960s.

Dinjiin: It isn't just the shift to online ordering that is killing malls.

Again, see book upthread. Online ordering is part of it, but malls are dying for a variety of reasons, including the complete mismanagement by the owning corporations. Fun fact, a lot of malls BAN KIDS now. Including the Mall of friggin America. If you're a minor, you have to be escorted. THE MALL IS WHERE TEENS GO, like. Holy shiat. And just to escalate it, some malls are banning mall walkers.

/hell some malls are now kicking out mall goths
//that is where mall goths live. that is their native habitat ffs

Malls started replacing the downtown/town square for gathering, in a controlled private environment where free speech was essentially erased, and the homogenization of retail where national chains proliferated and local identity disappeared. Plus the dead air.

Ringshadow: Floki: Malls started replacing the downtown/town square for gathering, in a controlled private environment where free speech was essentially erased, and the homogenization of retail where national chains proliferated and local identity disappeared. Plus the dead air.

A) not related to your previous argument, and B) read the book. You're not a subject matter expert on this. Hell neither am I, I just read a friggin book that deep dived into the actual history of the mall and the social structures at play here.

A) It's in addition to my previous argument. And malls ARE exactly that: a controlled, private environment that disallows many expressions of free speech and even congregation (assembly), populated by the same national retail chains to the exclusion of local retail businesses, and all that air sucks the life out of you. I doubt the book to which you refer disputes anything I've just stated.
B) It sounds like a book that I would nevertheless enjoy. Urban and suburban planning, economic renewal, and human geography are just a few of many interests I have.
I shop at malls on occasion but fortunately I had a downtown that still functioned in the town of my childhood, and that has held a lasting positive impression upon me.
It sounds like you had difficulty growing up, and that bitterness has accompanied you into your adult life. I hope by now you realize that being queer doesn't exclude you from having children. But sometimes the best way to answer someone who inquired about your life is to be honest. "I'm single and I've never wanted children (or 'I haven't found anyone with whom I'd like to have children')."
Personally, I love hearing about other people's lives. You can learn about life and the struggles we all face from anyone you encounter. Prior to the rise in remote work, most Americans spent one-third of their working lives with co-workers. It made sense to talk with your colleagues. One is more likely to find people interesting and become more tolerant of others and their differences rather than suspect of them and dehumanize.
Anyway, wish there were more independent bookstores (new or used) and music stores (new or used) and independent coffee shops around.
Good luck.

Ringshadow: But it does absolutely discount your first argument, because your statements were entirely wrong.

And you're wrong, boyo, I grew up upper middle class and had zero difficulty growing up.

And you're the reason why I don't make friends with many coworkers, AND NOW WE ARE GOING TO HR, if you were a coworker.

I've had a hysterectomy you complete nonce. I am sterile. THAT excludes me from having children even if I wanted them. I don't.

How about this. IT IS NONE OF THEIR BUSINESS.

"I'm single and don't want children" is how you start a fight. That's how you get "oh you'll change your mind" (one of the single most condescending phrases in the english language), or "why don't you want kids?! I have kids are you saying something about my kids?!" Because people hear you don't want kids and they take that shiat personal. REAL. FRIGGIN. PERSONAL.

And "I haven't found someone" is how you get dumbass coworkers setting you up on dates.

And before you accuse me of hyperbole, I've gone through this conversation hundreds upon hundreds of times. I'm tired of it. What I say now is "Sorry, I do not talk about my personal life at work." And that's period.

I'll talk to people all day long. Just not about their kids. I don't have any so it's creepy for me to be told about them.

Yes, we live in a capitalist hellscape that has trapped us in a 40h workweek for no reason except social control and a predatory upper class.

Also, that doesn't mean I have to be friends with them. Most of them I don't want to be friends with.

I am queer, neurodiverse, and vaguely a witch. Guess who gets dehumanized in this exchange. Hint: it me.

Bookshop.org ships from indie bookshops around the USA, so you can buy local, not locally.

You are a prime example on why I'm friendly, but not friends, with 99% of my coworkers. You're condescending, judgemental, jump to conclusions and think you know me better than I know me.

Learn empathy and stop expecting everyone to treat work like social hours. Let me swing a meter and shepherd drums of radioactive waste in peace. I do my job, I do it well, and I go home after.

I have not dehumanized you at all. In fact I am curious about who you are, what you have experience and how you view the world. You're clearly not an elitist, or a white supremacist, or a fascist. I know that's a low bar, but let's be honest. We live in America.

I can accept that you do not want children. I don't want any more children. I know many people who never had children. For all kinds of reasons. But offering up that you are single, queer, weird and sterile are not reasons. You could adopt, obviously. And obviously you have no interest in adopting. But being single, queer, weird and sterile are not conditions that are mutually exclusive to parenthood. Throwing those specious reasons out as an explanation suggests an alternative reason that you're unable to address.

That's not dehumanization of you. It's an attempt on my part to understanding your uniqueness.

My initial observations about malls still stand. With the creation of the interstate system under President Eisenhower, the ability for Americans to live further from their place of employment (typically in cities) and commute into downtowns. This (among many other factors) had the effect of contributing to the destabilization of the downtown being the center of retail and commerce. Isn't it obvious? Transfer of a population with significant buying power to newly developed suburbs means the center cannot hold. As the wealthier suburbanites transfer their activity to the suburbs, and white flight follows, the mall becomes the symbol of prosperity and a safe retail experience. The downtowns become symbols of poor, immigrants, undesirables, and subsequently the disenfranchised. Suburban life becomes homogeneous. The mall thrives.

There is a hellscape to American capitalism for many Americans. A 40-hr. workweek is not necessarily one of them, although I would prefer 30-hr. week they have in Iraq. Obviously, their hellscape has nothing to do with capitalism.

I thought perhaps you had a difficult childhood. I was wrong about that assumption. You like your privacy. You like ordering books online rather than visiting brick and mortar book stores, or the charm of used book stores, or book barns like you can find in the northeast.

"I do my job, I do it well, and I go home after."

Sounds like the perfectly docile employee in a capitalist hellscape. 😉