The COVID-19 pandemic blurred the boundaries between work and personal life, triggering a spillover of stress that results from both. During this period, people often had to share workspaces with their spouses and attend Zoom calls with noisy kids in the background. It was just adding to the stress. In 2022, when the pandemic situation had begun to settle a bit, a man was in his house, sitting on a chair, relaxing on his holiday. Just then, his phone rang and his manager asked if he could be available for work. He posted a recording of the conversation with his boss on his TikTok profile (@thelovieshow) and it has since gone viral, with over 4 million views.
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Nappy
The 25-second clip shows the man, most likely Drake of Drake & Marie, the couple who manages the TikTok channel. In his interaction with his boss, the boss said that the workplace was suffering from employee shortages due to the pandemic. Hence, she was appealing to Drake to take up the extra work. While recording the clip, Drake put the call on speakerphone, so the conversation could be heard in the video.
“Yeah, unfortunately, we had some team members call out sick today due to COVID,” said the boss. “Dang, you don’t have anybody else?” Drake asked. “No, we actually don’t,” she replied, adding, “And I know you’re not on the schedule, but we were actually wondering if you could come in anyway.” Drake appeared slightly bemused as his boss continued, “We’re a little short-staffed so we could really use your—.” But before she could complete her sentence, Drake interrupted and simply said, “Yeah, no,” and added, “Have a good night. Sorry.” Next, as the boss’ pleaded, “No, wait,” Drake abruptly hung up the call.
After the call was disconnected, he turned around to face Marie, who had been recording the entire scene on camera. An exuberant Drake then asked her, “So, do you want to go to Target,” to which she replied with delight, “Hell yeah!” The caption read, “Did we buy anything at Target? Yes. Was it useful? No.”
Representative Image Source: Pexels | Olly
People praised Drake for his blunt response, saying that boundaries are important to prevent work-life conflicts. @danimosnowman even went on to say, “I wouldn’t have even picked up. I’m not on call. Even at my IT job now. I clock out every day at the same time. I’ll answer texts and emails tomorrow.” @peeblydeebly said the same thing, “I don’t answer calls from work if I’m not working. It’s not poor work ethic it’s boundaries.”
Image Source: TikTok | @strwbrryshrty
Image Source: TikTok | @gstacks5
@sulfen reflected, “Companies can’t have it both ways. They should be prepared by scheduling slightly more people than they need but they only care about saving money.” Another TikToker, @cashcroft79, explained, “It is illegal in other countries to contact employees outside of work or after work hours. America is too comfortable with overworking its citizens.”
She’d paid $5 for her coffee, skipped the card tip prompt at checkout, and left a bill in the jar on her way out the door. The barista noticed, glanced at the cash in her customer’s wallet, and said loudly enough for the room to hear: “Oh wow! A whole dollar… that’s SO generous! Thank you SO much.”
Reddit’s reaction was not especially sympathetic to the barista. “Should have picked that dollar back,” was among the most upvoted responses. Others said they would have asked for a full refund on the drink. The OP herself landed on a version of that position: if a tip is going to be met with sarcasm, why tip at all?
But the incident is a little more complicated than a straightforward etiquette violation, because the math here actually favors the customer. A dollar on a $5 drink is a 20% tip, the same percentage most people consider the standard for a sit-down restaurant with table service. Industry veterans generally say a dollar a drink is a reasonable coffee shop tip, and that baristas at most cafés (unlike servers) are paid standard minimum wage rather than the lower tipped-employee rate that makes gratuities more essential.
None of which makes a public sarcastic remark the right response. But it does situate the incident inside a broader frustration that’s been building for a few years. A Pew Research Center survey found that 7 in 10 American adults say tipping is now expected in more places than it was a few years ago. A Bankrate survey found that 41% of Americans think tipping culture has gotten out of hand, and around 63% have at least one negative view about tipping overall. More than 60% agreed that employers should simply pay workers better so tips don’t have to fill the gap.
The tip jar and the checkout screen have become the place where all of that tension gets concentrated into a single uncomfortable moment. The barista’s comment was out of line. The customer’s dollar was not stingy. And the fact that it’s hard to say either of those things without someone disagreeing is probably the actual story.
This article originally appeared earlier this year.
Several Danish policies are intended to help mothers stay employed.
For example, subsidized child care is available for all children from 6 months of age until they can attend elementary school. Parents pay no more than 25% of its cost.
Using administrative data from Statistics Denmark, a government agency that collects and compiles national statistics, we studied the long-term effects of motherhood on income for 104,361 Danish women. They were born in the early 1960s and became mothers for the first time when they were 20-35 years old.
They all became mothers by 2000, making it possible to observe how their earnings unfolded for decades after their first child was born. While the Danish government’s policies changed over those years, paid parental leave and child allowances and other benefits were in place throughout. The women were, on average, age 26 when they became mothers for the first time, and 85% had more than one child.
We estimated that motherhood led to a loss of about the equivalent of US$9,000 in women’s earnings – which we measured in inflation-adjusted 2022 U.S. dollars – in the year they gave birth to or adopted their first child, compared with what we would expect if they had remained childless. While the motherhood penalty got smaller as their children got older, it was long-lasting.
The penalty only fully disappeared 19 years after the women became moms. Motherhood also led to a long-term decrease in the number of the hours they worked.
We estimated that motherhood cost the average Danish woman a total of about $120,000 in earnings over the first 20 years after they first had children – about 12% of the money they would have earned over those two decades had they remained childless.
Most of the mothers in our study who were employed before giving birth were eligible for four weeks of paid leave before giving birth and 24 weeks afterward. They could share up to 10 weeks of their paid leave with the baby’s father. The length and size of this benefit has changed over the years.
The Danish government also offers child benefits – payments made to parents of children under 18. These benefits are sometimes called a “child allowance.”
Denmark has other policies, like housing allowances, that are available to all Danes, but are more generous for parents with children living at home.
Using the same data, Christensen and I next estimated how motherhood affects how much money Danish moms receive from the government. We wanted to know whether they get enough income from the government to compensate for their loss of income from their paid work.
We found that motherhood leads to immediate increases in Danish moms’ government benefits. In the year they first gave birth to or adopted a child, women received over $7,000 more from the government than if they had remained childless. That money didn’t fully offset their lost earnings, but it made a substantial dent.
The gap between the money that mothers received from the government, compared with what they would have received if they remained childless, faded in the years following their first birth or adoption. But we detected a long-term bump in income from government benefits for mothers – even 20 years after they first become mothers.
Cumulatively, we determined that the Danish government offset about 80% of the motherhood earnings penalty for the women we studied. While mothers lost about $120,000 in earnings compared with childless women over the two decades after becoming a mother, they gained about $100,000 in government benefits, so their total income loss was only about $20,000.
Benefits for parents of older kids
Our findings show that government benefits do not fully offset earnings losses for Danish moms. But they help a lot.
Because most countries provide less generous parental benefits, Denmark is not a representative case. It is instead a test case that shows what’s possible when governments make financially supporting parents a high priority.
That is, strong financial support for mothers from the government can make motherhood more affordable and promote gender equality in economic resources.
Because the motherhood penalty is largest at the beginning, government benefits targeted to moms with infants, such as paid parental leave, may be especially valuable.
The motherhood penalty’s long-term nature, however, indicates that these short-term benefits are not enough to get rid of it altogether. Benefits that are available to all mothers of children under 18, such as child allowances, can help offset the long-term motherhood penalty for mothers of older children.
Each year on the holiday that bears his name, Martin Luther King Jr. is remembered for his immense contributions to the struggle for racial equality. What is less often remembered but equally important is that King saw the fight for racial equality as deeply intertwined with economic justice.
To address inequality – and out of growing concern for how automation might displace workers – King became an early advocate for universal basic income. Under universal basic income, the government provides direct cash payments to all citizens to help them afford life’s expenses.
In recent years, more than a dozen U.S. cities have run universal basic income programs, often smaller or pilot programs that have offered guaranteed basic incomes to select groups of needy residents. As politicalscientists, we have followed these experiments closely.
One of us recently co-authored a study which found that universal basic income is generally popular. In two out of three surveys analyzed, majorities of white Americans supported a universal basic income proposal. Support is particularly high among those with low incomes.
King’s intuition was that white people with lower incomes would support this type of policy because they could also benefit from it. In 1967, King argued, “It seems to me that the Civil Rights Movement must now begin to organize for the guaranteed annual income … which I believe will go a long, long way toward dealing with the Negro’s economic problem and the economic problem with many other poor people confronting our nation.”
But there is one notable group that does not support universal basic income: those with higher levels of racial resentment. Racial resentment is a scale that social scientists have used to describe and measure anti-Black prejudice since the 1980s.
Economic self-interest can trump resentment
At the same time, the results of the study also suggest that coalition building is possible, even among the racially resentful.
Economic status matters. Racially resentful whites with lower incomes tend to be supportive of universal basic income. In short, self-interest seems to trump racial resentment. This is consistent with King’s idea of how an economic coalition could be built and pave the way toward racial progress.
As mayor of Stockton, Calif., Michael Tubbs ran a pioneering program that provided a basic income to a limited number of residents. Rich Pedroncelli/AP
Income is not the only thing that shapes attitudes, however. Some of the strongest supporters of universal basic income are those who have higher incomes but low levels of racial resentment. This suggests an opportunity to build coalitions across economic lines, something King believed was necessary. “The rich must not ignore the poor,” he argued in his Nobel Peace Prize lecture, “because both rich and poor are tied in a single garment of destiny.” Our data shows that this is possible.
This approach to coalition building is also suggested by our earlier research. Using American National Election Studies surveys from 2004-2016, we found that for white Americans, racial resentment predicted lower support for social welfare policies. But we also found that economic position mattered, too.
Economic need can unite white Americans in support of more generous welfare policies, including among some who are racially prejudiced. At a minimum, this suggests that racial resentment does not necessarily prevent white Americans from supporting policies that would also benefit Black Americans.
Building lasting coalitions
During his career as an activist in the 1950s and 1960s, King struggled with building long-term, multiracial coalitions. He understood that many forms of racial prejudice could undermine his work. He therefore sought strategies that could forge alliances across lines of difference. He helped build coalitions of poor and working-class Americans, including those who are white. He was not so naive as to think that shared economic progress would eliminate racial prejudice, but he saw it as a place to start.
Martin Luther King Jr. believed Americans of different racial backgrounds could coalesce around shared economic interests. AP
Racial prejudice continues to fuel opposition to universal basic income, as well as other forms of social welfare. But our research suggests that this is not insurmountable.
As King knew, progress toward economic equality is not inevitable. But, as his legacy reminds us, progress does remain possible through organizing around shared interests.
