I See Hats. They're Everywhere.

And they're a pain in my ass, I mean neck

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I conceived of this story, like a lightening strike, this morning while reading

Sean Dietrich

’s

Sean of the South

post My New “Dumbphone”, link at the end. I’ve been ranting in my head for ages - like semi-old, semi-nuts humans tend to do - about how many hats we wear now. About how many jobs we perform for which we’re not paid but are in fact penalized by higher prices or worse service anyway. Spoiler alert - I have no solutions.

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Bren's Buzz | Cori Bren | Substack

Let’s start at the beginning…

In the beginning (for the sake of this article = as far back as my memory goes - maybe 4 years old), things were different. SURPRISE! Just kidding, this is not a surprise. Our minds play tricks on us about how ‘wonderful’ the good ole days were and how ‘tragic’ the horrible times were back then. Hear me out on this because there are some stats to purify the tricks my mind plays.

Here’s the thing. How many jobs have you taken on in your everyday life that once upon a time someone else was paid to perform? Not only were they paid to perform those jobs, but the upper-lower to lower-middle class (lol) wages back then allowed a family of 4-8 to have a relatively safe, relatively nice life doing such jobs.

Fast forward to 2025 and here’s the run down on what I now do for some corporation for free - - This is BY NO MEANS a complete list. At nearly 60 years old, I’m certain I will forget many hats I’m currently wearing, like a toddler forgets to put on pants before going outside to play.

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Food delivery - When I was 4, we had a food delivery to our house by the Stroehmann Sunbeam bread people. They had breads, pastries (20 cent brownies), and milk. Truck rolled up in the driveway, driven by a nice gentleman who was providing for his family while giving us some options on the odd weekend day. Although food and other delivery services are coming back around big-time, it’s taken on a life of it’s own and is a money making scheme for large corporations who don’t pay taxes, which trickles down to the lower and middle classes in the form of higher prices. The bread-truck delivery model ended in the 1970’s.

Auto care - Clean my car, check air in tires, put air in tires, check oil, check fluids, maintain battery health, replace wipers, pump gas, clean windshield. There’s a gas station in Carbondale, PA where attendants STILL pump your gas and yuck it up with the customers. I love it! It’s Laperas. I’ve been there a couple times over the years and the older gentlemen working there are nice, friendly locals who love their jobs. Stopping there is like a spa experience and a comedy club rolled into one. In 1970 30% of gas stations were self-service. In 2025 it’s ‘over 99%’.

Health - Check myself in sometimes with QR code online days in advance, schedule my own appointments online or over the phone, use a portal to communicate with a doctor or nurse practitioner I pay exorbitant amounts of money to and see with my own eyes for 20 minutes. I believe the changes in healthcare have been driven by insurance rules, primarily HMO/PPO type arrangements. I’ve done no research on that. However, these metrics make me go hmmm. In 1970 upwards of 85% of your family’s medical care was understood and managed by a family doctor or family medical practice. They knew you, your parents, your children and thusly all your family history. In 2024, only 24% of family medical care is understood and/or managed by a family doctor or family medical practice. AND we have a helluva lot more ‘mystery’ ailments that no one can quite put their finger on. But alas, I digress. Onward…

Insurance (health”care”) - Once upon a time, this was all handled by the family practices noted above. We had no such thing as insurance growing up. Either my dad ponied up the $ at the time of the service (which we never had) or they knew us and that we couldn’t pay and wrote it off. Now I manage all of the insurance, co pays, refunds/overpayments, and planning a pretax account that will cover all the out of pocket my wild-assed guess comes up with for the next year. And forget about it if they deny something. You are SCREWED. When Obama was in office they passed the Affordable Care Act. What this did was (maybe) help some upper-middle to lower-middle income households get some care, but it was neither affordable nor caring AT ALL. What else it did was take anyone who previously had decent health insurance through their workplace and kick them in the vag. Whatever this act entailed, the result was eroding the coverage of those who were doing alright. We had a serious illness in our household during one of the earlier years of that act and our out of pocket expense that year was $30,000 including our share of our workplace insurance premiums. That’s almost as much as we paid for our first home ($45,000). AND no one paid me to spend half my time managing all that medical shit that year while I wondered if the family member would make it out alive. AND during COVID the provider who ‘treated’ our family member sent me their bills again. Imagine, if I were not already a semi-professional budgeting, billing, and validating expert I would have mindlessly paid that $15,000 bill AGAIN. Since I believe our non-paid workload grows in correlation to medical spending, in 1960 healthcare spending was 5% of the economy. It was projected to be 20% in 2024.

Eyecare - Not sure what happened to the local eye doctor set up, but nowadays I use Walmart for speed, cost, and effectiveness. That is until the eye-ma-geddon of glasses (see my comment on Sean’s post, noted above and linked below) and the clown car of contacts occurred. Regarding the clown car, once again the local Walmart insisted my husband order his own online. Sorry, what? Don’t I pay you for that? He did. The script was entered correctly but filled incorrectly. He could not see, which is ‘not a good look’ for corrective lenses LMAO. He went to return them, which was a whole riggamaroll and ended with him going to this same out of state other Walmart (as mentioned in the Sean comment….try to keep up, mkay?) to ‘just get contacts that work for fucks sake’ and they said “why didn’t they order them?” like he’s clairvoyant. In their defense, they ordered the right ones (3rd attempt to get these mysterious correct lenses) and they cost $120 less than online. WTAF?! AND we are still not sure the credit for the wrong ones has hit our account - See “payments” above. It’s somehow my job as the household money person to hunt down this mysterious refund when back in the day some nerd at the eye doctor took care of all of that. TRAGIC! Where the hell are all these nerds working now? DOGE? LOL just kidding. DOGE is all people who can go to war, but not legally drink in America. Do NOT get up in my face until you see the comment button below!

Where was I? Oh, yes, more hats…

Payments - Swipe, flash, pin-code or otherwise pass money from me to myriad merchants through the thin air. This used to be a cashier, in person, discussing how nice the melons were that week. Now it’s my responsibility and not only am I not paid for this “privilege” but the billionaire’s miracle of modern graft, interchange, gets passed on to me by said merchants in their pricing. Or, another miracle of modern commerce (Auto Zone does this), the merchant directly charges me more at the counter if I use a card versus cash. It is unclear what % of US payments were digital in 1970 (after hours of research gah!) but plastic credit cards existed and ATM’s were in place. I am therefore assuming, as a reasonably intelligent human, that in 1970 less than 10% of consumer payments were any form of what we currently consider digital then. In 2024 more than 90% were.

Groceries - Bring my own bags (see climate stuff below) check out and bag my own groceries/stuff and return carts to a central location. And, to add insult to injury, they didn’t just come right out and say “Announcement - starting Thursday you lazy fuckers are doing your own cashiering and bagging the shit up with bags you bring. Don’t like it, shop somewhere else”. This I might (or might not) have respected. Nope. What they did was slowly fire all the cashiers but 1-2 even on the busiest days, and simultaneously install self-checkout lines. Those bastards knew we’d get sick of waiting and do it all ourselves. The first job for most in my high school class was either doing dishes at a local diner/truck stop or bagging groceries at a store. Where have all the baggers gone? Oh, wait. That’s me now. In 1970 self-checkout was not a thing. It’s rise began in 1986. In 2024, 40% of all grocery transactions were completed at self-checkouts.

Climate stuff and penny pinching - Where I work, EVERYONE takes their own trash from their workspace to a central location AND sorts it. This is not a huge deal, but a nice local person used to put food on their table keeping trash emptied and restrooms clean. At this glorious institution of modern learning, we also clean our own kitchen/breakrooms. Again not monumental in terms of effort, but do you want mid-level execs using their time cleaning a kitchen when a student at said institution or a single parent in the area struggling to make ends meet would be happy for the work? In both of these scenarios the company has 5-figure-income employees emptying trash and cleaning kitchens, and they wonder what’s happened to productivity. Bullshit like this, that’s what. Although recycling began in the 1960’s-1970’s in the US, at my prior company a professional waste management organization cared for all the trash and sorting of trash for the huge financial services firm I worked for. My entire life has been NATURALLY one big recycling adventure with hand-me-down clothes, second-hand cars, reusing shoelaces, bread ties, etc., etc., etc. We reused coffee grounds for fertilizer, tobacco juice for bug killer, and hell in some cases my sisters dated the same guys! So I know from recycling. I don’t need to take over trash management for a university with billions of dollars in endowments. I don’t need to clean the kitchen at work to keep from getting a disease because people spit in the kitchen sink. Hire these things out. Someone else needs those jobs, but I don’t. AND don’t pile stuff onto me without compensation either. In 2024 34% of townships in the US have curbside recycling options and 6 states have MANDATORY recycling - Colorado, California, New Jersey, Washington, Oregon, and Maine. I’m not saying any of this is bad. I’m saying I don’t want or need this job. I have my own recycling program going on at home, for which I am already amply compensated at $0.00 for ever and ever.

By now you’ve got the picture. As I said, I have no real solutions except to start employing people again. It’s ok for some people to start at minimum wage, which is currently $7.25 per hour. My first high school job outside of a summer government program was waitressing in a truck stop for $1.85 per hour. Because I ‘got tips’ (I didn’t, I was HORRIBLE at waitressing), they were allowed to pay below the then $2.90 per hour minimum wage. I was 14 years old living at home, not being ‘charged’ for living expenses and therefore had no need or reason to make more than that. We don’t pop outta the womb, or outta elementary or middle or high school, or even college needing to earn some kind of incredible wage or salary. People now need to be taught (preferably since elementary school) how to start where they are and conserve and save and plan and trade up. And, to continue that cycle over and over until they feel they’ve grown into their skills, income, and their own skin. There’s no better way to build resilience than by building a life for yourself. Until you get “there”, you have roommates, you ride share, you live on the bus line. Right?

I guess - GET REAL - is all I’ve got. And, when I retire in less than 40 days, I’m going to slowly, intentionally, thoughtfully, and methodically remove all these extra hats cause they’re a pain in my neck!

Someone else you know still appreciates a good thing for free. That’s Bren’s Buzz.

Here’s where you can come at me in the comments. This community loves a little bit of throw down, so bring it. I reserve the right to laugh, cry, or completely ignore you.

As promised, the link to Sean’s post.

My New “Dumbphone”