Tag: hard work

A Little Taco Truck in Oakley: Hard work and good food that come with opportunities only capitalism provides

Oh, I know, my kind of Republican politics has not been built by the Koch Brothers and other personalities who don’t get what’s coming in the future. While I am eager to return to Trump’s border policies and send back illegal immigrants wherever we find them, I do have a soft spot for people who are willing to crawl through broken glass naked to get into America and take advantage of the freedoms afforded individuals in the greatest country on earth. I don’t blame anybody who wants to get into America and work hard to have a good life, which they are not allowed to have in many other places. I tend to think more of immigrant people than I do of people who were born in America, by default, and expect someone to give them a golden slipper for the rest of their lives. I like to see people working hard. I have much more in common with most immigrant people because they often come from cultures where hard work is not only appreciated, it’s expected. The labor unions in America, with all the elements of Marxism that go with them, have destroyed the labor force in the United States. And for me, this isn’t even about cheap labor by people exploited because of their resident status. It’s simply a work ethic issue. While I am a person who likes AI and robotics because it makes a business not dependent on slugs who are afraid to work, I like immigration labor because of their work ethic. And when it comes to deporting people, I would vote to deport crybaby welfare recipients living off Medicaid well before I’d get rid of a cook working 18-hour days in the back of a Chinese food restaurant. I appreciate and most enjoy knowing people who work hard. And I very much despise lazy people who expect things to be given to them just because they were fortunate to be born in a rich country and want to exploit every political giveaway that they can get their hands on.

To this point, a friend of mine was out running around with me, and he wanted me to do something unusual for lunch and go all the way to Oakley to show me. I am used to Liberty Township and West Chester, Ohio, for lunch and dinner options. I expect delicious food if I’m going to eat it, and I like pleasant surroundings without a lot of slugs lying around, bringing down the vibe. When eating in public, I don’t want to smell pot smoke and look at a bunch of freak show contestants while I’m eating, so I usually go to places I know are safe for that kind of thing. So I was reluctant to follow my friend’s advice on this lunch option he was talking about, a little taco truck in a BP gas station in Oakley near the old Cincinnati Milicron plant that is now torn down and replaced by new economic development. This isn’t the best part of town; this newly developed renovation project is just east of Norwood. I have a long history in this area, so I wasn’t too excited to go there. There are taco trucks all over Cincinnati, so why this one? They have taco trucks at Liberty Center, which is my favorite place to go and eat. Why were we going all the way down to Oakley? Well, as he promised, according to him, these were some of the best tacos in the world, and he would know he’d traveled the world a lot and had sampled lots of food from many different people. And he swore by this particular taco truck that it’s simply the best around.

So we went way out of our way for lunch, and I was shocked to see how small it was.  But it had character; it was sitting in the parking lot of a gas station with its little grass umbrella shrouding a few picnic tables.  To the left behind the gas station were a couple of cops hanging out because of the vast homelessness problem that the area has and the frequent drug deals that are pretty obvious a part of the discarded shopping carts lying around.  Oakley is trying to reform itself with lots of new construction, but when people lose their way in life and conjugate all together in one area, they usually get depleted economic zones.  And that’s where we were; we were there to eat food.  So, I was skeptical.  But we knocked on the window, and a smiling face greeted us, a little Central American woman happy to get an order.  She immediately took the order and soon smoke was coming out of a little smoke stack on top of the truck, which was much smaller than I expected.  Two people were in the taco trailer that could have been pulled by a small car, and the whole thing ran on propane as its heat source, evident by the stack of tanks behind it discarded for refilling.  The entire event reminded me of something you might find in the highlands of Peru and some tourist spots in a remote part of the world.  A few people were making something happen with very minimal resources, and they were excited to have customers, which they went way out of their way to facilitate. 

To get drinks at this place, you have to go into the gas station to get them.  So I was having a cultural experience with all this.  But it was enjoyable, and once we were finished, the food was ready, and we ate it in the car.  These are all things that I usually wouldn’t do for lunch.  But, boy, was it all a treat.  It was great food made fresh and in large quantities.  It was worth going out of our way to get the food, and I was happy to give that little taco truck a little business.  These people wanted to work hard in exchange for a bit of money, and they provided a superior product.  This is as opposed to a fancy restaurant staffed with slow-minded people who feel entitled to a job, who often give only as much service as they can get by with not doing.  You get a good environment because the people attending such a place with you don’t have holes in their heads.  But this Oakley place was the opposite.  And if you wanted good food from good people trying to scrape their way out of a difficult situation, this little taco truck in Oakley, Ohio, was the place to go.  And it reminded me of what kind of country we could be again if we made it so many people were rewarded in life for their hard work instead of penalized.  While Democrats might think that these kinds of people running this taco truck will vote for their entitlement programs, I don’t think so.  I think they are primed to be Republicans and that they would vote for Trump if they could.  And these people want to work hard for a piece of the American dream.  And I am glad that they were doing what they did.  Let me say those tacos were fantastic!   America is a lot better off with many options from people worldwide who want the same thing: freedom and a chance to do good things without the government trying to hold them back from living a good life.

Rich Hoffman

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The Benefits of Hard Work: What’s desperately missing from the world

Typically, union members who participate in collective bargaining agreements cheat themselves out of the good practice of benefits rendered from hard work—the type of work that leaves every bone in your body tired, where you fight hard with others to achieve a task under ominous circumstances to arrive at a goal many thought impossible. When work is throttled down to where breaks must be taken every two hours on the hour and deep concern is paid to how much one has sold their time for per hour—the union laborer becomes simply a whore who sells their time for a price instead of a producer who willed with sheer resolve to a conclusion invisible to others functioning from emotional limitations.

To those who have pulled all nighters, or several of them in succession especially when a team of other people is involved they understand the feeling of tackling the impossible and just how good a breakfast can taste after 32 straight hours of good work concluded. Those hours for the truly productive are not about making money—but about making something from nothing and pushing the project uphill against all odds to a successful conclusion. To achieve such things, it often requires exceptional willpower to pull off.

I have been involved in many of these events over the years and they always feel good to participate in, and finish. I never tire of the euphoria of a job well done. There is a bonding quality which comes naturally with a team when they all struggle as individuals toward an objective and there is always much back slapping that goes on afterwards when tired bodies struggle against sleep after being awake for more than 24 straight hours working so hard that they forget to take breaks.

Union workers always look at the time clock not willing to miss a smoke break, or a chance to stand around and talk about little ideas with shrinking minds. They are always in a hurry to discuss nothing, do nothing, and prepare their lives for one useless event after another for example—“hey Bill, lets grab a cold one when we get done with this shit.” That type of banter means nothing and goes nowhere and usually only contributes to their inner self-imposed misery.

I have seen the kind of magic hard work creates during difficult camping trips where there is often a lot of struggle. I have seen it after busy nights of work where the hours are long and people struggle together to finish the job. I have seen it on movie sets where everyone works hard for 12 straight hours to get everything just right and overcome thousands of technical problems to arrive at the objective. I have even seen such magic on long drives to distant lands where all night travel wears away your senses until daylight rescues tired eyes from the clock-like movement of highway lines steadily going by under your car. It is through struggle that good things happen.

What gets lost in the attempts at an assured “living wage” is the struggle to get something of value. Money is cheapened to an expectation when it is given away easily through a collective bargaining agreement. Sure it can purchase the same iPhones, the same Xbox, the same flat screen televisions—but those items have less value to the union worker who doesn’t have to struggle to receive them. There is a spoiled nature to such people who comes from having things given to them as opposed to earning them with sweat and tired eyes.

Whenever there is struggle and people do it together there is joy in knowing those other people who travel with you—no matter what their political affiliation is, their religious beliefs, their financial status—people all come together when they do hard work together. It is good for their souls and cleanses their spirits. Hard work is the great unifier.

This is why labor unions are that much more of a detriment—they provide a disincentive attribute to hard work by their very nature. They do this by assuring that no matter what the performance level, no matter the schedule, no matter if they get along with others for a united task—that they will get paid. They do not feel they need to work to earn money, because the money is typically given to them just for showing up. So there is no reason to push themselves toward a struggle which holds the secret ingredient toward productive—unifying enterprise.

Capitalism brings out the struggle of an enterprise. Socialism destroys the struggle by bringing everyone down to the unproductive levels of any endeavor. It doesn’t take long for hard workers to become discouraged when some union knuckle dragger stops work in the middle of a difficult endeavor to take a mandated break. It is even worse when you get knee-deep into a project to discover that you still have 10 to 12 hours left and you’ve already put in 12 and you need it by tomorrow—and the union worker walks off the job to have one of those meaningless drinks before Monday Night Football starts leaving the struggle for the next day and a guaranteed schedule slip that is costly beyond measure. When it is wondered why American enterprise is struggling it is because of this very basic element of modern society—the loss of contact between monetary value and productive enterprise—the lack of urgency that avoids struggle because it all pays the same whether it gets done today or tomorrow. Without the struggle, any endeavor is a cheapened experience.

This is the case for any experience in life, from sex to food. Nobody would argue that a McDonald’s meal is of equal value to a five star restaurant which costs half of a thousand dollars for a dinner for two. Even though they are both categories of food, one is undoubtedly more valuable than the other. It is the struggle to make the food that makes the five star restaurant so much more valuable than the quick processing that takes place at McDonald’s. The same holds true for workers of all types, there are those who avoid struggle, and those who thrive in it. The good workers are those who enjoy pushing themselves to the limit. Bad workers are those who just show up in exchange for money like a simple prostitute—lawyers come to mind who charge for small talk about sports when they have a rate of $200 to $500 an hour. At the conclusion of an hour of legal advisement the lawyer strikes up a 6 minute conversation about college football which invokes animated discussion among two men who love sports. But when the bill comes that 6 minutes is included, just like the whore who goes over her time by the same and expects compensation. So to is the union worker who will do nothing above and beyond the collective bargaining agreement even if it is for the good of productivity. Those are bad workers who do things purely for money and seek to avoid struggle of any kind—especially pushing themselves toward excellence.

It is so rare these days to have those struggles when dealing with other people and I cherish each instance. When I see them first hand they restore my faith in the human race. I relish it and when I have breakfast after 32 straight hours of work where every bone in the body is sore and shaking from exhaustion; the food tastes better than anything on the face of the planet—because there is value in it being earned and worked for. That is why it tastes so wonderful with the added purity that only comes from a difficult task accomplished above and beyond all odds and opposition.

Rich Hoffman

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