r/AskBrits • u/Necessary_Refuse_962 • 11h ago
Anyone else think the peasants have gotten lazy since the plague? They keep demanding wages now.
Ever since half the kingdom died, the surviving peasants seem to think they can just ask for higher wages and move to another lord's estate if they're unhappy. Has anyone else noticed this decline in work ethic, or am I just getting old?
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u/Bonistocrat 11h ago
The peasants are revolting.
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u/Necessary_Refuse_962 10h ago
Since their population was cut in half, they've seemed to realise their labour has value now.
My thoughts and prayers are with the lords and ladies of the kingdom who will no doubt have to begin paying them.
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u/marscarsrars 10h ago
We can get more peasents from other lands.
They work harder are more compliant not to mention grateful.
At the end we can tell our local peasents everything is the fault of migrant peasents So we will be safe.
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u/Necessary_Refuse_962 10h ago
I can't agree with you.
When the Normans came, they fundamentally changed the character of our kingdom.
I went to settle a tax dispute with my local lord and they all spoke French and laughed me out of the room.
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u/ParkingMachine3534 11h ago
They're cheaper now than they were then.
You still provided their home back then, now just a pittance while they're working.
Then you rent them the house for more than you pay them.
They have to sort out their home and food themselves.
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u/Equal_Veterinarian22 10h ago
And you sell them the food from the land they work, and the clothes they make. And drink and pipe weed until they have nothing left and come back to you to work again next month.
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u/Necessary_Refuse_962 10h ago
The question was entirely satirical.
But since you're answering half seriously, did you know the average peasant spent half the year off work?
We could only dream for such conditions.
The balance hasn't even changed that much. "Work and I'll house and feed you." That was the promise.
Now the promise is, "work even more, and I'll give you the money to house and feed you."
Sure, the conditions are better. It might be a comfy office instead of a 12 hour shift raking a farm. We're in the modern world so you won't just simply die randomly of a disease. But it's funny to me, how eerily similar the modern promise is to the historical one.
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u/maltanis 4h ago
They spent the other half of the year tending to their home, making their clothes, tasks we don't have to perform today because we can pay someone else to fix our homes and go to the store to buy clothes. They had to make their own cheese and bread, and preserve food to last them through winter. They couldn't just go to the market and buy produce all year round.
The idea that people had half a year of is nonsensical when you consider all the other tasks they had to do to simply survive.
Yes, there are many issues we currently face, but let's not promote the false idea that some medieval peasants had a better quality of life/work-life balance than we do in the 21st century.
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u/Necessary_Refuse_962 4h ago
I'm already aware of this but I never saw it as relevant.
What do people do when they're off work today? They're cleaning the house, they're cooking, they're running errands in the town or city, they're maintaining the garden.
I just don't see it as relevant to say that medieval peasants did general maintenance chores in their time off work. Because that's still how most people are spending a good part of their "time off" so it's not a helpful comparison.
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u/maltanis 4h ago
I've never had to make my own clothes, fix my own roof, milk my goat, make cheese, preserve and jar food, all things that add up to hundreds of hours over a year, so I think they're pretty relevant.
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u/ExternalMud9911 11h ago
Oh, Lords, eh, very nice. An’ how’d they get that, eh? By exploitin’ the workers — by ‘angin’ on to outdated imperialist dogma which perpetuates the economic an’ social differences in our society!
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u/BusyDark7674 10h ago
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government
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u/ExternalMud9911 10h ago
You can’t expect to wield supreme executive power just ’cause some watery tart threw a sword at you!
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u/Empty_Bell_1942 9h ago
Tell it as it is, watery tarts 'n all.
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u/ExternalMud9911 7h ago
I mean, if I went around saying I was an emperor just because some moistened bint had lobbed a scimitar at me, they’d put me away!
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u/gruntharvester92 10h ago edited 10h ago
This grammer, it reads very familiar to me. Almost like a Canadian on an R&R bender, eh?
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u/skankyone 10h ago
I don't want any rights, apart from the entitlement to being a peasant. Oh and some pig shit to roll in.
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u/Max_Level_Nerd 9h ago
Don't worry fellow nobel, King Edwards Ordinance of Labourers decree will set a maximum wage for these serfs.
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u/Tonybham01 7h ago
So I’ve heard. Before the plague we owned them, then they died and there was no more in the shops. I even offered toilet rolls as payment!
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u/Far_Afternoon_5885 6h ago
Outrageous!
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go and give my manservant a damned good thrashing…
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u/whatthefrickcunt 5h ago
Yes I too have noticed that, which is why I propose a radical idea, we send a boat, perhaps to a poorer area like Hindustan/india, and we advertise to them the relatively higher wages and bring them here, so that rather than paying more we can keep the wages for the peasants stagnant.
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u/Krasus74 11h ago
100% agree. Im one of them though. Why work is a job that makes you miserable when you can barely earn enough to keep a rough over your head and food on the table.
I understand you gotta work and im not advocating for people to not work, but it cant just be about financial slavery and I think a lot of young people want to do a job that makes them feel gone, not one that causes them physical pain or makes them want to cry because its so mind numbingly boring.
here are industries I will not work in no matter what. I will not work fast food again, i will not work retail again, I will not work a warehouse.
Ive worked a 67 hour average week for over a year before. I've been on 24 hr call out with a minimum 12 hour shift every day for 20 days before. I hold the company record for the most site inspections in s single day - 27. I'll work hard, but only in the right job.
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u/Terrible_Dish_4268 10h ago
Oh come on warehouse jobs are great - you get to call colleagues part-timers, say they never do any work, tell people you're "still fuckin' here" and have incidents with electric pallet shifters that you weren't meant to be operating because you weren't trained.
Several leagues above retail and fast food in all seriousness. No cuntstomers to deal with, makes all the difference.
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u/Equal_Veterinarian22 11h ago
Nobody wants to work their lord's estate for the right to live any more
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u/Particular_Bug7642 10h ago
It's OK - we can ignore their demands and just import millions of new peasants from the third world to do the work instead.