# Answer me this.



## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

Its been said by DT, that a woman should get paid as much as a man IF she does the same work as a man.

Does that mean, if a job is easy enough for both a man and a woman to do it, they should both be paid the same, with which I agree with, 
OR
Does it mean that If a job cannot be done as well by a woman as by a man, that she should be paid the same as him, regardless? In which I disagree,

IF they hired a man off the street to run a sewing machine, for example, and after 6 mos he still wasn't as good at it as the women around him, and he asked to get the same amount of money as they made, Id say he wouldn't get it.
IF 
They hired a woman to run a F-30 and doing plowing, and she could barely turn it, and it nearly killed her to operate it, but after a month of wear and tear, she thought she should make as much as the other men running F-30s, Id say she wouldn't get it.

Is my thinking old fashioned or what?


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## rkintn (Dec 12, 2002)

DT is a little behind the times. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equal_pay_for_equal_work


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## Nsoitgoes (Jan 31, 2016)

Why do you assume that if it is easy a woman should be adequate for it, but if it is hard only a man would be able to do it properly?

Many jobs require brain power, lateral and creative thinking and communication skills. If a man and a woman are doing exactly the same job with exactly the same results then their pay scale and chance of promotion should be exactly the same.

When I was a fair bit younger one of the jobs I had was as a senior wages clerk responsible for calculating and distributing the wages of a mid sized factory. I know for a fact that the boy who brought me my tea made as much as I did. He wasn't much of a tea maker, either.


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## ceresone (Oct 7, 2005)

Oh, My, I won't even give my opinion on this!! Too many years working jobs--and making less than a man--cause women didn't need to make as much money--cause "men" have families to support. Women today just don't realize "how it used to be".. AND--how many men were asked if they had a babysitter before they could be hired? But--I digress---


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## coolrunnin (Aug 28, 2010)

1. Most jobs are in offices, so same job same expectations same pay.
2. Where are you going to find someone to pay you to plow with a f 30?


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

N I agree with your secend para wholeheartedly

I was using my examples as JUST THAT, EXAMPLES.


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## frogmammy (Dec 8, 2004)

I heard that "He has a family to support" once too often. Co-worker and I were hired at the same time. I had experience as a cook and waitress, he had none. He was paid more than I was. I asked for a raise and got that response from my boss. 

I pointed out that the BOY in question had no experience whatsoever in food service, and I had several years AND he was unmarried and lived at home with his parents while I had a child to support on my own. They told me he would get married in the future and needed to be saving money for it. Huh? This at a large hospital in Texas.

Mon


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## Nsoitgoes (Jan 31, 2016)

It isn't just the actual pay, month by month, that we lose out on. It is also social security (which is calculated on earnings) and employer-contributed retirement plans (also based on salary) so we lose out all the way down the line.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

It means that DT expects women to be less capable, or he would not have phrased it that way.

I, too, have seen men who have done less but been paid more. Fortunately the frequency seems to be decreasing. 

'Nuff said! 

For the record, I consider both major candidates to be corrupt.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

I sure agree with your last.

The examples others have shown above were where women had more experience then men on a job but got paid less for various reasons. I agree that that is WRONG. That was one side of the coin that I was trying to bring forward here. The other side was, when women got paid less for doing a job with men, but NOT doing it as well, BUT wanting the same pay as men.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

FarmboyBill said:


> I sure agree with your last.
> 
> The examples others have shown above were where women had more experience then men on a job but got paid less for various reasons. I agree that that is WRONG. That was one side of the coin that I was trying to bring forward here. The other side was, when women got paid less for doing a job with men, but NOT doing it as well, BUT wanting the same pay as men.


I keep hearing about that, but I have never seen it. The other way around I have seen. I am not saying it does not exist, only that I have not seen it.

All I can say is, people can be weird!


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## ceresone (Oct 7, 2005)

Is this where the saying comes from that a woman has to work twice as hard to be considered half as good as a man?
Terri, it depends on the part of the country you are in--how much it has changed.All the training people get on this subject, does not register with the good ole boys. I could give a good example that leads all the way to capital in Mo. but better not


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

C, as to your first, and as to my EXAMPLE of a woman plowing with a F-30 Farmall, She would likely have to work twice as hard, generally, as a man to operate it. I remember hearing that a neighbor who had 3 girls and 2 boys. He put himself on a new tractor, and his oldest boy on an old tractor, and his oldest girl on an ancient steel wheeled tractor. Now the 2 males could handle the ancient tractor OK, the man easier than the boy, but the boy easier than the girl. There were 2yrs between them. It was said that she cried whenever she had to make a turn.


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## Shrek (May 1, 2002)

There is absolutely nothing wrong with equal pay regardless of gender, however where some feminists have promoted reducing physical requirements of some job profile "to give women a better chance to compete for those jobs " is not wise.

If a worker can meet the physical and knowledge requirements of a job, then they deserve the pay for that job regardless of gender.

A local female who is built like a football linebacker works girder beam construction and earns more than many of her male coworkers as she is now a crew foreman and she always earned the same pay as she moved up.

A husband and wife I worked with were both engineers and the husband for the first 6 or 7 years I knew them , earned a grade higher pay because while they both had electrical engineering masters, he also held a mechanical engineering degree. After she completed her aerospace degree, she passed his pay grade as her additional degree was worth the extra pay.

A local female physician is married to a male nurse and she wants him to become either a nurse practitioner or a physician because he currently faces a glass ceiling in his sector because many female nurses of his grade with comparable time on the job earn more.

In reality equal pay of the gender often is simply media buzz as the perceived prejudice often is aimed in both directions depending on the gender of supervisors be they male or female and what qualities of the particular job they consider paramount.


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## MoonRiver (Sep 2, 2007)

I believe what Trump is saying is pay should be based on merit, period. Sex should not have anything to do with it.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

Shrek said:


> In reality equal pay of the gender often is simply media buzz as the perceived prejudice often is aimed in both directions depending on the gender of supervisors be they male or female and what qualities of the particular job they consider paramount.


"Often" is the most important word in that statement.

Before I was a nurse, I worked in Sterile Service. We cleaned and counted the instruments and checked them for chips, made up the packs of instruments for each surgery and sterilized them, checked the sterile instruments at the various stations for quantity and to prevent outdates. 

Do you know who made more than we did? Male Housekeeping did. Not the women: just the men. And, this was an improvement: the old-timers explained how they were once expected to clock out after 8 hours on the job, and then keep working.

Like I said: things have gotten better!


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## coolrunnin (Aug 28, 2010)

FarmboyBill said:


> C, as to your first, and as to my EXAMPLE of a woman plowing with a F-30 Farmall, She would likely have to work twice as hard, generally, as a man to operate it. I remember hearing that a neighbor who had 3 girls and 2 boys. He put himself on a new tractor, and his oldest boy on an old tractor, and his oldest girl on an ancient steel wheeled tractor. Now the 2 males could handle the ancient tractor OK, the man easier than the boy, but the boy easier than the girl. There were 2yrs between them. It was said that she cried whenever she had to make a turn.


This is nothing but an example of poor use of the labor pool available to the farmer, I'm guessing he's no longer in business.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

I suppose hes still farming, of a sort, pushing up daisys. The above was in the earliest 60s.


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## coolrunnin (Aug 28, 2010)

FarmboyBill said:


> I suppose hes still farming, of a sort, pushing up daisys. The above was in the earliest 60s.


Do you not agree the farmer could have made the most productive use of the ancient tractor? 

To me the way he ran his operation was the same as some have commented about the females being held back, and underpaid.


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## Raeven (Oct 11, 2011)

Shrek said:


> In reality equal pay of the gender often is simply media buzz as the perceived prejudice often is aimed in both directions depending on the gender of supervisors be they male or female and what qualities of the particular job they consider paramount.


With all due respect, *Shrek*, your statement is full of crap.

Wage disparity for equal work is easily measured on a mean value across jobs of all types and wages for same. These are not difficult or challenging calculations. The gender disparity of wages is well documented for anyone who wishes to genuinely study the situation beyond a few empirical observations in their little home town. It is not "simply media buzz" or a "perceived prejudice." Of course, if you have actual studies to cite that demonstrate the truth of your statements, I'm more than happy to read them. I think you'll struggle to find any. Here are the ones that support my position. They took about 2 minutes to find:

http://www.aauw.org/research/the-simple-truth-about-the-gender-pay-gap/

https://www.americanprogress.org/is...16/11391/the-top-10-facts-about-the-wage-gap/

http://www.catalyst.org/knowledge/womens-earnings-and-income

Oh, here's a link that shows that when women enter a field traditionally dominated by men, the pay rate drops: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/20/u...-male-dominated-field-the-pay-drops.html?_r=0

Isn't that nice?

Since you like empirical stories, however, virtually every woman I know can relate more than a few instances of pay disparity in her career. Here are a couple of mine:

When I was just entering the labor market, I joined a work study program in high school. The job I was given was doing manual inventory control in an auto parts department of a Fiat/Volvo/Alpha Romeo dealership. The job basically consisted of making hash marks indicating the parts we had sold in a big ADP book, so the parts manager could craft his orders to replace those sold items. It took me about 25 minutes of a 4-hour shift to do the work.

Since I still had 3 1/2 hours to fill, the fellows who worked the counter thought it would be fun to see if I could do their jobs. At that time, you asked the customer to list the make and model of his car, then flipped through the microfiche catalog to see exploded pictures of the systems and determine the part number. After you knew the part number, you rabbited back into the stacks and picked your part for the customer. I did not find this work particularly difficult or challenging. But the men who were training me acted like they'd accomplished a feat of immense difficulty with a monkey. 

Whenever a customer approached the counter and indicated what they needed, one of the guys would say, "Watch this!" and look at me expectantly. I'd do my thing, retrieve the part and try not to roll my eyes while everyone oohed and aahhed as if I had done some stupendous task. I half expected them to toss me a treat.

Soon I was working the counter right alongside the men. I did not get a raise, despite asking for one several times. I earned much less for doing exactly the same job they were doing.

A year or so later, I moved to Idaho and with my experience, got another job selling parts in a Volvo/Fiat/Lancia dealership. I learned I was being paid less than a new hire made a few months later. The parts manager quit at some point, and because it was obvious the junior hire couldn't do the job, I was "promoted" to parts manager. I never did earn more than my "employee." Why? "He has a family," I was told. (Sound familiar, ladies?)

This carried on throughout my career in selling auto parts. I never did achieve parity in that field. And I can't tell you how many times customers approaching the counter would just look past me, searching for a man to help them. Even after I clarified I could help them, more than a few weren't convinced.

I had pay parity in the years I worked in the legal field, so nothing to report there. Strangely, though, we all suffered from a "glass ceiling" in certain areas. In other words, there were jobs you simply couldn't promote to if you didn't have the requisite dangly bits.

I work for myself now, and I finally get paid what I am worth.

Stop trying to promote the notion that this is all in our heads. It isn't. It's a very real phenomenon with very real and adverse consequences for women across the board. Most jobs don't require people to lift 100 pounds over their heads, so let's be honest about that. For the few that do, I have no problems whatsoever to holding women to exactly the same job standards. But that's not really what we're talking about.


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## WolfWalksSoftly (Aug 13, 2004)

TESTIFY! lol Of the companies I have ever dealt with, it was always, this is the starting pay.. for everyone. Regardless of gender.


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## Bellyman (Jul 6, 2013)

One thing that throws a monkey wrench in the whole thing is the idea that a person should be paid per hour. While that's the most common form of employment, it leaves a lot of room for one person being more capable than another at performing the same task in a given time. And it's a big reason why different workers could be fairly paid at different rates of pay. Can it be abused, absolutely. 

I'm all for a person being paid according to the work that they do. I don't care if they're male, female or other. Move two pallets of freight onto this semi-trailer, it pays $10 per pallet. That's easy. If you are able to move 2 pallets onto the trailer in an hour, you made $20. If you fiddle-fart around and it takes you 4 hours to move the same 2 pallets, I have no problem with you being paid the same $20, even though that only works out to $5/hr. Equal pay for equal work. If it's the woman who moves the 2 pallets in an hour, great! She's a good worker and deserves what she earns. If it's the man who fiddle-farts around for 4 hours moving those two pallets, tough teat, he's still only earned $20 and can bellyache all he wants to about equal pay. 

Some things women are better at. Some things men are better at. Many things either one can do just fine and when they do exactly the same thing, they should get exactly the same pay.


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## Raeven (Oct 11, 2011)

I agree, paying by measurable output can work very well in some circumstances. It's not easy to measure output in all jobs, however. Hourly wages are good in some situations, salaries in others, piecemeal per measurable output in still others.

Everyone knows lazy people who get paid the same as hard workers, and that's across the board. That's an entirely different thing from pay parity by gender, though.


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## frogmammy (Dec 8, 2004)

I was an independent (interior) painting contractor in Texas, specialized in apartment complexes.

I'd find out what the men were bidding for the apartment contract and underbid them by $5. Always had a private laugh when I was given the contract because they "wanted to help a woman in business". Yeah, right! They just figured that they'd save a lot of $$$ by hiring me. And they did, at first. Then when I got a rep for getting the job done WELL and quickly, they paid much more.

Mon


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## oregon woodsmok (Dec 19, 2010)

What are you doing, Bill? Harnessing yourself up to the plow with a mule harness and pulling it with muscle power?

Around here, the husbands go to town to work a job with a salary and health benefits and the wives are feeding the livestock, raising the kids, and doing the irrigation. There is absolutely no reason that a woman can not run a tractor. The reason to use a tractor is to use the tractor power instead of your muscles. Maybe you should consider graduating to a tractor with some hydraulics?

There are some jobs that are muscle based that a woman might not be ale to do: professional football player, stevedore at a tiny harbor with no loading cranes, heavy class weight lifter at the Olympics, although the women weight lifters can get a bunch of pounds up into the air, just not quite as much weight as the men can lift.


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## Wolf mom (Mar 8, 2005)

Great argument for merit pay.....Leave sex out of it.


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

I got 4 tractors with hyds, one with 3pt. Whats your point.


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## sustainabilly (Jun 20, 2012)

@ Raeven, Thanks for posting the links above. I was surprised, both in a bad way and a good way from reading them and others I hunted up. Although I never really had the perspective that would make this an issue I would personally be concerned about, I've always thought it was a very inefficient and shortsighted business strategy. When I read a few more pieces on the pay gap I was surprised, because I not only thought the gap was less, I also thought it was closing faster than seems to be the case. 

I was happily surprised by something I read in an article by well known Silicon Valley corporate headhunter, Nick Corcodilos. 
http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-...er-women-dont-cause-the-pay-gap-employers-do/
It seems that women who're part of the millennial generation have got the answer. In a nutshell, it goes something like, 'Won't pay me right? I move on'. That's got to be a good sign for all the people who've been working for gender pay parity for so long to see... Real life proof that their efforts are paying off.


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## HappySevenFarm (Jan 21, 2013)

It seems to me that that has always been the way things work for both genders. If you don't feel like you're being paid enough you're certainly free to move on.


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## sustainabilly (Jun 20, 2012)

I think, like most sticky problems, it's more complicated than at first glance. Like I said earlier, I honestly never bothered to learn much about it. Being a man, it simply didn't affect me like it would a woman. I also think a single, simple solution won't fix what's broke.

I know that solution looks like a no brainer at first glance. It's easy to look at that way when seen from the perspective of a demographic that, historically, has had many viable options available to them. By viable, I mean many more occupational choices at higher pay. Pay that didn't leave them working a few months into the next year just to break even with what men doing the same job made ending on Dec.31.


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## Raeven (Oct 11, 2011)

sustainabilly said:


> @ Raeven, Thanks for posting the links above. I was surprised, both in a bad way and a good way from reading them and others I hunted up. Although I never really had the perspective that would make this an issue I would personally be concerned about, I've always thought it was a very inefficient and shortsighted business strategy. When I read a few more pieces on the pay gap I was surprised, because I not only thought the gap was less, I also thought it was closing faster than seems to be the case.
> 
> I was happily surprised by something I read in an article by well known Silicon Valley corporate headhunter, Nick Corcodilos.
> http://www.pbs.org/newshour/making-...er-women-dont-cause-the-pay-gap-employers-do/
> It seems that women who're part of the millennial generation have got the answer. In a nutshell, it goes something like, 'Won't pay me right? I move on'. That's got to be a good sign for all the people who've been working for gender pay parity for so long to see... Real life proof that their efforts are paying off.


Thanks, *Karl*. I appreciate you took the time to look and study an issue about which you acknowledge you had more to learn. Also for exhibiting much needed qualities of curiosity and empathy in a world far too short of both.

As a woman who, along with her peers, lived through this unprecedented era of women entering the workforce in very large numbers and encountering first hand, again and again, the pay disparity and glass ceilings, I have witnessed the progress we have made over these many years. I am happy when I see younger women who cannot imagine accepting less pay for doing the same job as a man and who are not deterred from trying for the highest positions. It was not always so, and as you learned, it still isn't. I'm pleased to have done my small part to push into traditionally male fields and fight for fair pay. And I am glad for the progress we have made.

There is more to do. I think it will resolve as another generation or two passes, but it appalls me when someone just waves their hand and minimizes the impact of pay disparity on my generation of women and those who followed. It is a very real thing. It has adversely affected many of us in ways those men will never experience -- or, apparently, care to understand.

I solved my own problem by becoming self-employed. But then, I had the luxury to do that. I didn't have kids. Not all women are in a position to make the same choices to walk away from jobs that do not treat women fairly.


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## Clem (Apr 12, 2016)

I appreciate and fully understand the problem. However, believe it or not, I was raised hungry and started picking cotton before I was tall enough th be seen in a cotton field. 2 or 4 cents a pound. On to peaches at 10 cent a bushel. Highlight of my life was cropping tobacco for 50 cents an hour.

There were old black women working in the barn, tying. They made more money than me.

All in all, poverty was a great equalizer. 

It was only after I wore my back out and started using my mind(still in the original container!!) that I saw inequality, against women, black people, and eventually the Hispanic migrant workers. 

Now it's everywhere. I'd never think of defending inequality, just because it didn't affect me. It's possible some people see things that ain't there, but I'm not one of them.


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

HappySevenFarm said:


> It seems to me that that has always been the way things work for both genders. If you don't feel like you're being paid enough you're certainly free to move on.


To a job that treated them worse? Like today, women worked at the best job that was available to them. 

These were the jobs that were available to us. people did not stay with firms that treated them badly if they had a choice. Most women worked because they or their families needed their wages, and it was the custom to pay them less.


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## Evons hubby (Oct 3, 2005)

The closest thing to a normal job where I competed with women was when I sold real estate.we were all paid the same.... A percentage of what we brought into the store. For eleven years straight I out performed every sales associate in the office and of course took home larger checks. I consistently brought in more listings as well as selling the most properties along with the highest total dollars worth of sales.


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## HappySevenFarm (Jan 21, 2013)

Terri said:


> To a job that treated them worse? Like today, women worked at the best job that was available to them.
> 
> These were the jobs that were available to us. people did not stay with firms that treated them badly if they had a choice. Most women worked because they or their families needed their wages, and it was the custom to pay them less.



Just saying you take the best the market is willing to pay whether you are male it female. If the best job available is a crappy job that you don't think is fair then you either take it or you don't. If the owner of a company wants to pay females less that's their business. Maybe they lose out by doing so, but again, that's their business. If a man is willing to work for less money than another man and put out the same production who is the business going to hire?


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

BUTT, the Co don't know they have a less than willing worker TILL they hire him. Like the poster said above, his Co hired several workers, but he out performed them all and took home a bigger check, as was his due


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

HappySevenFarm said:


> If the owner of a company wants to pay females less that's their business. Maybe they lose out by doing so, but again, that's their business. If a man is willing to work for less money than another man and put out the same production who is the business going to hire?


That is certainly true!

And, if it became the law of the land that men could be paid 50% less than a woman for the same job, that is what would be done with most workers. The businesses would not pay most workers twice what their competitors did. 

Changing employers would do little good, because everybody would pay their male staff less or the competition would eat them alive.

Human nature being what it is, and because the rent or mortgage must be paid every month, you would probably vote for the politicians who would make it illegal to pay a male dishwasher or waiter or any other profession half of what a woman made.

Which is eventually what happened with women being paid less than a man for the same job.


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## Clem (Apr 12, 2016)

Sadly, a 65 year old male stripper can't get paid much of anything. And no respect at all!!


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## HappySevenFarm (Jan 21, 2013)

No one said life is fair. Is it fair that the pretty waitress generally makes more in tips than her male counter part? Or, the pretty pizza delivery driver or bar tender making more in tips than their male counter parts? 
These are experiences that I've witnessed in my life. Should we have government regulate how much people tip so everyone gets equal pay too?


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

Clem, I think a 65yr old male stripper might make MORE than a 65 female stripper lol


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## Terri (May 10, 2002)

Clem said:


> Sadly, a 65 year old male stripper can't get paid much of anything. And no respect at all!!


Youth isn't everything: perhaps you could start something like Chippendales!


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## WolfWalksSoftly (Aug 13, 2004)

Good idea Terri..Maybe hit the Nursing Home Circuit. I have wondered what was better, The Vigor and Confidence of Youth or the Wisdom of a long life.


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## Nsoitgoes (Jan 31, 2016)

WolfWalksSoftly said:


> I have wondered what was better, The Vigor and Confidence of Youth or the Wisdom of a long life.


I'll take when I was in my mid to late thirties. Young and vigorous enough to be able to do anything, the confidence of relative maturity, and a fair amount of accumulated wisdom.

Though if I am totally honest I am having what is probably the best time of my life right now. I have no really pressing obligations, I have the strength and sense to be able to say "no" when needed, I have financial independence, a good emotional relationship...


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## FarmboyBill (Aug 19, 2005)

Agree totally with the above


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## AmericanStand (Jul 29, 2014)

Lol. I thought of this old thread tonight listening to my DIL rant that she will never hire another woman! 
This is the third woman she has groomed for the company managers job. 
There's a long selection and weeding out process that involves picking the best ,hiring five candidates and picking the best out of those after a couple years. 
Training more training and some very expensive training not to mention about 5 years in each one. 
The first two quit to raise kids for a few years and the last one to take care of grand kids and parents. . 
She's starting to get worried cause she wants to retire too!


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## frogmammy (Dec 8, 2004)

Maybe she should rethink the selection process and just go for gut instinct. Lot of people know how to look good on paper, and manipulate others and situations so they look good, but when it comes time to get down and dirty, miss the boat, or totally change direction.

Your daughter has a long dusty road ahead!

Mon


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