Ever had hard work mistaken for luck?

[Exterous]

[ATOT=blog]

So a relative and I got in a...discussion about how 'lucky' I am in life after she asked about my new job. Given that we started from almost the same base (US citizen, caring parents etc) I tried to point out that it wasn't just luck. The degree I got (Architecture) had the highest unemployment of any degree in the US starting the year I graduated and continuing for the next 8 years at around 14+% while degrees like art, drama, communication were in the 11% range. So I had to spend more time and effort to change my education and experience if I wanted a better career. Even then I worked for one company almost all the way through their bankruptcy, could have been laid off at any moment and got low balled on my next job salary because everyone knew I needed a job. The last company I worked for struggled to make its payroll on numerous occasions which meant salary freezes, layoffs and cuts to benefits.

But apparently I just don't get it because I am 'lucky' to not have financial problems. (As if worrying if I will get paid isn't a problem...) Of course they stretched themselves to buy the first house they saw and couldn't afford before the bubble while we looked at our finances and realized that we couldn't afford a house yet so we sat in a rental for another 2 years. When we bought a car it was a low mileage civic but they bought an 80,000 mile fully loaded SUV for about $1500 more than we spent. For years it was "Lets take my car because I don't like your car." "You don't have in dash nav?" "Is this as loud as your stereo goes?" But now when I say "Lets take my car because it still works" after she's spent thousands in repair bills over the last couple of years its a big deal.

They took their money out of the stock market in 2008 while I took the time to educate myself online and in the library about what I should be doing. We cut back on our spending, paid down our growing credit card debt and increased our contributions. I also became more focused about what I was investing in as I learned more. To this day everytime we get a raise a chunk of that goes to increased contributions. Meanwhile they bought new motorized recliner couches with massagers, LED lighting and a memory foam pullout. They have 5 LCD tvs for a family of 2 all of which are newer and more expensive than our TVs. They complain they have no money but then will go to Vegas because 'they deserve it'. If something breaks they just replace it instead of taking the time to learn how to fix it. When I bought our new kitchen appliances I did it over 1.5 years in order to buy matching returned\closeout deals. They just went and bought what they wanted without waiting for a sale and spent 3x what I spent for lower quality.

But I am just lucky...

[/blog]

tl;dr:
Bitch be trippin'

 

[notposting]

Just think, when the apocalypse o'doom hits, you'll still just be lucky.

Tell it to her zombie self at that time.

 

[DigDog]

given that luck doesn't exist, what do you think she meant?

people are less rational than we believe, and some people do get everything on a plate, stemming from good looks, pheromones, chance, contacts.. or sometimes plain hard work.
although in my experience, hard work is maybe the one of these that has the lowest returns ..

 

[rcpratt]

Nod and smile...nod and smile...

 

[Tweak155]

This is typical of people with money problems. While not everyone who has money / nice things had to do hard work to get there... most of it is not "luck".

Luck is when you're born into money or win the lottery or something similar.

 

[IronWing]

[ATOT=blog]

But I am just lucky...

[/blog]

God has truly blessed you.

 

[Ichinisan]

I know people like that! They're entitled. The "we deserve it" line really reminds me of a specific individual that takes and takes and takes and complains as if you can just cruise through life and have nice things without any effort.

 

[Vdubchaos]

If you were to ask me, wealth is more to do with luck then hard work.

 

[WackyDan]

How come this conversation sounds familiar?

Oh yeah, I've seen it repeated here at AT on the politics sub as well some other forums I frequent.

It is white privilege that allowed me to succeed according to many. I'm certain that I would have had a harder time getting ahead if I was black, or hispanic perhaps so there is that... But...

I have worked my ass off. If luck exists, then through hard work, smart work, and good networking I've created my own "luck".

I haven't blindly solicited an employer since the early 90's. IBM came knocking and wanted me to interview for a position they wanted me to have at minimum a four year degree with a masters preferred. I have neither. They created a duplicate job posting just for me to apply to that dropped the degree criteria. I was hired immediately - and this was in 2010 when nobody was hiring like they are now. ...But that is just luck right?

When I was laid off from Lenovo ( even though I made president's club for the 2nd year in a row) I had money in the bank, and chose to spend part of the 8 months I had off riding across the country on my spyder seeing old friends, family and taking in the sights. Some libs/progs on one of the political forums I frequent said that it was unfair of me to be able to do that at a time when others were suffering. Seriously.

So this luck bullshit is a mindset. People who haven't applied themselves or keep waiting for shit to happen will always believe that their misfortune or success is due to luck and apply that same logic to you. They don't believe working hard produces results because they believe the kid flipping burgers is working hard or the person picking produce is working hard. They might be working hard, but not doing anything that makes them grow with skill or anything marketable.

Anyway, I digress.

 

[kranky]

"The harder you work, the luckier you get" someone once said.

There can be an element of luck involved when people become successful - someone gets hired because the hiring manager's kids and the candidate's kids are on the same soccer team, and the hiring manager used that as a tie-breaker.

But when people label a more successful person as "lucky", IMHO it is usually because of envy and they feel entitled, and didn't get everything they believed they were entitled to. Since the self-entitled generally do not believe they lack any skill at all, the only way to make sense of what they see is to attribute it to good luck on the successful person's part, and/or "bad luck" happening to themselves.

You can't ignore that for many people, there is an element of luck involved, but when you work hard, you will be involved in more opportunities for luck to smile on you.

I once was assigned to a new group where I had zero experience and knowledge because my then-manager felt threatened by me. Bad luck. I worked hard to learn and impressed a few key people that solidified my position. Good luck. My manager and main supporter left the company. Bad luck. My new manager thought I was doing a fantastic job and got me into the annual bonus program. Good luck. Things have been pretty good ever since.

If I had been a self-entitled type when I got assigned to the group I knew nothing about, I would have fumbled around and failed, and blamed my bad luck for being thrown into a job I was unqualified for. But I worked hard (bought books, researched websites, spent many hours working with unfamiliar software) and at least was in a position where a lucky turn of events or two at least COULD happen.

 

[Exterous]

Just think, when the apocalypse o'doom hits, you'll still just be lucky.

Tell it to her zombie self at that time.

You are so lucky - our zombie plague was was worse than your zombie plague

God has truly blessed you.

Thank you Reverend

You can't ignore that for many people, there is an element of luck involved, but when you work hard, you will be involved in more opportunities for luck to smile on you.

I don't disagree with you but you'd think from the way she talks you'd think I have never had anything bad happen to me. My degree? Bad luck (went from 4% unemployment to 12% while I was in school). Job choices? Lots of bad luck there too. But, like you, I didn't let those setbacks define me in a negative way. Yeah they all sucked for a while but I worked hard at making my life better and overcoming those setbacks

 

[JohnKAdams]

Many of the times my hard work is mistaken for luck but hey.. This is life

 

[KeithTalent]

It's usually the opposite for me.

KT

 

[boomerang]

Equality of outcome is on the horizon. Enjoy your spoils while you can.

 

[IndyColtsFan]

While luck plays a role in our lives, hard work and good, solid decision-making are more important.

As an example, I've known a guy for about 17 years. We used to be good friends but had a falling out about a decade ago so now, at most, we're acquaintances. Over the course of the time I've known this guy, he has not progressed in his job or earnings and is continually mentioning on Facebook about how "poor" he is. If you review his life over the time I've known him, it has been one extremely poor decision after another:

1. Married an uneducated piece of white trash who basically refused to work and would complain to him and be angry because he was taking classes at night and acted as if that was his hobby. He confided in me and I told him it might be time to end the marriage - even with the two of them alone, he was struggling financially, she was lazy and useless, and nothing improved. Which brings us to #2...
2. He had a child with this lady and money became tighter, she became even more unwilling to contribute AT or outside the home (he got stuck doing most of the housework after working all day). He confided in me about their issues again, and I told him to get rid of her. What does he do? He has ANOTHER KID WITH HER.
3. The reason we aren't close friends was because I started dating a girl he was interested in (remember, he was still married) and he refused to speak with me afterwards.
4. After this issue, he finally wised up and divorced the wench. But now, he had 2 kids to support, very little money, and had to still deal with her and her trashy family.
5. During all of this, he lost 2 or 3 jobs -- at least one of which was due to incompetence. That particular job was the only one I recall where he got a promotion.
6. Sounds like a trainwreck? It gets better! He married yet another uneducated woman who doesn't work outside the home and had 3 MORE KIDS with her! So he is supporting 1 wife and 5 kids on his low salary now.

Why am I relaying this story? I'm relaying it because if I talked to him today and compared our lives in the last 10-15 years, he would say "You're lucky!" But a blind person could see from the story above that he was not unlucky -- he kept making one piss-poor decision after another and has effectively ruined his life. People never want to blame themselves and just want to ascribe the success of others to "luck" rather than recognizing hard work and solid decision-making skills.

 

[SlitheryDee]

Not in any case that I can point to. Who knows what people say when I'm not around though.

The op's case sounds like someone who is envious of his status trying to trivialize his accomplishments. People love to do that. I doubt they were even aware they were doing that though. It's just that their default position is that everyone who is better off than them must have had no small amount of luck to get there. If that attitude only came up in conversation it would be no nevermind to anyone. Problem is that is informs their political leanings as well. Eventually they'll use it to justify taking money from people like you.

 

[soulcougher73]

Some people are just stupid.

 

[Ancalagon44]

Not in any case that I can point to. Who knows what people say when I'm not around though.

The op's case sounds like someone who is envious of his status trying to trivialize his accomplishments. People love to do that. I doubt they were even aware they were doing that though. It's just that their default position is that everyone who is better off than them must have had no small amount of luck to get there. If that attitude only came up in conversation it would be no nevermind to anyone. Problem is that is informs their political leanings as well. Eventually they'll use it to justify taking money from people like you.

This.

This kind of attitude is fairly common. It comes with a large helping of entitlement. Usually people like this resent wealthier people for not helping them financially.

When you do well, they have to attribute it to luck, because accepting the reality that it is due to hard work and sacrifice (ie wait a bit to buy that TV) would be damaging to their egos. They've never been able to keep their urges at bay for longer than a month, and that is why they cannot save.

 

[HamburgerBoy]

I first noticed this as a kid when I'd study harder than many of my peers and get better grades, and they would call me lucky (or "too smart" which would be trivializing things to genetic luck, whether or not they realized it at the time). See also: "he's so lucky that he's thin". I hated those people at the time. Basically, in all areas you can find people with a shocking lack of self-awareness envious of others because of their own bad decisions. At this point I agree with the "nod and smile" advice above, no point in trying to convert people that have no desire to actually improve themselves.

That being said, luck is a thing and I don't think it's fair to bring up affirmative action and such in this discussion. My luckiest thing was being born into a family that stressed personal responsibility and hard work, and there are a lot of people born into shitty circumstances that never had a chance and will continue to perpetuate the cycle until that rare child decides to leave it behind. Far worse than anyone born into the ghetto and making bad decisions is someone (like many of my peers growing up) born into financial security and making bad decisions.

 

[Naer]

Two different things

 

[Imp]

For certain things, there is luck, a lot of luck, but luck usually won't get you anywhere unless it's accompanied by hard work. Getting a job, even a shitty one, can fall under this umbrella.

Blowing all your money on useless shit is all you though, baby.

 

[Lash444]

Equality of outcome is on the horizon. Enjoy your spoils while you can.

The irony is that the OP tells a story about how far off people's perceptions can be from reality.

 

[dyna]

Its more about having wisdom than luck. Also some people and you may be one of those people that just make everything look easy despite the complexity involved. That can be perceived as luck but really your just damn good at something and it takes less work for you than everybody else.

 

[smackababy]

OP, where is your hard work in not being laid off? You did not specify if you just weren't picked or you actually did make yourself an invaluable asset that they couldn't afford to lay off. That could easily have been luck.

 

[tcsenter]

I have an uncle who is this way and has made comments a couple times about not everyone being as "fortunate" as some of his siblings to have developed such a decent retirement. He lost a few good jobs over the years; one was not his fault, the company went bankrupt and folded. But he also quit a couple good gigs that are still in business, whereas these siblings he refers to stayed with one employer until retirement, or had a spouse who stayed with one employer. To his credit, he is a hard worker, doesn't feel he is "above" any kind of work and is always ready to pitch in when there is hard work to be done, but gets pissed-off too easily, takes things too personally, and burns his bridges.

He did get into a nasty divorce after some 17+ years of marriage, his wife basically had been sacking money away into a bank account that he did not know existed, deliberately lied to him about discrepancies for years, and then left him for a boyfriend she had on the side for about two years. And he wasn't expecting it. He just came home one day and most of the house was empty, there were divorce/court papers on the kitchen counter. Really the only reason he knew how much she had been scamming him over the years was because she rubbed his face in it.

I do know he had his flings on the side, too. So maybe he had it coming tit-for-tat. But she basically abandoned her children, too, and that's not part of the deal when you are getting even with your spouse for past wrongs and slights, you don't take it out on the kids.