The Pit (坑, ピット, 피트)

HBO has a new medical drama trending called "The Pitt" after the city where it takes place, Pittsburgh. The Pitt in the show is actually the emergency room at one of Pittsburgh's hospitals, where the opening episode sees medical procedural veteran Noah Wyle (from ER, which was set in Chicago) take on the role of doctor again leading a group of new doctors in an understaffed, underappreciated department. Does this man know how to play anyone else besides a doctor? The first episode shows a doctor who speaks 6 languages (not sure how this could be true unless inherited from a young age, as balancing a career as a doctor and learning languages seem fundamentally incompatible) and the usual difficulties an ER may offer, like patients suddenly going into cardiac arrest, new emergency cases being brought in, and a dude just needing an enema. All sorts of cases almost like random people from the street walking into a law office asking for legal help, except unlike lawyers the ER cannot just turn them away and refuse them as clients. It struck me watching The Pitt that the actors playing the medical team can just shoot the scenes and remember their lines and give dramatic performances (not saying that's necessarily easy, but it's not brain surgery) versus the people they're depicting, who actually have the tough jobs and can't back away from the jobs. It made me think, "what are the worst jobs in the world, the pits of the work force, if you will?" Nursing has to be one of the toughest jobs, which is probably why they're constantly understaffed and there's a consistent nursing shortage that probably won't go away ever. Hard to imagine ever having a nursing surplus, that's for sure. MJ did the equivalent of a heroic sacrifice to willingly choose to become a nurse as her second career, whereas many people she worked with conidered going the other way, quitting nursing to pursue a second career. Stories of bad patients, bad doctors, bad co-workers, people calling out of work, travel nurses in it only for the money, always being on one's feet all the time, 12-hour shifts that can go up to 13 or 14 hour shifts if you feel guilty for leaving someone with a bunch of work: the one good thing is that there's alway going to be work for nurses somewhere, it's just the level of B.S. you can put up with. It's compounded by the fact that the hospital always has to be open, 24/7, so they need like triple the work force as a normal operation. Say a restaurant or office work, 40 hours a week, closed rest of the time, only need to sign up 40 hours of shifts. Unfortunately for nurses, there are 24x7 = 168 hours total in a week, so that's more than 4 times the number of hours other businesses have to find employees willing to work! That's actually pretty incredible. I really doubt the new Gen Z is going to suddenly flock to the nursing profession in droves based on the conversations I hear at restaurants (hey your Youtube video was so awesome! You LITERALLY killed it) to "I'm so upset at my boss for (doing something annoying that most employees in America have to put up with), I'm very offended and looking for a new job. I can't believe I have to go into work twice a week)." - actual conversations MJ and I overheard while sitting at vegan restaurants. I'm guilty of the same: once someone has drank from the pool of easy work, as I have, you don't want to go back to doing hard jobs ever again. And in this age of everyone knowing all the information all the time immediately as it happens, everyone knows what the easy jobs are and want to do the easy jobs- get paid thousands of dollars for putting up a video of yourself! "Influencer!" Live your best life! Maybe some sort of "draft" will have to be installed to get people to become nurses, like during World War time, conscription. It's a battle against aversion towards difficult jobs. You'd think the free market could handle this by raising the price of nurses, but then where does the demand come from? People don't just "purchase" nurses or healthcare, the insurance system gets in the way of that and the money that I pay for health insurance (pretty hefty amount that gets into 5 digits annually if I consider additional costs than just the monthly premium) doesn't flow directly to the healthcare workers, they flow through the insurance companies to pay the hospitals who then pay the workers. That's at least 2 additional middle men (are we calling them middlepeople now?) Could I see myself working in the "Pitt?" I honestly don't; I'd be like the medical intern the first episode who's there to learn but immediatley faints upon seeing a disfigured leg. Could I be a farmer? Probably not. Could I be a construction worker? Probably not. Could I be any of the various jobs out there that have strong need for workers but are tough on the body and don't necessarily pay as well as white collar jobs? Probably not. It takes a lot of strength and dedication to work in places like the Pitt, and ironically those are probably the ones that won't get replaced by AI. (software engineers, translators, lawyers, "consultants", all white collar jobs can foreseeably be replaced much quicker, especially the ones with high-paying salaries). Will there be a work force revolution in the world, instead of the industrial revolution people moving from agricultural work and by hand moved to machines and mass production...will it be a reverse thing of moving from machines back to labor jobs like nursing and non-machine related jobs? Maybe the reckoning for us sit-at-home laborers is coming and we will be sent down to..... The Pitt.