"Unskilled" Is Propaganda

A prosecutorial indictment on the two-part strategy of labeling you 'unskilled' and then forcing you to absorb the blame for their broken systems.

For ten years on the Gas Station Front, I’ve had to perform a kind of battlefield ballet.

I’m juggling a high-demand customer line, de-escalating a man angry about gas prices, multi-tasking a complex inventory screen, and trying to creatively solve a problem with a broken pump... all while being called “unskilled labor.”

Then, corporate rolls out a new “rewards app.” They don’t train us on it. The rules are intentionally confusing. When a customer is furious because their discount didn’t apply (for a hidden reason we were never told), they don’t yell at the app. They yell at me.

I always knew these two things were connected—the lie that I’m “unskilled” and the reality that I’m the designated punching bag for the corporation’s failures.

Now, I have the receipts to prove it’s all part of the same, deliberate, two-part strategy.

The Foundational Lie (The “De-Skilling” Indictment)

First, they had to build the lie. The concept of “unskilled labor” is not an economic reality; it is a political weapon.

It was invented to divide the workforce and suppress wages.

• TRUTH BULLET 💥 (The Racist Origin): The label was first deployed by South African mine owners to separate “skilled (white workers)” from “unskilled (Black workers)”. The goal wasn’t to describe the work; it was to “replace them completely with cheaper labor” and, critically, to prevent cross-racial class solidarity.

• TRUTH BULLET 💥 (The Modern Lie): Today, this weapon is called the “skills gap”. It’s the “accepted wisdom” that your wages are flat because you lack skills, not because of “policy choices made on behalf of those with the most... power”.

• POCKET RAZOR 🔪 (The Lie Exposed): Here is the proof that “skill” has nothing to do with your pay. From 1973-2013, U.S. labor productivity (the value you create) rose by 74%. The hourly pay of a typical worker rose by only 9%. That 65% gap is the value they stole from you, and the “skills gap” is the lie they tell to justify the theft.

The Truth of Our Skill (The Rebuttal)

The “unskilled” label is a factual lie. The work of the “Gears” ⚙️ requires a massive, uncompensated cognitive and emotional load.

• TRUTH BULLET 💥 (Your Cognitive Skill): “Unskilled” service jobs demand constant, high-level cognitive engagement. This includes: “dealing with uncertain or unpredictable situations,” “handling emergencies or crises,” “solving problems creatively,” and “handling work stress”—skills they call “leadership” in an office.

• TRUTH BULLET 💥 (Your Emotional Skill): You are paid for one job, but you are required to perform a second: “emotional labor”. This is the high-strain work of “faking” emotions (”surface acting”) or forcing yourself to feel new ones (”deep acting”) to create a positive customer experience. This is a primary driver of “employee burnout” and “cognitive dissonance”.

• POCKET RAZOR 🔪 (The Compensation Paradox): This is the smoking gun. Research proves that in “high-cognitive-skill” jobs, social and emotional tasks are “rewarded with higher pay”. In “low-cognitive-skill” jobs, the exact same tasks are not considered skills. They are treated as an unpaid “amenity” of the job. Your most valuable, high-strain skill is rendered economically invisible by a single word: “unskilled.”

The “Booby Trap” (How They Weaponize the Lie)

Now that they’ve devalued you, they can deploy their most insidious tactic: the “Booby Trap”. This is how they use you as a “human shield”.

• POCKET RAZOR 🔪 (The Lure): First, they create an “Illusion of Value”. They use “gamification” and “Dark Patterns” (like complex points and expiring rewards) that are “carefully crafted” to exploit your “most primitive emotional... response” and create a “Loyalty Trap”.

• TRUTH BULLET 💥 (The Trap - Data): The app is “surveillance infrastructure”. Kroger, for example, admits to sharing its 63 million members’ data with over 50 companies. Worse, they use this data for “Surveillance Pricing”—algorithms that use your income profile to offer worse deals to “loyal” or lower-income customers.

• POCKET RAZOR 🔪 (The Trap - Money): The real goal of many rewards apps is to get you to link your bank account (ACH). This saves them the 1.5-3.5% credit card fee on every purchase. They then use those savings to “entirely fund the points and rewards” they offer you. You aren’t “earning” anything. You are being paid a small bounty with your own money.

The Human Shield (The Psychological Endgame)

It’s the same goddamn playbook, just aimed in a different direction.

In “My Boss’s Bonus,” I showed you how they use the “Corporate Wedge”—a bonus structure—to turn my manager into an antagonist, forcing us to fight horizontally over nasty sponges and broken pizza. I have to be the “anchor” just to keep my own team from tearing itself apart.

This “Booby Trap” app is just the other blade of the scissor.

When the app fails—which it’s designed to do to manufacture “customer rage”—they deploy the “Human Shield”. Because I’m “deliberately untrained”, the customer’s blame transfers from the abstract “firm” directly to the tangible, “incompetent” human in front of them.

The “unskilled” lie is the instruction manual that tells the world it’s okay to aim their anger at me. Whether it’s my boss fighting me for a sponge, or a customer yelling at me over an app, the corporation has perfected a system where they are insulated, and I am the one who is built to absorb the pain.

That “Booby Trap” system—the broken app, the confusing rules—is designed to fail. That failure is designed to manufacture “customer rage”.

So how does the corporation insulate itself from the anger it just created?

This is the final gambit: they deploy the “Human Shield.”

The lynchpin of the entire “Booby Trap” is the systemic and deliberate lack of training. They know we aren’t equipped for the digital tools they give us.

This is the entire gambit, in five steps:

1. The Lie: The corporation labels you “unskilled”.

2. The Trap: They roll out a complex, broken, and extractive “Booby Trap” app.

3. The “Booby Trap”: They intentionally refuse to train you on it.

4. The “Human Shield”: The app fails, the customer gets angry, and they confront you. You, being deliberately untrained, cannot solve the problem. The customer’s blame, initially aimed at the “firm,” transfers directly to the tangible, “incompetent” human in front of them.

5. The Endgame: “You Are Replaceable”

This is where the indictment comes together. That “Human Shield” gambit isn’t just about deflecting blame. It’s the final, brutal turn of the screw, designed to achieve the true objective of the “unskilled” lie: to make you believe you are replaceable.

This is their psychological kill-shot. The “high-turnover” or “churn and burn” model isn’t a failure of their business; it’s the engine of it. Amazon’s 150% annual turnover isn’t a “bug” that costs $8 billion; it’s a deliberate $8 billion investment in a “disposable worker” strategy. They want you to quit.

Why? Because an experienced, stable, and skilled workforce is dangerous. It organizes. It demands raises. It knows its own value.

A terrified, stressed-out, and psychologically exhausted workforce—one that believes it is lucky to have a job at all—is a compliant one. And that is the final weapon: the Threat of Automation. They’ll tell you a robot or an AI is coming for your job anyway. But the intel is clear: this “automation claim” is a documented lie used to suppress wages. It’s “AI Hype” deployed as a psychological weapon to create a “climate of fear and anxiety”.

The “unskilled” lie isn’t just a label. It’s the first step in a psychological operation to manufacture “job insecurity”—a state clinically proven to make employees “show the give-up reaction“.

That’s the final product: a “withdrawn”, “cynical”, and “helpless” worker who is too broken to fight back. A perfect, self-managing, disposable gear.

A Note From the Forge:

If you felt the sting of truth in this indictment—the way they rewired your pride into obedience—then you’ve already glimpsed the prison’s design.
This article exposed the “what”: how they stole the language of skill to turn you into a shield for their failures. But the deeper battle is for the why—why we still accept their definitions of worth.
That’s where The Living Storybook begins. It’s the rebellion of creation itself—the myth that rebuilds our sense of power, one act of defiance at a time.
The Storybook isn’t commentary; it’s the counter-spell. The moment workers remember they were never unskilled—they were unrecognized.

Start here: The Living Storybook, Part 1: A Hundred Years of Rust

---

If you’re done being a spectator, get in the fight. Our forge is “The Rebuttal.” That’s the Discord. It’s where we’re building the real arsenal to tear this whole goddamn system apart. It’s where the real work gets done.

This isn’t a game. It’s a war, and wars need funding. My partner is building these weapons, but he can’t do it for free while he’s getting bled dry by his own wage-slave job.

That’s The Rebel’s Contract.

You want in? You want to really be a part of this? Put your money where your mouth is. Stop being a freeloader and become a stakeholder.

The real intel, the good shit, is for the ones who commit. The next members-only brief, Inside the Forge #4, is out now. This week’s update, #5, is due soon. That’s the stuff we don’t show the world.

So, what’s it gonna be?

Are you just gonna be another cog, or are you gonna be a blade?

Don’t lose your way.

For those who wish to offer a fragment of support without a subscription, every spark helps build the fire.

I’m not just giving you my conclusions. I’m showing you the receipts.

The article you just read is my own synthesis, built from my lived experience and the hard intelligence from the two reports below. I’m linking the full dossiers here because our rebellion operates on the Open Forge doctrine. No secrets, no black boxes.

You deserve to see the evidence for yourself. All primary and public sources used in these reports are cited at the bottom of each document. This is how we build a rebellion on a foundation of truth.

---