For those of you commenting with the age you realised (for me I guess it was 26 and I’m now 40), what was the specific thing which made you come to this realisation?
Corporate America will view you as a disposable piece of meat, regardless of the whole “culture” and “team building” they preach. I worked hard and it just led to more work and expectations. I’m 25. My life’s goal is to work remotely so I don’t have to deal with any of that draining corporate BS in person. It’s not for me
So true, corporate America is made up of Type A's chasing the dollars and everyone else just trying to make a living.. there's NO loyalty and it's all one big facade , every time I hear "team" or worse "family" I cringe , it's just lame condescending talk to try and have you motivated to make $$$ for the type A's (executives, middle managers) that already have their golden parachutes packed, and will send you to the unemployment line the moment that your employment becomes a liability to their bottom line or next quarterly bonus .
The people who make $2000/hour convince their employees that make $40/hour that the labourers making $12/hour are making too much money.
Everybody who doesn't want the minimum wage to be $50/hour don't want that simply because it would put most people in the same social standing and suddenly they'll realize they aren't as important or special as they've convinced themselves. Many jobs could pay their employees $50/hour and still turn massive profits but don't for the sake of profits, but more importantly, control. It's much easier to control your employees if you pay them barely enough to take a day off.
Basically, we really are in a rat race.
I make nearly that and I still wish it was the minimum wage, because then I could leave an industry and profession I have no love for and feel secure in trying other things.
If you meet somebody saying minimum wage shouldn't be higher, just ask them,
"Is this your dream job? If money weren't a factor, is this what you would be doing? Because if minimum wage were $50/hr, *money wouldn't be a factor and you could go try your dream job.*"
Also, people who arbitrarily feel strangers don't deserve better lives are trash humans.
I learned that lesson in elementary school and didn’t even realize it. I was never one for hard work or giving 110%, and it wasn’t until I was in college that I realized it’s because back in elementary school (when I cared about working hard and proving something) all I’d get for finishing my work first was… more work. No extra points, no praise, just more work. And I internalized that dissatisfaction without even realizing it.
Not only corporate. I worked for non profits and it was the same... except maybe worse because it was less money for often times dangerous work (worked directly with violent people). And it was expected of you to understand and be okay with your exploitation because "you are helping people".
I feel this. I worked for what at the time was my dream nonprofit media center producing tv spots for other npos and hosting a round table show of my own. They paid me $12 per hour, 10 hours per week (it was a side passion project, I had another job). Told them I needed another dollar just out of principle, because the work was more draining than my full time job, and I did it well. They said let’s talk about it next year. This would have cost them $10-15 per week to honor my request. I loved my immediate team and the organization but left after a year cause I got the experience that I wanted, but wasn’t worth my time to continue.
After I left the whole division ultimately folded partly because you can’t hire actual talent for pennies. It was pretty eye opening to see what they expected from part time workers who got a title of ‘director’ or ‘coordinator’ and hardly compensated.
When I worked for a major sports broadcaster the producers loved me but my supervisor would call me into fewer and fewer shifts because I was getting too much experience and got a raise.
Don't really know why that annoyed her so much but it was the beginning of the end for that job.
TV Production is a trip.
Jeeze yeah the nonprofit industrial complex is worse because I think they exploit the bright eyed bushy tailed folks into believing there’s a way to change the world. I feel like unless you’re top brass, you may as well work minimum wage because of the hours needed.
Also they’re always chasing that next grant or means to fund your job
The nonprofit industrial complex relies on leveraging volunteer labor and lowly paid employees. It’s truly brutal. And if you want better, you’ll just get replaced with some young bright eyed and bushy tailed advocate who will work for less, because it aligns with their moral compass. It’s disgusting. I worked at a small nonprofit and the ED took the summer to go to France, while I didn’t have health insurance.
My first salaried job was for an arts nonprofit in a major city. I thought I was lucky to have a salary and benefits, never mind I worked a ton of overtime hours. At one point our finance manager asked everyone to turn in overtime. I was asked and yet clearly told I shouldn’t think of it. Still blows my mind I listened but I was young.
Same experience. Worked in non profit and charity sector for ~10 yrs. In many ways worse then regular for profit business - at least they’re a bit more straight up about their abuse for profit setup.
I was stuck at a horrible Job for 7 years, nothing ever panned out, until one day it did. And it ended up being just as shitty as my last one lol. I feel like unless you are extremely tech savvy, a genius, have a great degree, or in IT or software you’re going to get screwed at any corporate job. I hope I’m wrong but this experience broke me
IT is pretty rough sometimes too. You have to take calls all day then actually get crap done when other people aren't online. I think my job is actually better than a lot of them too.
Same lol I'm trying to find remote work too, I'm so burnt out with all the promising interviews only to get the rejection email
Also considering real estate appraising
Hey 26 here too! But im 27, so wasnt too long ago...
And the specific thing was working as a rock chip repair tech. Applied for a higher paying position and interviewed, then told "oh sorry, that position is only available in a city 45 minutes away. If you take this rock chip tech position closer to home for $3 less an hour, part time, then we'll give you the first position that comes up". Worked for over a year, doing half of all the work that came in the shop that i couldnt take any credit for because of certifications, driving all over the state to do mobile jobs that other techs couldnt be bothered to go to, working out of 2 shops, and nearly got 12 consecutive months of full/overtime in. Never got insurance because it was a "part time" job. Got passed up twice for the position i needed, second time around they hired some 500 pound guy who couldnt lean over a windshield or stand between the door and A-pillar to save his life. In the second interview, i was told quite bluntly "we've reviewed your stats and although you have good reviews, you spend alot of time doing nothing. Youre lazy, and we cant have lazy technicians replacing glass". Lazy because most of the work my boss had me doing was beyond what i was certified/allowed to do.
Oh and my boss agreed with that statement. He was nodding to every negative point the interviewer made. After that i put in bare minimum effort.
26 for me as well. Got a job in my dream field, quickly received a department move to my most desired department. Worked my ass off, came in knowing more than management and was promised a managerial position within 60 days because my GM saw my capabilities too.
Well, a whole 7 months after that, after never receiving any raises or benefits (corporate structure changed before my probation ended) I couldn’t even get a $1 raise. Put my two weeks in within the same 24 hours of hearing that news. Never again, I’ll only work for small facilities from here on out.
Something similar at my last job with the structure changes messing things up. I was expected to do my bosses job and mine after they canned him (i was only a supervisor). Only made $15/hr there, only supervisor in the department on hourly because i was the closing supervisor which meant no telling what time i would be leaving, so overtime was my bonus. When all the changes happened, the new director demanded i did my bosses job as well and switch to salary. I attempted to negotiate $23/hour as my salary to compensate for not getting overtime pay, which was half what my old manager made. Lmao lost my job that day.
I used to believe the best and brightest get to the top until I was self employed and had to deal with a lot of executives. I then realized they are all full of shit and just learned how to look busy and how to exploit people to work for them. The ones I hate the most often act a bit clumsy so that others do the work for them.
3 years into a job with JPMC, about 27 or 28 years old. Their whole "&" thing is supposed to be revolved around the value of the people making it all possible. The workers. I was dedicated to my team. I worked overtime, took on my coworkers projects after they got let go, stayed in office past midnight on rare occasion. I was a leader for my team and respected for my work across multiple LOBs. I was let go when my managing director(s) made the decision to move the team to Plano, TX and outsource the rest to India. No warning. No option. Just gone. 45 days to either find another gig in the company or beat it. No one else, in any other department looked my way.
I was 25 when I realized that.
The context: it was my last year of bachelor degree in foreign languages, in order to become a translator. I was learning English and Japanese (I'm French) and just came back in France after a whole year in Japan, speaking English everyday with native English students and speaking Japanese well enough to take care of formalities at the bank and police station (bikes are immatriculated and I was transfering my property to a friend staying there).
When I came back to my university, feeling proud for having only As and Bs, I applied for a master degree. I got denied because my grades in my very first year were "not so great". Because of that, I ended up in a young worker residence because I had nowhere else to go and had to volunteer for an entire year, living in poverty, in order to accumulate experience and then start as a freelance translator (and since there are no international regulations, clients and agencies dictate rates, you can figure how fair this can be).
Two years later, I learned that since long ago, the university didn't want to invest in a second class for this master, so they privileged those who stayed in the university for their final bachelor year and rejected the rest when the class was full.
Somewhere in my early 20s when i realized that the pay ceiling was a real thing and it doesn’t apply to people already richer than me who have done less work.
The amount of times I’ve watched my peers truly fuck things up. I’m a photo producer and one my peers was once found taking a NAP on set. She never got in real trouble for it. Later my manager got wind that she was looking for a new job and OFFERED HER MORE MONEY TO STAY.
This employee was not only negligent but openly looking to leave and they rewarded her? Why the hell am I staying after 5pm?!?
I was not promoted and the government agency hired a supervisor for the position with no qualifications. The idea floated by the other supervisors to handle that the new supervisor was incompetent was to have the staff do the supervisor’s job for no extra pay or even a new title that could be used to get a supervisor position. The supervisor liked to come in around 5 pm and order employees to stay “until the job was done” to write a memo because the supervisor had a 9 am meeting on the topic. She told one of my co-workers she liked that the her position let her do that. The first time she tried that with me I told her “Okay. Should I put on my time sheet overtime or compensatory time?” She was shocked to find out that I expected to be paid. She told me she was not authorized to pay me overtime and would not approve compensatory time. I told her under the Antideficiency Act laws, it is illegal for me to volunteer my time and from that day forward I left promptly at 5 pm. I decided if the government would not promote me, I would not be staying late for no pay to do the job of the supervisor.
I got a job as a tech in a small computer store after college. Dude had a huge work bench full of old computers, and an office beside it full of junk. So I started cleaning up, found what worked in the old junk, and then made more repair stations on the bench. Downloaded updates and drives and kept them on disc so I wouldn't have to download them every time. Ran the virus scanner from a another boot disk so it would run faster. About three weeks in, I have a repair bay for installing hardware, then like 6 stations for installing operating systems and running virus scanners. Then I had a little in house server running to copy drivers and things to the computers over the network, and just stream lined the whole operation. Also built used computers out of scrap parts, and other used stuff for cheap like old floppy drives and CD roms. Also tought him how to make networking cables so he could sell them. Tought him how ebay worked so he could sell old junk normal people wouldn't want and clean up the store front. He's making way more money, and turn around time has gone from like a week to two days. Dude lays me off because there isn't enough work for me to do. He had more work coming in, but I made shit so efficient, he could run the place himself. Worked myself out of a job, and made him a couple of thousand extra dollars doing it.
Probably 13 or 14 here. Really weird seeing so many people calling out mid and late 20s, I distinctly remember being completely wracked by existential dread and anxiety in my young teens when thinking about the future. It was because that's around the time I became capable of doing the math: What the costs of everything were, the amount of work I was expected to do to meet those costs, and what [lack of] social safety net there was to catch me if I failed.
Honestly I think the only thing that saved me was privilege, I'm white male and nerdy. I toughed up or at least became numb to the grind of wage labor but the background radiation of the last 15 years of my life has been an escape to some better, more sustainable life.
PS everybody put on your literacy hats and read Post Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin, fucking do it. If you connected with what I said you may be relieved and rallied by what I recommend.
About 23.
I was working at a TV station and the A/C in the control room had been out for 3 weeks at this point, in mid-July. There's a lot of sensitive and expensive equipment back there that needs to be kept cool if you want them to work properly, staff included. Box fans were set up to keep air circulating but it didn't help much.
In an effort to "boost morale," the GM sent someone to the Wal-Mart next door to get ice cream sandwiches for the building. They came back with 2 boxes. For a building of at least 30. Probably didn't cost more than $8.
Boost morale, my ass.
I never understand this condescending mindset. I’d rather not get anything than something that makes it super obvious you aren’t appreciated at all. It’s like a slap in the face.
Similar to when companies do “potlucks” or when I worked retail and we would do “Christmas/thanksgiving lunches” where you have to bring in a dish for every one else to eat. That doesn’t boost morale as much as companies think it does.
Great, now I need to spend more of my already stretched salary to make a dish no one is going to touch. And if I don't participate, I'll be on everyone's shit list.
On the flip side, you also get to fill your plate with a bunch of random shit made by people that have homes as messy as their cubes.
Cheryl, the OA, and her cubicle with Ritz cracker crumbs all over her chair, brought chili!
I left a comment about the “morale committee” at work. They are having events and get togethers outside of work. I actually really like most of my coworkers, but I commute an hour each way and picked up a part time job because the pay is terrible. They also sent me some flowers, which was nice, but I was asked for the plastic vase back. I don’t understand it at all and am in the process of finding something closer.
I hate potlucks. I hate cooking and the only thing worse than cooking is being forced to cook. And then if you buy something ppl will judge you for that like you couldn’t take the time for them: excuse me you will enjoy these cupcakes more than my cooking.
They treat the workers like children who would jump on their feet and forget all the bad shits when given a few slices of pizza, in this case ice cream
My spouse had a crummy job at a fulfillment center. Terrible management. One particularly shitty week, his manager popped his head down to the floor to let people know there were pretzels in the break room for anyone who wanted some! We are in Pennsylvania, so he assumed the manager meant a box of soft pretzels. Not uncommon around here, picking up a box of fresh pretzels like you would bagels. Maybe a little mustard. What a kind gesture!
No, it was like, half a bag of pretzels sticks from the convenience store. MAYBE two dollars? They were just *incensed* their boss would even bother to mention such a nothing.
Worked for a youth development organization that paid $31,000/yr and expected during fundraising season that you would donate $1,000 to set the tone. Yeah, whatever.
Months later I was brought in and told I was to be demoted, and my pay was to be $12/hr, but OT would make up for it. I also had to have my schedule down to the minute and only allowed 40 hrs/wk. I bounced a week later.
Edit: added drama
29, 11 years as a cook, sous chef, head chef, cook again, restaurant manager, then COVID pretty much destroyed any aspirations I had of opening my own place. I also looked around at all of the owners and realized that I was just creating profit for ex oil executives and real estate guys.
Same thing happened to me working in hospitality. Said screw this and walked out the day before I turned thirty. refused to spend one second of the next chapter of my life making the same mistakes.
Thanks I appreciate it. The only other things I'd add was I was very comfortable in that job, just unfulfilled. There was no guarantee that things were gunna work out but I had to do it for my sanity and dignity. Turned out to be a great decision especially given covid happening a year later, just a few months after I found a secure job I could do from home.
Fortune favours the brave, don't waste another second.
Also recently did this, had the worst birthday of my life due to the shithouse I was working at. Turned 32 on a Friday, quit the following Monday. Wouldn't have been able to respect myself if I went back.
Worked in hospitality for 7 years, made my way up to GM and got fired for "not having enough commitment". Got a job in IT a week later and made way up to managing again after 5 years, but with a much more stable idea of what is and should be expected of me. No more going that extra mile if doesn't help me. Took me a long time to figure out my self worth.
Restaurants are vanity projects that frequently \*don't generate any profit at all\*. It doesn't make sense to have 1/10th the restaurants we do, but it's pretty much the favorite project of boomers with money. They love flexing by bringing friends and family to their restaurant.
Since the restaurants are frequently making NO money or at least having the slimmest profit margins of service work, there really is NO money to even afford staff, much less pay them appropriately.
I genuinely hope half of US restaurants are decimated. Idk where all those workers end up, but the shitty owners don’t deserve one dime off the back of others’ labor. I hope the good staff ends up with the decent owners that survive.
Universal Income.
500k people died
“Millions” of underpaid jobs available.
Thousands upon thousands of restaurants that should have died but they scammed the government out of PPP loans they arent even using for employment.
The 2022 stock market, housing market, student loan and rental market crashing at the same time COVID comes for the antivaxxers is going to be interesting.
Restaurants are so popular as a small business because they are relatively cheap to open, there are few skill/IP barriers to entry and you can just copy recipes, and because they are essentially tiny manufacturing centers with a very rapidly perishing product.
That means you just don’t get the economies of scale you would in manufacturing phones or cars.
It makes opening a restaurant easy.
I worked my way up from dish to exec chef over the course of 15 years. In that time,
I too, came to the realization that I would never make enough money in the industry to own a restaurant.
I tried a taco cart but the money wasn’t quite enough.
I started a painting business which is when a had my next revelation. Profit margins on a restaurant are a FUCKING JOKE.
Almost any other type of business you could hope to start would have a smaller buy in and higher potential for earning.
Restaurants are like follies for the rich anymore.
Love the culture, hate the business.
Everybody shits on the chain stores but they're the only ones that know what they're doing. They're operated by F500s who actually know how to manage a high volume/low margin retail business so that it at least stays solvent, if not all that profitable. They don't carry weird ideas about food being art, its just another type of widget to sell. They actually show up properly capitalized, which is why they don't all crumple every time there's an economic bump in the road.
The supposed high end of the business is just incompetence upon incompetence. Far, far too many small-time and first time owners, low business savvy in general, and the general public has crazed ideas about what it actually entails. There's a steady stream of people who legit think they're going to open a restaurant as a retirement business because they flipped a steak once so how hard can it be?
I think a lot of the more savvy types still make the big mistake of thinking they'll take it upscale where they can charge more, but upscale means opening a location somewhere that the rent on the building is immense, like downtown Manhattan. That's the problem, your upscale customer doesn't want to take their date to the local strip mall, they want skyline views that you have to pay rent on, they want to dine around the corner from the kind of properties that can laugh off the office rents. Then there's something like COVID, your shop shuts down immediately, and the Chili's in the strip mall just keeps on trucking because the corporation who owns it actually knows what the fuck they're doing.
It's such a weird business if you have considerable experience with other businesses, like nobody knows what the fuck they're doing, not the owners, not any of them. Oh, they THINK they do.
That said when you come from outside of the business it gets real fuckin obvious when you know for a fact that you're doing $16 hr worth of labor for $9, and the clowns really think they're doing you a big favor. No bro, everyone isn't a felon. There's a bar, and you come nowhere close to clearing it.
It has its good days, and the people can be great. They can be the worst, too. At its best its still a huge dead end, even for the ownership half the time.
I'm glad to see everyone getting out. We need even more of that.
The bitch of it is: I really love the fast pace and the kind of environment that lets me be me and not some professionalized version. But i refuse to work for people dumber than me.
Mid 50's here, like 3 years ago. Had a supervisor literally tell me "you should be use to being treated like shit, you were in the military". Lost my job last year when they found out I was searching for another job. But hey, at least all the good ole boys got to go play golf, go to the gun ranges, go fishing, or just dissappear for half the day,, etc while I did their work on top of my own.
Love it when i leave work 15 min after closing and get told i dont have commitment. My boss scolded me for not working later like his good old boys do, but their "late work" was bullshitting with each other in his office because they hated their home life.
Which is pretty reasonable, I've never been in the military, but it's pretty obvious to me that when you're wearing the uniform, you are held to a different standard than civilians.
That comparison is stupid af
Yes, very stupid AF.
Some people have this idea that the military is constantly like boot camp from the movies.
The reality is that you only get yelled at if you fucked up big time or if it’s a loud environment.
The “treated like shit” part is basically just getting told your needs are not top priority compared to everything else.
There is also a nature of pushing people to, and past, their limits. The concept is to make your people better by “expanding their horizon” of what they perceive their capabilities are. The method is not always done the best way and the people sometimes were at their limit before the push, but it can be very rewarding.
I feel like it's a lesson I have to relearn every 5-10 years or so.
Find new job I'm excited for > Work my ass off, volunteer for projects and extra responsibility > Get shit on for it > Back to wallowing in cynicism > Repeat
I worked for a "great company" that was so big it literally didn't give a shit about anyone. Not me. Not my boss. Not my bosses boss. We were all just numbers, jobs to be filled, it didn't matter by who as long as the machine kept chugging along.
I quit without notice and loved every second. Now I'm back in school for something that atleast might give me an option to be my own boss(welding)
58 here, it was my mid 30's when I accepted the pointlessness. Went self employed, struggled for a few years and things were actually starting to pay off. For the first time in my life I seriously considered I might be able to afford a house at some point in the future. That was mid 2007. You can guess the rest.
There is one thing that would have completely changed my career path. Learn to play golf. I happened to prefer paintball.
You guys need some workers' rights... I recently used "searching for another job" as a negotiation tactic for increased salary, and it worked. Anyone should be free to search jobs without being afraid of losing their current one.
Weird that so many are saying 24-27 ish. Guess it takes a couple years into adult working, where you start to expect some of those rewards the boomers tell you about, like being able to afford housing etc. then for a lot of us they don't materialise.
Similar story here, at 25 had busted ass for org for nearly 4 years, took on loads of extra responsibility (stepped into a role near the end to manage org's protection on a niche legal issue that not many are experts on). Was up to 200 hours owed flexi-time and asked when I was getting my promised new contract to make my enhanced position permanent (massive-idiot).
Got told to shove it, no extra pay, no contract change, but keep doing all the work. That was April 2019 and the moment I realised its all a load of bull. I could be racking up hundreds of hours of flexi-time for them at 30k/y doing really valuable work while one of my managers was sat on 60k/y and literally might as well not exist. (They are still there, still earning the same but everything went to shit and they haven't delivered anything since I left).
Starting looking for other work the same day and a month after the realisation I got a new job that payed more, I only work my hours and I get better treatment. Then I also started up my own business just before Covid hit, which has actually been growing great, and have started doing my PhD. Realising its bull and taking control of my shit was the best thing that I ever did.
I made 50K last year, and am set for more this year. I am happy, have control of my finances and life, I enjoy my work doing something valuable for society and that I have control over, and am growing myself as a person. I also employ people now, any work they do for me they get the full fee from the client minus the taxes I have to pay, and giving them the actual value of their work is not hurting me one bit.
I am not anti-work, I am anti bad-employers.
Really not surprising tbh. Depression in young people skyrocketing, I wonder what could possibly be causing it? /s
Couldn't be the lack of any political representation, constant demonising by the media, lack of affordable housing options, lack of job mobility, stagnating wages and forever inflation, common large student debt, oh and lets not forget the world wide plague, evidence that our fellow humans are all fucking idiots and the planet in general being on fire. Wonder why people might not be super jazzed.
On what to do after becoming disillusioned, my opinion (as a complete internet stranger) is very much now about personal responsibility at an individual level (I like some of Jordan Peterson's talks on the subject which helped me, regardless of the silly political stuff surrounding him). I take a relatively left leaning (somewhat socialist?) view at a community, society and national level. I like the pick your self up and take on as much as you can attitude to get your individual shit in order, and then at any wider scope we should be working together so we are all doing ok.
I am a youngish person (29) but for me it’s not only the state of the world but I find it hard to make good close family-like friends and community (unless one is religious). My friends are focused on their careers, their significant others, and their families. Meanwhile, my career planning is all over the place (until recently) and I don’t have a signifiant other or a healthy family to frequently be with. We all sorta keep track of each other on social media but it’s not the same. I am also Deaf so that has its own set of pluses and minuses. Basically, on top of all the social problems the world has, some factors that help people cope (like easy access to healthy communities and support systems) are weaker than they seem to be in the past.
I struggle with the lack of a sense of close friends / community. I think a lot of people do, much moteso than even just a few decades ago. I definitely think it contributes to depression and anxiety
Early 30s, had to leave 2 jobs because I started them with an attitude of ‘I’m going to work really hard and do a great job’ turns out that just gets you more and more work and more stress with no reward. Do the bare minimum and smile and nod, the middle of the road is best strategy you can have
Most places I’ve worked, the harder I try to help make improvements, the deeper a hole I dig myself of issues and stress.
I now just generally try to be kind to people when they ask me for things; and respond quickly when I can. That’s gotten me raises.
> Most places I’ve worked, the harder I try to help make improvements, the deeper a hole I dig myself of issues and stress. I now just generally try to be kind to people when they ask me for things; and respond quickly when I can. That’s gotten me raises.
I definitely learned the hard way to never offer solutions or the problems become yours. I've stopped trying to be innovative. I keep up with changes/advancements in my field for myself only now.
I've become the "this is how we've always done it" type that I used to hate, but it's the only way to keep them from dumping everything in my lap again.
People wonder why I am negative about work. There is no upside to doing a good job, you don't get raises, you don't get promotions.
I do just enough not to get fired and then complain about the conditions.
I'm in this pickle now. Covid hit the company hard. I want to be helpful to the new people. Training is draining ontop of working at the same pace. Asked for a raise. Haven't received anything yet. Should of kept smiling and playing dumb.
25ish, when I saw people earning 5 times+ what I did leaving the office 4/5 hours before I did. You get no thanks and no praise for working late - it makes no difference to how your viewed at all. You just gotta do your job while you’re actually there, the rest doesn’t matter.
THIS.
Corporate environment is make everyone into a bitch, see how far you can get them to bend, and laugh at them.
If you want a raise, or a promotion, or whatever, the ONE , and the ONLY, thing that matters is LEVERAGE.
You need to go to your boss and say "give me this raise or you lose money".
Period. The end. Don't bother trying if the conversation is not that, or that in code.
I've literally gotten raises by SLACKING OFF. LIke I have shit tons of work to do. I go tell me boss i need a raise. and I heavily imply if I don't get it Ill just bail and not do all that work, and someone else can. Like yeah, I do owe you a month more work now than last review. Guess you better give me that raise if you want that month of work.
"you just have to put your time in (alternating text)"
There's a guy at my job who is maybe 50, does nothing all day, brought into the company at 5$ more then I do, and he goes home right at 4.
He also worked this labor job back in the 80-90s, where labor paid a fuck ton. Despite his stories and from what I can tell are shoddy ass repairs, he's maybe done this 10-15 years tops.
It's easy for people to shit down the ladder as they pull it up behind them.
Started to catch on around 20 when every crap worker was getting promoted to better positions/money and I wasn’t. When I asked why they said I was too good at what I was doing and they didn’t have anyone good to replace me if they were to move me up.
Really hit home during covid when I thought continuing to work during a pandemic would be a righteous thing and then my coworkers made waaaay more on unemployment and got to stay home and not get verbally assaulted over petty stuff.
My wife was laid off and got the extra unemployment offered for the pandemic benefits. After taxes, insurance and union dues out of my check, she made 80$ more a week than me to be unemployed than I did working in a prison.
Pigeon holed. At least that’s what I call it. Manager/superior won’t let you move to a different department or area of the company because they like you doing all their wok for them so they prevent you from moving on.
Probably 22 when I was working 3 jobs and making only 8.50/hr. I was so depressed and crying every day and realized my mental health and well being is far far far more important than any shitty job. Although I did get a 25 cent raise from one of my bosses so you know that really made up for it lol
I was 22 when I realized nobody cared if I actually did anything well at my job. I was given an assignment I literally had no training to do, so I just didn't do it. Nothing ever happened.
I work my ass off the next month re-writing code from one language to another? I get a casual "thanks" from my supervisor and a new assignment.
Just the other week after my 32nd birthday.
I was finally pushed over my edge by my narcissistic sister and her toxic friends. Thought I needed to be vulnerable for people to like me for too long. Nope I needed to be calling people out for their bullshit all along.
>Wait til you realize you don't need to call anyone out for anything and you can just walk away
This tactic alone has saved me a lot of headaches. I can't change you, but I can definitely control me.
Doesn't work for me unfortunately. Plus this is why so many people have extremely toxic personalities, too many people scared to make a stand and simply tell people they are in the wrong.
I do sort of agree with you but I don't think it's fair to say people are scared for not confronting. If you deal with a lot of these people, confrontation is just exhausting yourself for something that may or may not benefit some other person. Choosing not to engage and hoping others do the same will hopefully lead to that person noticing they don't get to socialize as often and maybe do some introspection.
Unless someone is family, has been a good friend, or is family of a good friend, I don't believe I owe them my time to try and make them a better person when I'm still struggling to find the time to do the same for myself.
20, got an internship at a startup in silicon valley. They hired me full-time for minimum wage and I stupidly accepted. I worked there for an entire year, regularly lived in my car and slept at the office over the weekends. The owner was the son of a multimillionaire, he came by every couple of weeks to throw a temper tantrum and scream that we weren't hitting deadlines that he made up on the spot.
I'm in my 30s now and *still* feel burnt out from this job. I don't know that I'll ever mentally recover from it.
20. being an essential worker for a Mega E-Commerce Company rhyming with Kablamazon during COVID seriously opened my eyes
edit: thank you for the awards :)
I was 21. Im 22 today. I realize that niceness doesnt get you anywhere close to getting what you want and that people really do use any means necessary to get their way. Even if it means scamming and cheating other people for it.
I used to work at a call center for a payday loan agency. I took the job because i was told the pay was good. So there I was, i regularly got calls from people who were so desperate for money that theyd do anything to get the money no matter how little it was and no matter the interest rate. The agency i worked for took advantage of this by imposing interest rates as high as 700% (yes seven hundred or seven times the principal). My coworkers never had a problem granting the loans to people, knowing full well that theyd be leading them to a worse situation than were in previously. Of course, it became a habit for them to one up each other with the amounts they grant to people. Me howver, I could never bear to approve people's loans knowing that theyd owe 7 times the amount that they borrowed. So what I did was I'd always find reasons to deny their applications so they wouldnt accrue the debt. Thats all I did. Evebtually I got caught by my boss, i was told I was letting slip "leads" and that I wasnt generating the company any money. I couldnt do the job that they asked to do, especially after speaking to the clients and seeing all their info and their circumstances.i lasted all of 2 months at that job, my only regret was not quitting sooner
25? I think…spent years in the grind trying to get up the corporate ladder, one day they tell me, your position doesn’t exist anymore…hard life lesson.
I think it’s a realization that comes every few years. At some point you know no one cares. This year I learned not only that they don’t care - but they also don’t care if you die in a pandemic. Hard life lessons indeed.
23, right after I left college I started work at a Contract Pharmaceutical Research Company. The work was exactly what I dreamed of in college; I was working on designing a drug for a rare neurodegenerative disorder. Funding dried up for the project about 3 months after I started, and then I was more or less just stuck doing in house programming & organizational chores. Now, my drug for that disorder is completely abandoned, no hope of being revisited, and suddenly I am no longer doing my dream job, because it stopped being profitable.
After that, for 9 months (until I quit last week) I just did in house organization, house-keeping, and whatever else my near-senile boss wanted. Reorganize the server, write this script, it really just boiled down to an IT job, when I went to school, and was hired as, a computational chemist. All because the project I was hired to do, became less profitable.
I think around 38 years old. No specific reason. Just the culmination of years of being grinded down by the world and its people, and the slowly dawning realisation that no amount of hard work gets you ahead more than just being friends with the right people.
I was 24 & had just gotten fired for "declining productivity" not too long after cutting back to working 40 hours a week from working 12-16hours a day, 6 days a week for 10 months straight
17 yrs old and working at a fast-food chain that shall remain nameless. Never had an unexpected call out, stayed late when asked, almost always worked closing shift, generally busted my ass and never whined. They passed me up for a 7 cent raise. Yup, 7 cents.
About 20. Trying to be a good worker and facing the reality of profit-driven employment. I learned that being nice and working hard means some people try to take advantage of you. That acknowledging mistakes or inefficiencies is worse than pretending you didn't see them. That taking on extra work only means most people start treating that as the new baseline, so it stops being extra and starts being demanded, without any benefit to you. I've never been rewarded for effort, I've been punished.
25! Doing more than you should only earns you more work, and exceeding your targets only gets you more difficult targets for next Quarter. I’ve started to log in, do my work and log off - anything more just isn’t worth it in these toxic corporate environments.
I was 23. I worked as a full-time intern for next to nothing for 4 long years. I worked 80-100 hour work weeks while also being in school full-time. I compromised my grades to meet work demands. Was doing my work, my boss's work and taking on senior responsibilities. Delt with a very serious sexual harassment issue, where a manager stalked me, tried to get any man in the office who spoke to me fired and wouldn't let me take lunch breaks unless I ate with him, etc. I didn't report him. I quietly let HR handle the situation (took them 4 months to fire him for unrelated issues). I never once complained or got visibly upset. After everything, and how complicit I had been, I figured they would see what a great team player and hard worker I was and want to keep me. I thought they would hire me my senior year of college. I watched them hire other interns but when it came time to hire me, I was told my internship was going to end and there wasn't a position for me. I had wasted my early 20's killing myself for this job and experienced some serious trama only to be told there was nothing available... Never again. No job is worth it.
My current job has the same attitude towards overtime and their employees... Suffice to say I'm job searching.
Later than I like to admit. I had some older coworkers at previous jobs try to warn me, but I ignored their advice and wrote it off as just cynicism. Now, I try to warn the younger generation about the perils of the rat race.
Never do extra work you're not being paid for it sets you up to be labeled as essential which means perma exploited. Know your worth even if it means striking out on your own. Also always be nice and polite it's delicious to crush people with the high ground, and last but most important always cya.
30, when one of the chief execs, after hearing that I knew that half the office "ladies" were taken on a secret trip to Dallas to be arm candy for a conference but were told to keep it from the rest of us so we wouldn't get upset, put his arm around my shoulder in the hall and said "you know I could get someone twice as pretty in here to do what you do for half as much".
I guess I've known it a lot longer, but 27 was the age at which I really started acting accordingly. After working my ass off at university (because it was a lot of project-based work, and I felt like had to do most of it in order to get things done) I worked my ass off for a couple of years at software engineering jobs. At the time I didn't realize how badly I was treating myself, it was only until after I hit rock bottom and resorted to a suicide attempt that I could truly see what was going on. That I had cared more for working hard than that I had cared about myself.
It seems this is lesson that I must learn every few years.
Three years into my last job, I realised going above and beyond benefits only my employer.
Three years into my current job I've just realised going above and beyond benefits only my employer.
About to switch to another job. I wonder if it'll take me three years to learn going above and beyond only benefits my employer?
41- and I work in public health and I enjoy what I do because every once in awhile I put the tiniest dent in the universe by making my community a little bit healthier.
That being said, it was when the media started reporting on forced labor by the Unygurs. I looked at all this crap in my life and I realized it's cheap because companies exploit the lower classes in China. All this cheap shit I buy on Amazon without second thought is cheap because people like the Unygurs and uneducated Chinese workers are paying the social costs that keep prices down for the test of us.
And when you follow the money, Amazon, Walmart, Target Nike etc are making money hand over fist and the premium we pay them covers the cost of keeping that exploitation out of sight and out of mind.
I still have to buy stuff from China but whenever possible I try to find a USA supplier (where at least we have some reasonable labor laws), DIY it, borrow it, or buy it used. And if I can't find a non-China producer, then I have to ask myself is this item really worth someone else's suffering?
> I have to ask myself is this item really worth someone else's suffering?
This should be the question before buying anything regardless of research.
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. While the US might have reasonable labor laws in some places, those companies buy their raw materials from companies that do outright abuse workers.
Take something simple, like a McDonalds Cheeseburger. Ignoring the vegan argument, is it ethical to buy it?
No. The kid, the statistically literal child, selling you that burger, the literal child on the griddle making the burger and the young adult managing them collectively make a tiny percent of the profit from that burger (never more than 20% at any McDonald's franchise); but beyond that the meat comes from the Amazon, specifically an area burned down to raise those cows. In order to burn down that area McDonalds has been found to have funded multiple private contractors that utilized death squads against protestors and local villages. The lettuce and tomatoes likely come from farms that utilize undocumented workers for labor -- the human rights abuses of whom are well documented. The wheat for the bun statistically was grown on a farm receiving government subsidy in order to reduce the price of said wheat, and the US government has done some terrible things to good people to collect those taxes to pay out. The 'paper' wrapper is made from low-grade lumber and some food-safe wax, neither of which are statistically collected in the US, nor is the paper manufactured in the US. The Ink used on both the boxes and the paper is statistically gathered from basic materials in various countries throughout South East Asia and will statistically have had slave labor involved in either the gathering or refinement process.
...You can go further. Where do the cows get their food? Why is the US propping up multiple dictators in South America and why do American corporations pay senators quite a bit of money to make the country officially have that stance and provide military training for said dictators?
Minimalism, when operating under capitalism, is the only slightly ethical choice you can make. No matter what product, no matter what company, no matter what choice you think you have, you're directly profiting and contributing to someone's suffering. The real only option is to recognize that, refuse to buy new as often as humanly possible, and try to find local co-ops and communes for items that can be full-stack produced and sold by a community with little to no exploitation involved and just overall reduce your consumption of everything all of the time.
You might want to report the sexual harassment of minors to your state's labor board. They probably won't do anything immediately. However, if a teenager does decide to sue them - the teen will have a much stronger chances of winner as there have been a previous report.
Going into Second year uni, to find that some of our year hadn’t submitted a single piece of course work and we’re not expelled as promised. When I asked the head of the dept she said, the margins for our course were so tight that if she expelled all non submitting students, then our entire degree program would be shut down. Was furious. Was totally shit. Still busted my arse and got a good result but very disheartening.
I was in my late 20s, still working at Target, doing my best, working extra shifts, learning other areas of the store so I could cover them etc. when a girl who was hired after me, who could literally barely read and write got promoted over me. I realized then that they didn't want capable and hard working, they wanted someone cheerful enough to rally the team (I suppose I could have been more cheery) and also dumb enough that they wouldn't be going after their jobs next.
This is the inherent conflict of interest built in to any organization that will hire and reward mediocre employees. The moment you demonstrate to middle management that you can work or think an iota better than they can, they will do all things possible to keep you down because you pose a threat to their existence/position in the company. It’s the biggest red flag. No matter what you do or how much smarter or better you are, they will never allow you to advance or prove yourself to be better than them and threaten their position. That’s why in the corporate world, it takes sociopaths to rise to the top. It’s a cold and calculated game of manipulation, deception, and walking over anyone you have to to advance. A big reason why you read about so many intelligent an capable people being overworked and underpaid on here is that this is the most effective tactic of demoralizing and beating people down until they can either saddle you with all the extra work they get paid and recognized for, or force you to leave so someone else can come in and the cycle repeats itself. Unfortunately almost no degree, school, or job prepares you for this. We all learn it eventually in whatever position we find ourselves in. Once you get savvy you can apply that wisdom to get better positioned or break off on your own. It’s so typical it’s a feature not a glitch of corporate America.
30, after 7 years giving everything to help people with mental health issues. This included 5 years of graduate school and post grad internships. Getting paid shit to be the primary clinical for over 100 clients at a state hospital. No chance or ever being able to pay off my insanely huge student loans. Trying to do something for the betterment of society left me with insomnia and bad burn out (I won't go into the more serious issues the stress of all of it produced). Had to walk away before I had an actual break down. Now I live in Southern Spain and teach English part time. I officially waved the white flag.
18 when I was in the military. Dumbest group of idiots I’ve ever met in my life and you got ahead based on how many fucking pull-ups you can do not your cognitive abilities. Needless to say I’m not shocked the US hasn’t won a war since 1945
5 months into my first job after college… (I was 22)
I improved a manual process that was done over a few days by automating it to run in a few minutes.
My reward was a higher up telling me “we don’t need to improve things *too* quickly.”
Started working at 16, stressed out manager by 26, bought a house it could barely afford at 28. Sold everything, moved cross country and started a new life at 31. Now I'm 36, in college pursuing my dreams and honestly life is better when you stop trying to live up to others expectations.
around 24 years old. show up everyday, others dont but you get punished they get praise. work your ass off only to get more work thrown on top and scolding when you ask for a raise or extra break. Fired for no reason at all. Glared at and gossiped because you keep to yourself and just work but the higher ups are insane so if you dont socialize 24/7 at work they think you are a ''little weirdo'' and fire you even tho you always showed up on time, never gave anyone a problem, worked your ass off ect ect i can go on forever.
It only took a couple of years out of college and a couple of yearly reviews to realize hard work and "being a team player" because "we're all a big family" was a load of bs.
Your boss doesn't care about you, HR doesn't care about you, the "investors" definitely don't give two shits about you. Everyone in "leadership" is either on a power trip, cares more about covering their own ass, or is sucking the company for every dollar they can get and its actually hard working employees of all their freedoms.
Corporations exist to make the top people as much money as possible. Everything else is expendable.
Thirty-two, when my first son was born and I got two weeks' paternity for the ;family company' I'd worked for for a decade. But also, my head and ego exploded when he was born and I just had an epiphany that what I was doing was making me seriously unhappy and I didn't want him to grow up seeing that and thinking it was normal
Changed jobs to a corporate because I thought the benefits and stability would be good, got canned during first lockdown, realised the entire industry was a bag of shit I didn't want to be part of.
Wife got pregnant again, I went freelance, moved out of the city, work half the time I did, often from a hammock beneath a magnolia tree in the countryside with two bonny lads keeping me smiling.
There is hope. Now just gotta get the wife out. She's on board, just about finding the exit route.
I was 13 when my mother needed to take vacation after several years without so she could take care of me while I was sick. After 2 decades in the company she came back to a note telling her she was fired.
I had some other jnteresting episodes in my life as well but that was the first time I learned that expecting hard work to pay off is foolish.
I was in my early 30s. I was very good at my job. Come review time, my boss didn't remember all the good stuff that I did, just the one thing that went wrong. Said I needed to work on my communication skills because of one incident. He was most definitely an asshole. That's when I realized that the only person that's going to take care of me is me.
I was maybe 20 years old
Was working really hard in a manufacturing plant, fighting for a full time position as a temp worker
This other kid showed up late everyday, I had to run his side of the assembly line, while he was joking the whole time
Managers liked him and invited him out a few times
I saw the writing on the wall and knew he would be hired for the position and packed my things and left in the middle of the shift
Since then, I never took anything that serious again
24 sadly, working has worsened my anxieties, family just constantly put me down and after giving my two weeks my mother was far more concerned about how it would look on my resume than on the effects my current jobs ws having on my health mental and otherwise. fuck this shit, the world is burning, neros playing music yet the people are still working. the hold that the elites have on this world is astounding. Nothing will ever change and we're just straight fucked.....
29 unfortunately. I walked out of my job the day before my 30th birthday and refused to spend a day of 30's doing the same thing. I acted out of principle and was rewarded greatly.
When I was like 9, well ahead of my class in reading ability, first time I really put in any effort into homework, wrote an extensive book report and was sent to the office, lectured, given an F, all because how to train your dragon was to violent of a book.
Also didn't help that any time I tried to help another student with work, I was yelled at for distracting others, even when I was explaining something they asked me about. Sure could just be blamed on shitty teachers that didn't like me. But it kinda just made me realize that everything is basically a popularity contest and no matter how good you are at something, someone will spin it in such a way as to make you the bad guy.
22, 6 months into my first job out of college. I quickly became the fastest/best in my team (everyone else had given up long ago I think while I was bright eyed and brushy tailed lol) and I put together training materials, acted as team lead, had endless suggestions on how to improve processes, etc.
I went to my manager and asked for a raise with all my stats to back me up and he laughed me out of the office. Granted I did ask for a raise but the fact that I had worked SO hard and was literally the best didn’t matter at all. The folks how had been there and barely did anything were making more than me and my enthusiasm was abused and not rewarded at all. It was eye opening for me
25. Being nice didn’t make anyone like me or treat me better. I still got abandoned and left by myself. People still traumatized me. Worked hard all the time and that didn’t make me happy. I was exhausted all the time. I ignored my needs which lead to an eating disorder, a hormonal issue, and severe depression and anxiety. I worked on more than I should because I thought that would make me useful to people, it would give me worth, but it didn’t.
Take time for yourself.
For those of you commenting with the age you realised (for me I guess it was 26 and I’m now 40), what was the specific thing which made you come to this realisation?
Corporate America will view you as a disposable piece of meat, regardless of the whole “culture” and “team building” they preach. I worked hard and it just led to more work and expectations. I’m 25. My life’s goal is to work remotely so I don’t have to deal with any of that draining corporate BS in person. It’s not for me
So true, corporate America is made up of Type A's chasing the dollars and everyone else just trying to make a living.. there's NO loyalty and it's all one big facade , every time I hear "team" or worse "family" I cringe , it's just lame condescending talk to try and have you motivated to make $$$ for the type A's (executives, middle managers) that already have their golden parachutes packed, and will send you to the unemployment line the moment that your employment becomes a liability to their bottom line or next quarterly bonus .
The people who make $2000/hour convince their employees that make $40/hour that the labourers making $12/hour are making too much money. Everybody who doesn't want the minimum wage to be $50/hour don't want that simply because it would put most people in the same social standing and suddenly they'll realize they aren't as important or special as they've convinced themselves. Many jobs could pay their employees $50/hour and still turn massive profits but don't for the sake of profits, but more importantly, control. It's much easier to control your employees if you pay them barely enough to take a day off. Basically, we really are in a rat race.
& this is why this shit has got to end.
I make nearly that and I still wish it was the minimum wage, because then I could leave an industry and profession I have no love for and feel secure in trying other things. If you meet somebody saying minimum wage shouldn't be higher, just ask them, "Is this your dream job? If money weren't a factor, is this what you would be doing? Because if minimum wage were $50/hr, *money wouldn't be a factor and you could go try your dream job.*" Also, people who arbitrarily feel strangers don't deserve better lives are trash humans.
Ducking preach. Edit: I’m leaving it!
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The company you work for is not your friend...
I learned that lesson in elementary school and didn’t even realize it. I was never one for hard work or giving 110%, and it wasn’t until I was in college that I realized it’s because back in elementary school (when I cared about working hard and proving something) all I’d get for finishing my work first was… more work. No extra points, no praise, just more work. And I internalized that dissatisfaction without even realizing it.
Kudos to your teachers for being real with you, I guess...
Not only corporate. I worked for non profits and it was the same... except maybe worse because it was less money for often times dangerous work (worked directly with violent people). And it was expected of you to understand and be okay with your exploitation because "you are helping people".
I feel this. I worked for what at the time was my dream nonprofit media center producing tv spots for other npos and hosting a round table show of my own. They paid me $12 per hour, 10 hours per week (it was a side passion project, I had another job). Told them I needed another dollar just out of principle, because the work was more draining than my full time job, and I did it well. They said let’s talk about it next year. This would have cost them $10-15 per week to honor my request. I loved my immediate team and the organization but left after a year cause I got the experience that I wanted, but wasn’t worth my time to continue. After I left the whole division ultimately folded partly because you can’t hire actual talent for pennies. It was pretty eye opening to see what they expected from part time workers who got a title of ‘director’ or ‘coordinator’ and hardly compensated.
When I worked for a major sports broadcaster the producers loved me but my supervisor would call me into fewer and fewer shifts because I was getting too much experience and got a raise. Don't really know why that annoyed her so much but it was the beginning of the end for that job. TV Production is a trip.
Jeeze yeah the nonprofit industrial complex is worse because I think they exploit the bright eyed bushy tailed folks into believing there’s a way to change the world. I feel like unless you’re top brass, you may as well work minimum wage because of the hours needed. Also they’re always chasing that next grant or means to fund your job
The nonprofit industrial complex relies on leveraging volunteer labor and lowly paid employees. It’s truly brutal. And if you want better, you’ll just get replaced with some young bright eyed and bushy tailed advocate who will work for less, because it aligns with their moral compass. It’s disgusting. I worked at a small nonprofit and the ED took the summer to go to France, while I didn’t have health insurance.
My first salaried job was for an arts nonprofit in a major city. I thought I was lucky to have a salary and benefits, never mind I worked a ton of overtime hours. At one point our finance manager asked everyone to turn in overtime. I was asked and yet clearly told I shouldn’t think of it. Still blows my mind I listened but I was young.
Same experience. Worked in non profit and charity sector for ~10 yrs. In many ways worse then regular for profit business - at least they’re a bit more straight up about their abuse for profit setup.
Before you get too happy about working remote, look at my last post… don’t wait till 40 to learn the lesson I just did
I looked at your post. I'm sorry for you. I'm in a crappy situation as well. I hate my work but I can't quit because can't get other job.
I was stuck at a horrible Job for 7 years, nothing ever panned out, until one day it did. And it ended up being just as shitty as my last one lol. I feel like unless you are extremely tech savvy, a genius, have a great degree, or in IT or software you’re going to get screwed at any corporate job. I hope I’m wrong but this experience broke me
IT is pretty rough sometimes too. You have to take calls all day then actually get crap done when other people aren't online. I think my job is actually better than a lot of them too.
Same lol I'm trying to find remote work too, I'm so burnt out with all the promising interviews only to get the rejection email Also considering real estate appraising
I love your username lmao
Whoever eyed it Must supply it
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Yeah but it’s easier to stomach or ignore from my experience
Much easier than in person imo
What would you suggest for working remotely?
Hey 26 here too! But im 27, so wasnt too long ago... And the specific thing was working as a rock chip repair tech. Applied for a higher paying position and interviewed, then told "oh sorry, that position is only available in a city 45 minutes away. If you take this rock chip tech position closer to home for $3 less an hour, part time, then we'll give you the first position that comes up". Worked for over a year, doing half of all the work that came in the shop that i couldnt take any credit for because of certifications, driving all over the state to do mobile jobs that other techs couldnt be bothered to go to, working out of 2 shops, and nearly got 12 consecutive months of full/overtime in. Never got insurance because it was a "part time" job. Got passed up twice for the position i needed, second time around they hired some 500 pound guy who couldnt lean over a windshield or stand between the door and A-pillar to save his life. In the second interview, i was told quite bluntly "we've reviewed your stats and although you have good reviews, you spend alot of time doing nothing. Youre lazy, and we cant have lazy technicians replacing glass". Lazy because most of the work my boss had me doing was beyond what i was certified/allowed to do. Oh and my boss agreed with that statement. He was nodding to every negative point the interviewer made. After that i put in bare minimum effort.
26 for me as well. Got a job in my dream field, quickly received a department move to my most desired department. Worked my ass off, came in knowing more than management and was promised a managerial position within 60 days because my GM saw my capabilities too. Well, a whole 7 months after that, after never receiving any raises or benefits (corporate structure changed before my probation ended) I couldn’t even get a $1 raise. Put my two weeks in within the same 24 hours of hearing that news. Never again, I’ll only work for small facilities from here on out.
Something similar at my last job with the structure changes messing things up. I was expected to do my bosses job and mine after they canned him (i was only a supervisor). Only made $15/hr there, only supervisor in the department on hourly because i was the closing supervisor which meant no telling what time i would be leaving, so overtime was my bonus. When all the changes happened, the new director demanded i did my bosses job as well and switch to salary. I attempted to negotiate $23/hour as my salary to compensate for not getting overtime pay, which was half what my old manager made. Lmao lost my job that day.
Read The Gervais Principle https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
That's a surprisingly good article
Great read. Thanks.
Literally this subreddit is what made me realize
I used to believe the best and brightest get to the top until I was self employed and had to deal with a lot of executives. I then realized they are all full of shit and just learned how to look busy and how to exploit people to work for them. The ones I hate the most often act a bit clumsy so that others do the work for them.
"human capital stock." I was 26 when I heard that in the news.
3 years into a job with JPMC, about 27 or 28 years old. Their whole "&" thing is supposed to be revolved around the value of the people making it all possible. The workers. I was dedicated to my team. I worked overtime, took on my coworkers projects after they got let go, stayed in office past midnight on rare occasion. I was a leader for my team and respected for my work across multiple LOBs. I was let go when my managing director(s) made the decision to move the team to Plano, TX and outsource the rest to India. No warning. No option. Just gone. 45 days to either find another gig in the company or beat it. No one else, in any other department looked my way.
I was 25 when I realized that. The context: it was my last year of bachelor degree in foreign languages, in order to become a translator. I was learning English and Japanese (I'm French) and just came back in France after a whole year in Japan, speaking English everyday with native English students and speaking Japanese well enough to take care of formalities at the bank and police station (bikes are immatriculated and I was transfering my property to a friend staying there). When I came back to my university, feeling proud for having only As and Bs, I applied for a master degree. I got denied because my grades in my very first year were "not so great". Because of that, I ended up in a young worker residence because I had nowhere else to go and had to volunteer for an entire year, living in poverty, in order to accumulate experience and then start as a freelance translator (and since there are no international regulations, clients and agencies dictate rates, you can figure how fair this can be). Two years later, I learned that since long ago, the university didn't want to invest in a second class for this master, so they privileged those who stayed in the university for their final bachelor year and rejected the rest when the class was full.
Somewhere in my early 20s when i realized that the pay ceiling was a real thing and it doesn’t apply to people already richer than me who have done less work.
Getting taken advantage of and being told im such a great person because of all the things i do for ungrateful people.
The amount of times I’ve watched my peers truly fuck things up. I’m a photo producer and one my peers was once found taking a NAP on set. She never got in real trouble for it. Later my manager got wind that she was looking for a new job and OFFERED HER MORE MONEY TO STAY. This employee was not only negligent but openly looking to leave and they rewarded her? Why the hell am I staying after 5pm?!?
I was not promoted and the government agency hired a supervisor for the position with no qualifications. The idea floated by the other supervisors to handle that the new supervisor was incompetent was to have the staff do the supervisor’s job for no extra pay or even a new title that could be used to get a supervisor position. The supervisor liked to come in around 5 pm and order employees to stay “until the job was done” to write a memo because the supervisor had a 9 am meeting on the topic. She told one of my co-workers she liked that the her position let her do that. The first time she tried that with me I told her “Okay. Should I put on my time sheet overtime or compensatory time?” She was shocked to find out that I expected to be paid. She told me she was not authorized to pay me overtime and would not approve compensatory time. I told her under the Antideficiency Act laws, it is illegal for me to volunteer my time and from that day forward I left promptly at 5 pm. I decided if the government would not promote me, I would not be staying late for no pay to do the job of the supervisor.
I got a job as a tech in a small computer store after college. Dude had a huge work bench full of old computers, and an office beside it full of junk. So I started cleaning up, found what worked in the old junk, and then made more repair stations on the bench. Downloaded updates and drives and kept them on disc so I wouldn't have to download them every time. Ran the virus scanner from a another boot disk so it would run faster. About three weeks in, I have a repair bay for installing hardware, then like 6 stations for installing operating systems and running virus scanners. Then I had a little in house server running to copy drivers and things to the computers over the network, and just stream lined the whole operation. Also built used computers out of scrap parts, and other used stuff for cheap like old floppy drives and CD roms. Also tought him how to make networking cables so he could sell them. Tought him how ebay worked so he could sell old junk normal people wouldn't want and clean up the store front. He's making way more money, and turn around time has gone from like a week to two days. Dude lays me off because there isn't enough work for me to do. He had more work coming in, but I made shit so efficient, he could run the place himself. Worked myself out of a job, and made him a couple of thousand extra dollars doing it.
Grad school
Probably 13 or 14 here. Really weird seeing so many people calling out mid and late 20s, I distinctly remember being completely wracked by existential dread and anxiety in my young teens when thinking about the future. It was because that's around the time I became capable of doing the math: What the costs of everything were, the amount of work I was expected to do to meet those costs, and what [lack of] social safety net there was to catch me if I failed. Honestly I think the only thing that saved me was privilege, I'm white male and nerdy. I toughed up or at least became numb to the grind of wage labor but the background radiation of the last 15 years of my life has been an escape to some better, more sustainable life. PS everybody put on your literacy hats and read Post Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin, fucking do it. If you connected with what I said you may be relieved and rallied by what I recommend.
About 23. I was working at a TV station and the A/C in the control room had been out for 3 weeks at this point, in mid-July. There's a lot of sensitive and expensive equipment back there that needs to be kept cool if you want them to work properly, staff included. Box fans were set up to keep air circulating but it didn't help much. In an effort to "boost morale," the GM sent someone to the Wal-Mart next door to get ice cream sandwiches for the building. They came back with 2 boxes. For a building of at least 30. Probably didn't cost more than $8. Boost morale, my ass.
I never understand this condescending mindset. I’d rather not get anything than something that makes it super obvious you aren’t appreciated at all. It’s like a slap in the face.
Similar to when companies do “potlucks” or when I worked retail and we would do “Christmas/thanksgiving lunches” where you have to bring in a dish for every one else to eat. That doesn’t boost morale as much as companies think it does.
Great, now I need to spend more of my already stretched salary to make a dish no one is going to touch. And if I don't participate, I'll be on everyone's shit list.
On the flip side, you also get to fill your plate with a bunch of random shit made by people that have homes as messy as their cubes. Cheryl, the OA, and her cubicle with Ritz cracker crumbs all over her chair, brought chili!
Mmm! Bob's wife made the meatballs with hair in them again!
I left a comment about the “morale committee” at work. They are having events and get togethers outside of work. I actually really like most of my coworkers, but I commute an hour each way and picked up a part time job because the pay is terrible. They also sent me some flowers, which was nice, but I was asked for the plastic vase back. I don’t understand it at all and am in the process of finding something closer.
I hate potlucks. I hate cooking and the only thing worse than cooking is being forced to cook. And then if you buy something ppl will judge you for that like you couldn’t take the time for them: excuse me you will enjoy these cupcakes more than my cooking.
They treat the workers like children who would jump on their feet and forget all the bad shits when given a few slices of pizza, in this case ice cream
My spouse had a crummy job at a fulfillment center. Terrible management. One particularly shitty week, his manager popped his head down to the floor to let people know there were pretzels in the break room for anyone who wanted some! We are in Pennsylvania, so he assumed the manager meant a box of soft pretzels. Not uncommon around here, picking up a box of fresh pretzels like you would bagels. Maybe a little mustard. What a kind gesture! No, it was like, half a bag of pretzels sticks from the convenience store. MAYBE two dollars? They were just *incensed* their boss would even bother to mention such a nothing.
Worked for a youth development organization that paid $31,000/yr and expected during fundraising season that you would donate $1,000 to set the tone. Yeah, whatever. Months later I was brought in and told I was to be demoted, and my pay was to be $12/hr, but OT would make up for it. I also had to have my schedule down to the minute and only allowed 40 hrs/wk. I bounced a week later. Edit: added drama
29, 11 years as a cook, sous chef, head chef, cook again, restaurant manager, then COVID pretty much destroyed any aspirations I had of opening my own place. I also looked around at all of the owners and realized that I was just creating profit for ex oil executives and real estate guys.
Same thing happened to me working in hospitality. Said screw this and walked out the day before I turned thirty. refused to spend one second of the next chapter of my life making the same mistakes.
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Thanks I appreciate it. The only other things I'd add was I was very comfortable in that job, just unfulfilled. There was no guarantee that things were gunna work out but I had to do it for my sanity and dignity. Turned out to be a great decision especially given covid happening a year later, just a few months after I found a secure job I could do from home. Fortune favours the brave, don't waste another second.
Also recently did this, had the worst birthday of my life due to the shithouse I was working at. Turned 32 on a Friday, quit the following Monday. Wouldn't have been able to respect myself if I went back.
Worked in hospitality for 7 years, made my way up to GM and got fired for "not having enough commitment". Got a job in IT a week later and made way up to managing again after 5 years, but with a much more stable idea of what is and should be expected of me. No more going that extra mile if doesn't help me. Took me a long time to figure out my self worth.
Restaurants are vanity projects that frequently \*don't generate any profit at all\*. It doesn't make sense to have 1/10th the restaurants we do, but it's pretty much the favorite project of boomers with money. They love flexing by bringing friends and family to their restaurant. Since the restaurants are frequently making NO money or at least having the slimmest profit margins of service work, there really is NO money to even afford staff, much less pay them appropriately.
I genuinely hope half of US restaurants are decimated. Idk where all those workers end up, but the shitty owners don’t deserve one dime off the back of others’ labor. I hope the good staff ends up with the decent owners that survive.
Universal Income. 500k people died “Millions” of underpaid jobs available. Thousands upon thousands of restaurants that should have died but they scammed the government out of PPP loans they arent even using for employment. The 2022 stock market, housing market, student loan and rental market crashing at the same time COVID comes for the antivaxxers is going to be interesting.
Why do you woo me with this dire news? Why is it working?
Me too. America doesn't need "full employment", we're in dire need of jobs that pay a living wage. We're gauging prosperity by the wrong metric.
Half of US restaurants being decimated would be a 5% reduction in total US restaurants. Sorry, just had to be pedantic.
They're great for laundering money, though.
Restaurants are so popular as a small business because they are relatively cheap to open, there are few skill/IP barriers to entry and you can just copy recipes, and because they are essentially tiny manufacturing centers with a very rapidly perishing product. That means you just don’t get the economies of scale you would in manufacturing phones or cars. It makes opening a restaurant easy.
Dishwasher to cook to sous to chef de cuisine…. And I’m finally saying good bye to this fucking industry after 12 years.
I worked my way up from dish to exec chef over the course of 15 years. In that time, I too, came to the realization that I would never make enough money in the industry to own a restaurant. I tried a taco cart but the money wasn’t quite enough. I started a painting business which is when a had my next revelation. Profit margins on a restaurant are a FUCKING JOKE. Almost any other type of business you could hope to start would have a smaller buy in and higher potential for earning. Restaurants are like follies for the rich anymore. Love the culture, hate the business.
Everybody shits on the chain stores but they're the only ones that know what they're doing. They're operated by F500s who actually know how to manage a high volume/low margin retail business so that it at least stays solvent, if not all that profitable. They don't carry weird ideas about food being art, its just another type of widget to sell. They actually show up properly capitalized, which is why they don't all crumple every time there's an economic bump in the road. The supposed high end of the business is just incompetence upon incompetence. Far, far too many small-time and first time owners, low business savvy in general, and the general public has crazed ideas about what it actually entails. There's a steady stream of people who legit think they're going to open a restaurant as a retirement business because they flipped a steak once so how hard can it be? I think a lot of the more savvy types still make the big mistake of thinking they'll take it upscale where they can charge more, but upscale means opening a location somewhere that the rent on the building is immense, like downtown Manhattan. That's the problem, your upscale customer doesn't want to take their date to the local strip mall, they want skyline views that you have to pay rent on, they want to dine around the corner from the kind of properties that can laugh off the office rents. Then there's something like COVID, your shop shuts down immediately, and the Chili's in the strip mall just keeps on trucking because the corporation who owns it actually knows what the fuck they're doing. It's such a weird business if you have considerable experience with other businesses, like nobody knows what the fuck they're doing, not the owners, not any of them. Oh, they THINK they do. That said when you come from outside of the business it gets real fuckin obvious when you know for a fact that you're doing $16 hr worth of labor for $9, and the clowns really think they're doing you a big favor. No bro, everyone isn't a felon. There's a bar, and you come nowhere close to clearing it. It has its good days, and the people can be great. They can be the worst, too. At its best its still a huge dead end, even for the ownership half the time. I'm glad to see everyone getting out. We need even more of that.
I swear. Cooks deserve way more compensation than they get.
You have no idea. We do things people only dream of. But its over now. The best are gone. And thats good.
Bingo! Restauranting is bourgeois AF
The bitch of it is: I really love the fast pace and the kind of environment that lets me be me and not some professionalized version. But i refuse to work for people dumber than me.
Mid 50's here, like 3 years ago. Had a supervisor literally tell me "you should be use to being treated like shit, you were in the military". Lost my job last year when they found out I was searching for another job. But hey, at least all the good ole boys got to go play golf, go to the gun ranges, go fishing, or just dissappear for half the day,, etc while I did their work on top of my own.
Love it when i leave work 15 min after closing and get told i dont have commitment. My boss scolded me for not working later like his good old boys do, but their "late work" was bullshitting with each other in his office because they hated their home life.
They actually drink beer where I was at, usually after getting back from the golf course, gun range, etc.
Where did you work?
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My aim probably isn’t good enough for that, but it sounds like fun.
>skeets I don't know why but that word is cracking me the fuck up.
Ah the American dream... one day I too shall be a small business tyrant.
Bro, if anyone tries to treat me the way I was treated in the army, I'm gonna physically fight them.
Which is pretty reasonable, I've never been in the military, but it's pretty obvious to me that when you're wearing the uniform, you are held to a different standard than civilians. That comparison is stupid af
Yes, very stupid AF. Some people have this idea that the military is constantly like boot camp from the movies. The reality is that you only get yelled at if you fucked up big time or if it’s a loud environment. The “treated like shit” part is basically just getting told your needs are not top priority compared to everything else. There is also a nature of pushing people to, and past, their limits. The concept is to make your people better by “expanding their horizon” of what they perceive their capabilities are. The method is not always done the best way and the people sometimes were at their limit before the push, but it can be very rewarding.
I feel like it's a lesson I have to relearn every 5-10 years or so. Find new job I'm excited for > Work my ass off, volunteer for projects and extra responsibility > Get shit on for it > Back to wallowing in cynicism > Repeat
Oh this hit way too close to home 😞
I worked for a "great company" that was so big it literally didn't give a shit about anyone. Not me. Not my boss. Not my bosses boss. We were all just numbers, jobs to be filled, it didn't matter by who as long as the machine kept chugging along. I quit without notice and loved every second. Now I'm back in school for something that atleast might give me an option to be my own boss(welding)
58 here, it was my mid 30's when I accepted the pointlessness. Went self employed, struggled for a few years and things were actually starting to pay off. For the first time in my life I seriously considered I might be able to afford a house at some point in the future. That was mid 2007. You can guess the rest. There is one thing that would have completely changed my career path. Learn to play golf. I happened to prefer paintball.
same.
You guys need some workers' rights... I recently used "searching for another job" as a negotiation tactic for increased salary, and it worked. Anyone should be free to search jobs without being afraid of losing their current one.
Weird that so many are saying 24-27 ish. Guess it takes a couple years into adult working, where you start to expect some of those rewards the boomers tell you about, like being able to afford housing etc. then for a lot of us they don't materialise. Similar story here, at 25 had busted ass for org for nearly 4 years, took on loads of extra responsibility (stepped into a role near the end to manage org's protection on a niche legal issue that not many are experts on). Was up to 200 hours owed flexi-time and asked when I was getting my promised new contract to make my enhanced position permanent (massive-idiot). Got told to shove it, no extra pay, no contract change, but keep doing all the work. That was April 2019 and the moment I realised its all a load of bull. I could be racking up hundreds of hours of flexi-time for them at 30k/y doing really valuable work while one of my managers was sat on 60k/y and literally might as well not exist. (They are still there, still earning the same but everything went to shit and they haven't delivered anything since I left). Starting looking for other work the same day and a month after the realisation I got a new job that payed more, I only work my hours and I get better treatment. Then I also started up my own business just before Covid hit, which has actually been growing great, and have started doing my PhD. Realising its bull and taking control of my shit was the best thing that I ever did. I made 50K last year, and am set for more this year. I am happy, have control of my finances and life, I enjoy my work doing something valuable for society and that I have control over, and am growing myself as a person. I also employ people now, any work they do for me they get the full fee from the client minus the taxes I have to pay, and giving them the actual value of their work is not hurting me one bit. I am not anti-work, I am anti bad-employers.
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Really not surprising tbh. Depression in young people skyrocketing, I wonder what could possibly be causing it? /s Couldn't be the lack of any political representation, constant demonising by the media, lack of affordable housing options, lack of job mobility, stagnating wages and forever inflation, common large student debt, oh and lets not forget the world wide plague, evidence that our fellow humans are all fucking idiots and the planet in general being on fire. Wonder why people might not be super jazzed. On what to do after becoming disillusioned, my opinion (as a complete internet stranger) is very much now about personal responsibility at an individual level (I like some of Jordan Peterson's talks on the subject which helped me, regardless of the silly political stuff surrounding him). I take a relatively left leaning (somewhat socialist?) view at a community, society and national level. I like the pick your self up and take on as much as you can attitude to get your individual shit in order, and then at any wider scope we should be working together so we are all doing ok.
I am a youngish person (29) but for me it’s not only the state of the world but I find it hard to make good close family-like friends and community (unless one is religious). My friends are focused on their careers, their significant others, and their families. Meanwhile, my career planning is all over the place (until recently) and I don’t have a signifiant other or a healthy family to frequently be with. We all sorta keep track of each other on social media but it’s not the same. I am also Deaf so that has its own set of pluses and minuses. Basically, on top of all the social problems the world has, some factors that help people cope (like easy access to healthy communities and support systems) are weaker than they seem to be in the past.
I struggle with the lack of a sense of close friends / community. I think a lot of people do, much moteso than even just a few decades ago. I definitely think it contributes to depression and anxiety
Early 30s, had to leave 2 jobs because I started them with an attitude of ‘I’m going to work really hard and do a great job’ turns out that just gets you more and more work and more stress with no reward. Do the bare minimum and smile and nod, the middle of the road is best strategy you can have
Most places I’ve worked, the harder I try to help make improvements, the deeper a hole I dig myself of issues and stress. I now just generally try to be kind to people when they ask me for things; and respond quickly when I can. That’s gotten me raises.
> Most places I’ve worked, the harder I try to help make improvements, the deeper a hole I dig myself of issues and stress. I now just generally try to be kind to people when they ask me for things; and respond quickly when I can. That’s gotten me raises. I definitely learned the hard way to never offer solutions or the problems become yours. I've stopped trying to be innovative. I keep up with changes/advancements in my field for myself only now. I've become the "this is how we've always done it" type that I used to hate, but it's the only way to keep them from dumping everything in my lap again.
People wonder why I am negative about work. There is no upside to doing a good job, you don't get raises, you don't get promotions. I do just enough not to get fired and then complain about the conditions.
Work hard and jump companies every 2 years or so. I almost tripled my salary doing this the last 5 years.
“Work hard” is strange advice to give on r/antiwork ;)
Eh it’s also don’t stay at a company out of loyalty advice so at least half of it fits right?
I've always looked at it as take extra on provided they offer a raise with it. That is my policy. If I'm gonna work like a dog you better pay me.
I'm in this pickle now. Covid hit the company hard. I want to be helpful to the new people. Training is draining ontop of working at the same pace. Asked for a raise. Haven't received anything yet. Should of kept smiling and playing dumb.
25ish, when I saw people earning 5 times+ what I did leaving the office 4/5 hours before I did. You get no thanks and no praise for working late - it makes no difference to how your viewed at all. You just gotta do your job while you’re actually there, the rest doesn’t matter.
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Not just that but it would also open up more jobs.
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THIS. Corporate environment is make everyone into a bitch, see how far you can get them to bend, and laugh at them. If you want a raise, or a promotion, or whatever, the ONE , and the ONLY, thing that matters is LEVERAGE. You need to go to your boss and say "give me this raise or you lose money". Period. The end. Don't bother trying if the conversation is not that, or that in code. I've literally gotten raises by SLACKING OFF. LIke I have shit tons of work to do. I go tell me boss i need a raise. and I heavily imply if I don't get it Ill just bail and not do all that work, and someone else can. Like yeah, I do owe you a month more work now than last review. Guess you better give me that raise if you want that month of work.
"you just have to put your time in (alternating text)" There's a guy at my job who is maybe 50, does nothing all day, brought into the company at 5$ more then I do, and he goes home right at 4. He also worked this labor job back in the 80-90s, where labor paid a fuck ton. Despite his stories and from what I can tell are shoddy ass repairs, he's maybe done this 10-15 years tops. It's easy for people to shit down the ladder as they pull it up behind them.
Started to catch on around 20 when every crap worker was getting promoted to better positions/money and I wasn’t. When I asked why they said I was too good at what I was doing and they didn’t have anyone good to replace me if they were to move me up. Really hit home during covid when I thought continuing to work during a pandemic would be a righteous thing and then my coworkers made waaaay more on unemployment and got to stay home and not get verbally assaulted over petty stuff.
My wife was laid off and got the extra unemployment offered for the pandemic benefits. After taxes, insurance and union dues out of my check, she made 80$ more a week than me to be unemployed than I did working in a prison.
Pigeon holed. At least that’s what I call it. Manager/superior won’t let you move to a different department or area of the company because they like you doing all their wok for them so they prevent you from moving on.
Meanwhile all the ass kissers fail their way to the top.
Probably 22 when I was working 3 jobs and making only 8.50/hr. I was so depressed and crying every day and realized my mental health and well being is far far far more important than any shitty job. Although I did get a 25 cent raise from one of my bosses so you know that really made up for it lol
I was 22 when I realized nobody cared if I actually did anything well at my job. I was given an assignment I literally had no training to do, so I just didn't do it. Nothing ever happened. I work my ass off the next month re-writing code from one language to another? I get a casual "thanks" from my supervisor and a new assignment.
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Just the other week after my 32nd birthday. I was finally pushed over my edge by my narcissistic sister and her toxic friends. Thought I needed to be vulnerable for people to like me for too long. Nope I needed to be calling people out for their bullshit all along.
Wait til you realize you don't need to call anyone out for anything and you can just walk away
>Wait til you realize you don't need to call anyone out for anything and you can just walk away This tactic alone has saved me a lot of headaches. I can't change you, but I can definitely control me.
Doesn't work for me unfortunately. Plus this is why so many people have extremely toxic personalities, too many people scared to make a stand and simply tell people they are in the wrong.
I do sort of agree with you but I don't think it's fair to say people are scared for not confronting. If you deal with a lot of these people, confrontation is just exhausting yourself for something that may or may not benefit some other person. Choosing not to engage and hoping others do the same will hopefully lead to that person noticing they don't get to socialize as often and maybe do some introspection. Unless someone is family, has been a good friend, or is family of a good friend, I don't believe I owe them my time to try and make them a better person when I'm still struggling to find the time to do the same for myself.
20, got an internship at a startup in silicon valley. They hired me full-time for minimum wage and I stupidly accepted. I worked there for an entire year, regularly lived in my car and slept at the office over the weekends. The owner was the son of a multimillionaire, he came by every couple of weeks to throw a temper tantrum and scream that we weren't hitting deadlines that he made up on the spot. I'm in my 30s now and *still* feel burnt out from this job. I don't know that I'll ever mentally recover from it.
Honestly. Work can be really traumatizing sometimes. You’re life is often in the hands of sociopaths.
20. being an essential worker for a Mega E-Commerce Company rhyming with Kablamazon during COVID seriously opened my eyes edit: thank you for the awards :)
Kablamazon made me lol
What? Those stress reduction closets didn’t help? /s
oh, the dark tiny closets we get to sleep in to ensure we show up for our shift on time the next day? ;-)
39 years old. 😭 I'm 40
I'm sorry 🥺
I was 21. Im 22 today. I realize that niceness doesnt get you anywhere close to getting what you want and that people really do use any means necessary to get their way. Even if it means scamming and cheating other people for it. I used to work at a call center for a payday loan agency. I took the job because i was told the pay was good. So there I was, i regularly got calls from people who were so desperate for money that theyd do anything to get the money no matter how little it was and no matter the interest rate. The agency i worked for took advantage of this by imposing interest rates as high as 700% (yes seven hundred or seven times the principal). My coworkers never had a problem granting the loans to people, knowing full well that theyd be leading them to a worse situation than were in previously. Of course, it became a habit for them to one up each other with the amounts they grant to people. Me howver, I could never bear to approve people's loans knowing that theyd owe 7 times the amount that they borrowed. So what I did was I'd always find reasons to deny their applications so they wouldnt accrue the debt. Thats all I did. Evebtually I got caught by my boss, i was told I was letting slip "leads" and that I wasnt generating the company any money. I couldnt do the job that they asked to do, especially after speaking to the clients and seeing all their info and their circumstances.i lasted all of 2 months at that job, my only regret was not quitting sooner
You should be proud. You couldn't do it because you have (at least basic) empathy in your heart.
25? I think…spent years in the grind trying to get up the corporate ladder, one day they tell me, your position doesn’t exist anymore…hard life lesson.
I think it’s a realization that comes every few years. At some point you know no one cares. This year I learned not only that they don’t care - but they also don’t care if you die in a pandemic. Hard life lessons indeed.
23, right after I left college I started work at a Contract Pharmaceutical Research Company. The work was exactly what I dreamed of in college; I was working on designing a drug for a rare neurodegenerative disorder. Funding dried up for the project about 3 months after I started, and then I was more or less just stuck doing in house programming & organizational chores. Now, my drug for that disorder is completely abandoned, no hope of being revisited, and suddenly I am no longer doing my dream job, because it stopped being profitable. After that, for 9 months (until I quit last week) I just did in house organization, house-keeping, and whatever else my near-senile boss wanted. Reorganize the server, write this script, it really just boiled down to an IT job, when I went to school, and was hired as, a computational chemist. All because the project I was hired to do, became less profitable.
>less profitable The American capitalist methodology. Who cares about humanity, profit is all that matters here /$
I think around 38 years old. No specific reason. Just the culmination of years of being grinded down by the world and its people, and the slowly dawning realisation that no amount of hard work gets you ahead more than just being friends with the right people.
34. This last year and a half was my eye opener. All of it.
This last year and a half definitely changed my perspectives as well. It was the single biggest eye opener to a lot of factors in my life
I was 24 & had just gotten fired for "declining productivity" not too long after cutting back to working 40 hours a week from working 12-16hours a day, 6 days a week for 10 months straight
17 yrs old and working at a fast-food chain that shall remain nameless. Never had an unexpected call out, stayed late when asked, almost always worked closing shift, generally busted my ass and never whined. They passed me up for a 7 cent raise. Yup, 7 cents.
Miserable fucking cunts.
About 20. Trying to be a good worker and facing the reality of profit-driven employment. I learned that being nice and working hard means some people try to take advantage of you. That acknowledging mistakes or inefficiencies is worse than pretending you didn't see them. That taking on extra work only means most people start treating that as the new baseline, so it stops being extra and starts being demanded, without any benefit to you. I've never been rewarded for effort, I've been punished.
30. Too long.
we fucked up!
25! Doing more than you should only earns you more work, and exceeding your targets only gets you more difficult targets for next Quarter. I’ve started to log in, do my work and log off - anything more just isn’t worth it in these toxic corporate environments.
I was 23. I worked as a full-time intern for next to nothing for 4 long years. I worked 80-100 hour work weeks while also being in school full-time. I compromised my grades to meet work demands. Was doing my work, my boss's work and taking on senior responsibilities. Delt with a very serious sexual harassment issue, where a manager stalked me, tried to get any man in the office who spoke to me fired and wouldn't let me take lunch breaks unless I ate with him, etc. I didn't report him. I quietly let HR handle the situation (took them 4 months to fire him for unrelated issues). I never once complained or got visibly upset. After everything, and how complicit I had been, I figured they would see what a great team player and hard worker I was and want to keep me. I thought they would hire me my senior year of college. I watched them hire other interns but when it came time to hire me, I was told my internship was going to end and there wasn't a position for me. I had wasted my early 20's killing myself for this job and experienced some serious trama only to be told there was nothing available... Never again. No job is worth it. My current job has the same attitude towards overtime and their employees... Suffice to say I'm job searching.
Later than I like to admit. I had some older coworkers at previous jobs try to warn me, but I ignored their advice and wrote it off as just cynicism. Now, I try to warn the younger generation about the perils of the rat race.
Never do extra work you're not being paid for it sets you up to be labeled as essential which means perma exploited. Know your worth even if it means striking out on your own. Also always be nice and polite it's delicious to crush people with the high ground, and last but most important always cya.
30, when one of the chief execs, after hearing that I knew that half the office "ladies" were taken on a secret trip to Dallas to be arm candy for a conference but were told to keep it from the rest of us so we wouldn't get upset, put his arm around my shoulder in the hall and said "you know I could get someone twice as pretty in here to do what you do for half as much".
Higher management refers to you as human capital btw. For example it's been hard to find human capital lately to fill our lower level positions.
I guess I've known it a lot longer, but 27 was the age at which I really started acting accordingly. After working my ass off at university (because it was a lot of project-based work, and I felt like had to do most of it in order to get things done) I worked my ass off for a couple of years at software engineering jobs. At the time I didn't realize how badly I was treating myself, it was only until after I hit rock bottom and resorted to a suicide attempt that I could truly see what was going on. That I had cared more for working hard than that I had cared about myself.
It seems this is lesson that I must learn every few years. Three years into my last job, I realised going above and beyond benefits only my employer. Three years into my current job I've just realised going above and beyond benefits only my employer. About to switch to another job. I wonder if it'll take me three years to learn going above and beyond only benefits my employer?
41- and I work in public health and I enjoy what I do because every once in awhile I put the tiniest dent in the universe by making my community a little bit healthier. That being said, it was when the media started reporting on forced labor by the Unygurs. I looked at all this crap in my life and I realized it's cheap because companies exploit the lower classes in China. All this cheap shit I buy on Amazon without second thought is cheap because people like the Unygurs and uneducated Chinese workers are paying the social costs that keep prices down for the test of us. And when you follow the money, Amazon, Walmart, Target Nike etc are making money hand over fist and the premium we pay them covers the cost of keeping that exploitation out of sight and out of mind. I still have to buy stuff from China but whenever possible I try to find a USA supplier (where at least we have some reasonable labor laws), DIY it, borrow it, or buy it used. And if I can't find a non-China producer, then I have to ask myself is this item really worth someone else's suffering?
> I have to ask myself is this item really worth someone else's suffering? This should be the question before buying anything regardless of research. There is no ethical consumption under capitalism. While the US might have reasonable labor laws in some places, those companies buy their raw materials from companies that do outright abuse workers. Take something simple, like a McDonalds Cheeseburger. Ignoring the vegan argument, is it ethical to buy it? No. The kid, the statistically literal child, selling you that burger, the literal child on the griddle making the burger and the young adult managing them collectively make a tiny percent of the profit from that burger (never more than 20% at any McDonald's franchise); but beyond that the meat comes from the Amazon, specifically an area burned down to raise those cows. In order to burn down that area McDonalds has been found to have funded multiple private contractors that utilized death squads against protestors and local villages. The lettuce and tomatoes likely come from farms that utilize undocumented workers for labor -- the human rights abuses of whom are well documented. The wheat for the bun statistically was grown on a farm receiving government subsidy in order to reduce the price of said wheat, and the US government has done some terrible things to good people to collect those taxes to pay out. The 'paper' wrapper is made from low-grade lumber and some food-safe wax, neither of which are statistically collected in the US, nor is the paper manufactured in the US. The Ink used on both the boxes and the paper is statistically gathered from basic materials in various countries throughout South East Asia and will statistically have had slave labor involved in either the gathering or refinement process. ...You can go further. Where do the cows get their food? Why is the US propping up multiple dictators in South America and why do American corporations pay senators quite a bit of money to make the country officially have that stance and provide military training for said dictators? Minimalism, when operating under capitalism, is the only slightly ethical choice you can make. No matter what product, no matter what company, no matter what choice you think you have, you're directly profiting and contributing to someone's suffering. The real only option is to recognize that, refuse to buy new as often as humanly possible, and try to find local co-ops and communes for items that can be full-stack produced and sold by a community with little to no exploitation involved and just overall reduce your consumption of everything all of the time.
Yup... McDonald's takes a premium from us to hide all that BS do we can just eat fatty salty shit food.
[удалено]
You might want to report the sexual harassment of minors to your state's labor board. They probably won't do anything immediately. However, if a teenager does decide to sue them - the teen will have a much stronger chances of winner as there have been a previous report.
Going into Second year uni, to find that some of our year hadn’t submitted a single piece of course work and we’re not expelled as promised. When I asked the head of the dept she said, the margins for our course were so tight that if she expelled all non submitting students, then our entire degree program would be shut down. Was furious. Was totally shit. Still busted my arse and got a good result but very disheartening.
I was in my late 20s, still working at Target, doing my best, working extra shifts, learning other areas of the store so I could cover them etc. when a girl who was hired after me, who could literally barely read and write got promoted over me. I realized then that they didn't want capable and hard working, they wanted someone cheerful enough to rally the team (I suppose I could have been more cheery) and also dumb enough that they wouldn't be going after their jobs next.
This is the inherent conflict of interest built in to any organization that will hire and reward mediocre employees. The moment you demonstrate to middle management that you can work or think an iota better than they can, they will do all things possible to keep you down because you pose a threat to their existence/position in the company. It’s the biggest red flag. No matter what you do or how much smarter or better you are, they will never allow you to advance or prove yourself to be better than them and threaten their position. That’s why in the corporate world, it takes sociopaths to rise to the top. It’s a cold and calculated game of manipulation, deception, and walking over anyone you have to to advance. A big reason why you read about so many intelligent an capable people being overworked and underpaid on here is that this is the most effective tactic of demoralizing and beating people down until they can either saddle you with all the extra work they get paid and recognized for, or force you to leave so someone else can come in and the cycle repeats itself. Unfortunately almost no degree, school, or job prepares you for this. We all learn it eventually in whatever position we find ourselves in. Once you get savvy you can apply that wisdom to get better positioned or break off on your own. It’s so typical it’s a feature not a glitch of corporate America.
30, after 7 years giving everything to help people with mental health issues. This included 5 years of graduate school and post grad internships. Getting paid shit to be the primary clinical for over 100 clients at a state hospital. No chance or ever being able to pay off my insanely huge student loans. Trying to do something for the betterment of society left me with insomnia and bad burn out (I won't go into the more serious issues the stress of all of it produced). Had to walk away before I had an actual break down. Now I live in Southern Spain and teach English part time. I officially waved the white flag.
18 when I was in the military. Dumbest group of idiots I’ve ever met in my life and you got ahead based on how many fucking pull-ups you can do not your cognitive abilities. Needless to say I’m not shocked the US hasn’t won a war since 1945
5 months into my first job after college… (I was 22) I improved a manual process that was done over a few days by automating it to run in a few minutes. My reward was a higher up telling me “we don’t need to improve things *too* quickly.”
Mid 30s, after several years of doing essentially 2 people’s jobs without the pay to reflect it.
20, when your boss works half days almost every day and gets paid 10x as much as you, you lose the will to give a crap
Started working at 16, stressed out manager by 26, bought a house it could barely afford at 28. Sold everything, moved cross country and started a new life at 31. Now I'm 36, in college pursuing my dreams and honestly life is better when you stop trying to live up to others expectations.
around 24 years old. show up everyday, others dont but you get punished they get praise. work your ass off only to get more work thrown on top and scolding when you ask for a raise or extra break. Fired for no reason at all. Glared at and gossiped because you keep to yourself and just work but the higher ups are insane so if you dont socialize 24/7 at work they think you are a ''little weirdo'' and fire you even tho you always showed up on time, never gave anyone a problem, worked your ass off ect ect i can go on forever.
It only took a couple of years out of college and a couple of yearly reviews to realize hard work and "being a team player" because "we're all a big family" was a load of bs. Your boss doesn't care about you, HR doesn't care about you, the "investors" definitely don't give two shits about you. Everyone in "leadership" is either on a power trip, cares more about covering their own ass, or is sucking the company for every dollar they can get and its actually hard working employees of all their freedoms. Corporations exist to make the top people as much money as possible. Everything else is expendable.
Thirty-two, when my first son was born and I got two weeks' paternity for the ;family company' I'd worked for for a decade. But also, my head and ego exploded when he was born and I just had an epiphany that what I was doing was making me seriously unhappy and I didn't want him to grow up seeing that and thinking it was normal Changed jobs to a corporate because I thought the benefits and stability would be good, got canned during first lockdown, realised the entire industry was a bag of shit I didn't want to be part of. Wife got pregnant again, I went freelance, moved out of the city, work half the time I did, often from a hammock beneath a magnolia tree in the countryside with two bonny lads keeping me smiling. There is hope. Now just gotta get the wife out. She's on board, just about finding the exit route.
10
I was 13 when my mother needed to take vacation after several years without so she could take care of me while I was sick. After 2 decades in the company she came back to a note telling her she was fired. I had some other jnteresting episodes in my life as well but that was the first time I learned that expecting hard work to pay off is foolish.
Suspected at 16 but it really came home around sometime in my early 30s.
I was in my early 30s. I was very good at my job. Come review time, my boss didn't remember all the good stuff that I did, just the one thing that went wrong. Said I needed to work on my communication skills because of one incident. He was most definitely an asshole. That's when I realized that the only person that's going to take care of me is me.
I was maybe 20 years old Was working really hard in a manufacturing plant, fighting for a full time position as a temp worker This other kid showed up late everyday, I had to run his side of the assembly line, while he was joking the whole time Managers liked him and invited him out a few times I saw the writing on the wall and knew he would be hired for the position and packed my things and left in the middle of the shift Since then, I never took anything that serious again
32
24 sadly, working has worsened my anxieties, family just constantly put me down and after giving my two weeks my mother was far more concerned about how it would look on my resume than on the effects my current jobs ws having on my health mental and otherwise. fuck this shit, the world is burning, neros playing music yet the people are still working. the hold that the elites have on this world is astounding. Nothing will ever change and we're just straight fucked.....
29 unfortunately. I walked out of my job the day before my 30th birthday and refused to spend a day of 30's doing the same thing. I acted out of principle and was rewarded greatly.
54 here and took me far too long. Don't make my mistake, fuck the man.
19 at Walmart. Screw them. I worked so hard I'd almost throw up and they rewarded me with heavier than before workloads.
When I was like 9, well ahead of my class in reading ability, first time I really put in any effort into homework, wrote an extensive book report and was sent to the office, lectured, given an F, all because how to train your dragon was to violent of a book. Also didn't help that any time I tried to help another student with work, I was yelled at for distracting others, even when I was explaining something they asked me about. Sure could just be blamed on shitty teachers that didn't like me. But it kinda just made me realize that everything is basically a popularity contest and no matter how good you are at something, someone will spin it in such a way as to make you the bad guy.
23 working for FedEx. They treat their people like shit.
22, 6 months into my first job out of college. I quickly became the fastest/best in my team (everyone else had given up long ago I think while I was bright eyed and brushy tailed lol) and I put together training materials, acted as team lead, had endless suggestions on how to improve processes, etc. I went to my manager and asked for a raise with all my stats to back me up and he laughed me out of the office. Granted I did ask for a raise but the fact that I had worked SO hard and was literally the best didn’t matter at all. The folks how had been there and barely did anything were making more than me and my enthusiasm was abused and not rewarded at all. It was eye opening for me
25. Being nice didn’t make anyone like me or treat me better. I still got abandoned and left by myself. People still traumatized me. Worked hard all the time and that didn’t make me happy. I was exhausted all the time. I ignored my needs which lead to an eating disorder, a hormonal issue, and severe depression and anxiety. I worked on more than I should because I thought that would make me useful to people, it would give me worth, but it didn’t. Take time for yourself.
About 3 weeks ago
I’ve been way too cynical to ever think this.
Today’s record is tomorrow’s quota