30 People Share The Exact Moment At Their Jobs That Made Them Go ‘Radical’ And Join The ‘Antiwork’ Movement
You might have the patience of saints when it comes to your work, dear Pandas, but even saints reach their limits at some point in time. Let’s face it, the past couple of years have been hell for many of us. The radical changes in the way we work, the job industry disruptions, the layoffs, the fights with management… we could go on and on.
But the fact of the matter is simple: a lot of people got so sick and tired of their jobs, they either put in their 2 weeks’ notice and quit or started to fight back against the status quo. Internet users started sharing the exact moments they became ‘radicalized’ and adopted the antiwork mindset in a viral thread on Reddit. We’ve collected some of their stories to share with you today.
Scroll down, upvote the ones that you could relate to the most, and let us know in the comments if you’ve ever experienced anything similar. The story about the sad retirement party is something that really hit us hard.
Bored Panda wanted to learn more about why people quit or become disillusioned with their jobs, so we reached out to Sam Dogen, the author of 'Buy This, Not That: How To Spend Your Way To Wealth And Freedom.' Sam is also the founder of the Financial Samurai blog and has left the job industry a decade ago. Scroll down to read what he has to say.
This post may include affiliate links.
Friend died after not being able to afford insulin. They had a full time job
“The pandemic has given all of us more time to think about what we really want to do in life. Furthermore, given so many fun things we used to do have been curtailed, there's been this huge increase in people being dissatisfied with life overall. With the help of government benefits, millions more people quitting suboptimal jobs is an inevitability,” he explained to us.
“Personally, I left my investment banking job in 2012 at age 34 because work was no longer interesting or fun. I was doing the same old thing for 13 years,” the expert opened up.
For me it was when/how my mom died. I had spent a few years in a new office job after escaping retail, thought I had finally like, “made it” or whatever. Real adult stuff, they offered health insurance, paid vacation, etc. All the stuff you’re supposed to look for in a job right. (I should clarify this was almost ten yrs ago now)
One day mom calls my while I’m at my desk, tells me she has cancer and not long left. I immediately started spending every weekend at her house (just about a 5 hour drive) until she got just too sick, and I had to make a decision.
She didn’t have health insurance. Small business owner, “self employed”. So her not being able to work meant no money on her part, no insurance meant end-of-life care was wildly expensive, and now I had had to leave my job and move in to wait it out with her to make sure she was as comfortable as possible until the end. So also no paychecks for me, because as soon as I started not being able to focus 100% on my stupid a** corporate bulls**t job, they said “welp… sorry bout that. Hope everything works out for you.”
So I never went back. To an office job, to that state, or even to retail honestly. Not a single entity had any sort of support to offer us, any kind of help, nothing… (I sincerely don’t mean the local community when I say this, her vast network of friends in the area were mostly amazing and kind but not exactly flush with cash). I lost my job, my savings, my entire plan for the future, my home, and my mother in the span of six months because there was less than zero support for a dying poor woman in this country. I’d leave here behind if I could, too.
Wow thank you guys, sorry I came here, overshared, and then left for the rest of the day, it was stressing me out that I even talked about it. Y’all are incredibly kind and supportive, thank you all.
Why is wanting fair treatment and fair pay for a fair days work "radical"?
“I wanted to take a leap of faith, while I was still relatively young. Feeling regret for not trying something new is one of the worst feelings,” Sam explained to Bored Panda that young employees tend to have much more flexibility when it comes to career changes or doing passion projects.
According to the financial expert, there are some concrete ways to bring workers back to the job industry. “Not only could higher compensation entice more people to come back to work, but more flexibility as well. It's clear that very few people work or need to work 40 or more hours a week. There's a lot more productivity happening if you're able to work from home,” he pointed out.
Got into the same Industry my father raised me in, he was able to afford multiple houses, cars, and raised three kids.
I make the same as he did 40 years ago. Can’t afford rent.
THIS is what our economy has become..and what leads to the false assumption that the older generation worked harder and the younger generation just doesnt work hard enough/is lazy.
After I turned 26 and had to get off my parents health insurance i applied for it at the office I had worked at for five years. The owner of the company told me that providing health insurance for employees was "a huge burden on the company".
My team had performed so well that year that the owning family rewarded themselves with new cars paid for with company money. The employees received, and I s**t you not, a bag of chips and a candle. I realized then that employers are NEVER your friend. They will climb over your dead body to make a nickel of profit.
Our business was up 40% for the year, we did not get a Christmas bonus, a party, or even a couple pizzas or a Christmas card. My coworker was in tears because she couldn't afford gifts for her family. We had expected a bonus because in the years prior we had gotten an extra hundred bucks at least, that year they just decided to stop giving bonuses and not say anything about it. Most of us were working paycheck to paycheck.
Seeing my coworker almost cry at his retirement "party" which was nothing more than crappy catered Italian food.
Dude was here for 42 years and the owner of the company didn't even bother to show up. The HR manager came and said, "Thanks Scott. Now go eat."
And that was it.
A large part of an employee’s job satisfaction relates to what their coworkers and bosses are like. When you’re part of a friendly, talented, and passionate team, you can’t help but adopt their enthusiasm.
On the flip side, if you’re constantly being micromanaged, overworked, and underpaid, you start looking for greener pastures. They say that people leave managers, not companies. Whether you agree with this or not doesn’t change the fact that for some people this is the reason why they go elsewhere.
I got really sick as a teenager. My mom’s insurance wouldn’t cover the treatment that the docs thought could save my life. We were well off and she was able to pay for it out of pocket. But the other kids I met/befriended at the hospital and in the local groups did not have the same privilege and died. For a long time I carried that weight as a guilt, but now it burns like a red hot anger. “Let this radicalize you, rather than lead you to despair.”
Seeing people that work their entire life and get completely railroaded when bad health comes knocking. If it's like that, then what the f**k's the point?
I was 20 and a bank teller. One day a week my shift started at 11 instead of 9. I walked to work like I did every day and when I got there, police tape is everywhere. The branch was robbed just before I arrived and a coworker held at gunpoint. He handed over the cash and thank goodness, no one was hurt.
In the series of meetings that followed, HR proceeded to berate him for giving the robber too much money (i.e., bank profits). He went on stress leave and never came back.
"You just gave him the money? What would he do, shoot you?" Also....isn't this supposed to be covered by insurance.
Eddy Ng, the Smith Professor of Equity & Inclusion in Business at Queen’s University, explained to Bored Panda during a previous interview the difference between strong and weak leaders.
For him, a strong leader in the workplace is someone who is principled, moral, and who always does the right thing. Meanwhile, weak leaders are those who dither or only ever do the things that make them popular.
In 2020 I worked at Wal-Mart. There was a Deli worker who was recovering from major liver surgery due to a car wreck. She was 72 years old and still healing. The doctor gave her an order stating that she couldn't stand for more than 20 minutes at a time and she wasn't supposed to lift more than 5 pounds. They had her at the door counting people to make sure we didn't go over capacity. Then the store manager came up to her and told her that she couldn't sit at work and accused her of being lazy and took her chair away. She was in so much pain in her abdomen about an hour later that she had to run to the restroom to puke. I was furious. I went to Susan's (store manager) office on my lunch break and informed her that what she was doing was not only unethical, but Illegal. And violates labor laws. I let her know I had informed corporate and the TIPS hotline about what she was doing. She told me that I was just a greeter and needed to mind my damn business. I reported what she had done to the district manager and two assistant managers. The lady that I will call Sara. Got her chair back 3 days later, after justifiably refusing to work under those conditions while recovering from surgery. Nothing happened to the store manager so I quit a week after reporting the incident to as many people as I could. When I realized they could abuse a disabled elderly woman for no reason and get away with it, I was too disgusted to work there. And I will NEVER work for a Wal-Mart again.
I'll never shop in a walmart again after what my staff and I were subjected to when I worked for them.
Being disabled.
I was forced to work full time (as practice to come back from full time disability) at a place that refused to hire me (even though that was the goal according to my plan with the disability-services).
Why? Because the state paid THEM $34/day (not taxed) to have me there. While I had to survive off $5/day, paid by the state (and which I paid taxes on, so it was less than $5/day in the end).
Disabled people are abused by the entire system, yet seen as some kind of freeloading tax-stealers? Companies are tax-stealers. Not the sick.
Governments only see us disabled people as burdens and not human beings that need respect. All I got from my government in Spain was indiference and all I got from Belgium was threats and lies. I wont even be able to ever become a citizen (and have rights) because I cannot work (so i am not a person, just a burden).
I don't think believing that people have a right to a comfortable life and be compensated fairly for the exchange of labour is radical...
If a business needs slave labour the business should fail. If billionaires paid fair taxes and we use that money to better society, I'd hardly consider it radical...
“The notion of servant leadership is gaining attention in the workplace. Although it is associated with many of the strong leadership traits such as empathy, selflessness, and humility, the focus is on the leader’s propensity to serve (or support) their followers. Servant leaders empower and lift up followers (employees) to motivate and fuel their passion,” the professor told us.
According to the expert, at the core of leader-follower relationships lies the principle of exchange. “Employees can manage that relationship to have work satisfaction. In this instance, employees need to communicate what they need (tools) or work conditions (autonomy) in order for them to perform optimally when working with a controlling boss. Employees need to convey what they can and are able to perform,” he stressed the importance of clear communication.
My rent went up +$200. My raise was $0.40. CEO raise was 7 digits.
Similar. But I had a happy end. They waste millions in all corners, and I was like: there IS money for me. I am doing a good job. So I got in touch with a friend who could hire me on the spot, told him about it and all. He made me an offer he would keep, if I wanted it. Went to my boss and told him about it. Resulted in 15% raise.
Getting a write up for pumping breast milk on my breaks in which they had me using a public restroom to do so. Both were illegal. I have not worked a traditional job since. I worked in Healthcare.
Edit to add that the same employer also got upset with me for having my baby. They made sure to tell me how much of an inconvenience it was for them. They also got upset for my time off when my dad died and kept texting and calling during his funeral. I should have quite right then and there but I just needed a job so bad and felt stuck.
Why is the default always - use the bathroom? I mean, I have yet to see people eating their lunch in the bathroom, so why would you expect me to obtain MY KID's next meal in there? That, and people complaining about how much time you spend pumping (30 minutes total for me) and yet they take frequent 10-15 minute smoke breaks or make runs to the mini-mart.
Former employer pushed many of us to the point of hospitalization, under the threat that "if you don't do this, the business will close its doors." Many of us worked 80+ hour weeks for months and months on end, sometimes peaking at close to 120 hour weeks. That means, you literally only get 3-4 hours of sleep a night and you're working for ~16-17 hours a day. I was actually in management, but I was working alongside my team, putting in even more hours than they were. I actually cared about my team and defended them. I put in a rotating schedule so they could have time off, and I took their work home with me. When my boss found out, I got chewed out and screamed at since I was "being insubordinate" on the hours mandate. I got HR involved, but HR was corrupt as all hell and actually buried everything- all I did was bring to light what they needed to bury.
After years of this bulls**t, the company decided to clean house. Many people I respected were fired with zero notice. Some were in the middle of business trips, and the company actually told them "yeah, you're fired, find your own way back home, chump." I was retained, but demoted, pay cut, and kicked out of the department I built and was managing. It was insulting beyond all belief. New management was terrible and was treating the legacy guys like garbage just to make them all quit so there would be no opposition. I had enough and quit. As I mentioned in another post, they went far out of their way to screw me over once I put my notice in. I actually had to take several days off during notice because of how cruel the ridicule had become.
NEVER TRUST HR. NEVER TRUST HR. NEVER TRUST HR.
I run into one of the HR backstabbers in public quite often. She refuses to make eye contact with me and will even walk out of a restaurant if she sees me. Spineless cowards.
Nope. HR are just the bad-news-buffer-zone between staff and management. They are as unscrupulous as they come.
Load More Replies...
HR isn't there for the employees. HR is there to protect the company from the employees.
HR is not there to protect you, but the company. If they refuse to do their job report the company and involve a lawyer or at least threaten to. Also if your being abused during your 12weeks notice, just leave. F**k them.
What in earth could be so important that people have to be worked like that? I mean, I get that this might happen to healthcare staff and first responders in an emergency, but selling widgets or whatever? Wtf?
Omg a lot of that is illegal in my country...I wonder, was it that suing would be too exhausting and expensive or were there no workers rights?
Negan in the Walking Dead universe made it clear: "people are a resource." You're not a person to the company, you're an expense. And HR works for the company, not for you (in many cases.)
I hope those on business trips that got fired didn't finish the rest of their meetings which would give the company a big black eye.
I wouldnt say its HR so much its teh executive team running the company. I was at a company that had the HR lady fire 20+ people in a single day, when she was finished ( and it was hard for her many of them were her friends) they fired her after doing their dirty work for them.
Even if you rub the law in their face. Even if another institution (some official bureau of employee rights) says they do it wrong. They go out of their way to tell me I am wrong, then cover up everything, for years, until they know how little it will cost them to finally say I was right and change the rules. The HR quit, right then, and I went on to fight again for 5 years hours back, but they only wanted to give 1 year backwards to the employees they cheated...because in that year they made sure everyone worked according to the actual law, so almost no one got anything, when they cheated all of them of a few thousand hours a year... „If you dont like it, you can leave?“ Left.
Another part of doing well at work is very individual. It requires that employees focus on their physical needs by getting enough rest, movement, and having good diets. Fitness expert Jack Bly told Bored Panda that “to increase our work output, the #1 place I look at is health.”
“Better health leads to more energy, more focus, and more productivity. To improve our health and ultimately our output, we need to make sure we’re doing things like sleeping 7-8 hours consistently, [having] good nutrition, [and maintaining] consistent exercise,” he said.
“Prioritizing things like workouts actually give us more energy rather than take energy,” the expert said. He highlighted the fact that sleeping and eating well, and exercising make a “night and day difference in our output.”
I've been sympathetic for a long time because so much of what I see here is really just a call for basic human dignity and respect. The thing that radicalized me is becoming friends with Thomas through my church's homeless outreach; he has three jobs but can't afford an apartment. I cannot support such a cruel system.
My gastritis that has turned into a bleeding ulcer from work stress. Can’t quit though because food and shelter are important to me.
I had same, ended up in emergency surgery straight from work and bed bound for nearly two months. I chose not to go back. And I'm still choosing to rather starve and take my chances as homeless than going back to toxic environment. I barely manage, but I'm grateful I have social benefits and support from government to reskill and take my time before returning. My health got to the point where I was bleeding non stop, every food triggered more bleeding and I couldn't walk/sit/ and only food that didn't hurt me was the one boilt to mush. It's been over a year and I still can't eat raw fruit/veg, can't handle grains/nuts/meat/eggs. All because I wanted shelter and food, I'm now in constant pain and most likely unable to carry pregnancy past 11 weeks (12+ miscarriages and counting) and every fruit I don't peel makes me bleed and back to hospital. take your health seriously!!!
Got fired for mentioning I had autism
I will never, ever admit to that. I will shadow, mirror and cover until the day I die before admitting that to my employers! I'm lucky that I'm high-functioning and my bosses have been high ignorant!
US Military service (also worked as a recruiter) during the Iraq/Afghanistan campaigns is what radicalized me. Especially returning from deployment and seeing what was happening in America. US playing resource pillager and coming home to see people zombified by consumption. The whole experience sent me pretty far left.
Being "sent me pretty far left" means that despite the system, you're still a human being with a conscience. Be careful. The bigshots love to find such "deviants" and make examples out of them.
Having kidney disease.
I've struggled my entire life only to have the rug yanked out from under me, time and again. I'm not lazy or stupid my any measure but now...I'm just f*cking old and sick. This is presenting a slew of new hurdles and to be honest, I'm tired.
I'm really tired.
I did the math and it actually made more sense to quit work collect disability and get state insurance than to work pay for insurance which I needed for prescriptions (still very expensive under employer insurance)
I had a stroke at the office. Like a legit full I could die stroke. And all I could think was I need to get back so I don't get fired.
This is horrible. I don't like when I feel bad to take a sick day...I don't like that mentality that has been promoted throughout my work life.
Honestly it was about 20 years ago. I was antiwork long before it was a thing. There was this woman on contract as an office admin in a big company I worked for and she was amazing. She literally ran the office, helped everyone, did tons of after hours work. I was young and really thought she was a shining example of a great employee. Then she was told on a Friday that her contract was up and she didn't have work Monday. She was then escorted out of the building which was absolutly humiliating for no reason whatsoever. It was then I fully realised people in buisness can be sociopathic f**ks. So my entire career has been based on NOT going that extra mile. Not being like that poor woman. Doing what I need to do to benefit me. Since then I've had a LOT of confirmations that this philosophy is correct. S**te managers will excel because corporate culture promotes the ruthless that say what their managers want to hear and will trample on anyone to meet their personal targets.
I worked 40+hrs a week every week from the age of 19 to 24 and never made more than a dollar or 2 above minimum wage. Then I found out how much profit I was generating for those people and I absolutely lost my s**t.
I was at the mall pre-COVID with my young daughter and her favorite daycare teacher was working at the food court.
I literally sobbed in my car later. No one should have to work two jobs to support their family.
Many teachers have to work two jobs to stay afloat, especially in the beginning of their careers. And teachers don't get paid over the summer.
Working in bankruptcy law during the 08 crash. I saw people losing everything who had done “everything right” but got sick or lost their job due to the crash and their whole lives were falling apart.
It made me suddenly realize that there was no “middle class” safety like I’d been raised to believe. It was all a house of cards.
This is the scariest thing about our society. It all can change in an instant unless you set yourself up with real physical assets that will support you even if society collaspes
Supervisor (nice guy, member of the union) was promoted to mid/upper management at a time when the company "needed" to make deep cuts across the board. He was tasked with being the axe man, deciding who got fired and handing out pink slips. You could see how it hurt him to have to lay off former friends and co-workers. As soon as the org hit their austerity targets for staff, they fired him. He never saw it coming. he thought he was going to work his whole life with that company until he retired.
It’s SOP to fire the “corporate out-processing manager” (aka hatchet-man) at the end of the bloodbath. Corporations really do run on the Stalinist model.
The '08 housing bubble crisis. How you could have done everything "right" all your life but the economy can still take anything & everything from you
My mother worked 4 jobs to keep us afloat when my father was terminally ill. We couldn’t afford insurance for him in the pre-Obamacare days. When he died she quit most of her jobs, but the one she kept piled work onto her until she was working 80 a week. So she quit and found a new job, which began putting more work on to her until she was working 80 a week. I told her to quit, pursue her doctorate, while I breadwon for the house and figured out what I wanted to do professionally. I worked a year at Walmart through the pandemic, literally saw hell every day I clocked in. Worked up to 60 hours some weeks. I had a mental breakdown at work and was written up for it. I wasn’t the first I’d seen like that since I got there. I then switched to working taxes, where I never saw a w-2 for more than 80000 dollars, but I saw landlords and business owners raking in hundreds of thousands. Through out all of this, I spent more time without insurance than with it. All of my father’s pension and social security was eaten by the medical bills. One MRI of mine took 3 years to pay off. To say there was a single event for me would be incorrect. It’s more like the inequities and awfulness present in the system was beaten into me so many times that I started to notice.
A call center coworker sobbing through phone calls after being informed that if she left early due to health issues she would suffer consequences that could get her on the path to termination. We depended on that predatory job because there was nowhere else to turn in our tiny rural community and the people running the place completely exploited that.
Realizing that the salary I was receiving for teaching 12 students was paid by the fees of only two of them. The for-profit college was taking everything else.
Fair enough though- the question is running costs. So someone has to cover electricity, building maintenance, maintenance guys' salary, admin staff salaries, grounds, municipal services and taxes, etc. I am friends with a school head and it SOUNDS like a super way to make tons of cash but it depends on the school fees and how high they are. If they're say, double a government school fee, you can be fairly sure that the school is limping by. If however they're over 3x a state school, you're fairly justified in thinking it's a serious for-profit school.
I realized I'll never ever make a living wage while apartment hunting. I'd need to double my pay today to afford a single bedroom or a studio. By the time I earn my way to that wage the cost of an apartment will probably double leaving me poor still.
What's the point of working so hard just to struggle? Why was I born even? Just to struggle work and die? When do I get to live?
Husband is a nurse. Watched his entire office administration take off to their country homes when COVID started. They left him all their work, the work the janitorial staff left when they quit (over not being offered PPE) then they took away his OT pay, and gave themselves raises. Now he’s not allowed to make his own schedule. They threw him a pizza party and made him stay late to clean up. I’m f**king done and we are looking into homesteading.
Mine has been repeatedly going above and beyond my job description in every job I've ever had, always volunteering for additional duties, constantly learning and improving myself, demonstrating the kind of work ethic and competence that makes me my bosses go-to, having a degree and still working toward higher education... and then watching incompetent, undeserving, lazy, entitled, power-hungry people get promoted because they know the right people and kiss the right a**es. Nepotism and Cronyism. I'm 36 M and still am in a peon position barely struggling to get by despite my qualifications and experience. Resumes in automated systems are rejected because they don't have the right keywords, because no human is looking at the resume, but I'm told by hiring managers just to lie about my qualifications to match the job description exactly. No integrity, no reward or compensation for excellence, no consideration of factors beyond being a naive workhorse.
You can optimize the words in the resume. You don't have to lie. Have a resume writer do a new resume for you. If you feel it is unethical to lie, pay money for them to ethically rewrite it. You have skills and you deserve to go forward in your career.
12 years ago - Being told, "You suck." by the HR Manager in my yearly review, after my first year. I had carried a 6 person department by myself the bulk of that year because they fired and refused to hire anyone for over 7 months. We hit all of our targets. I do occupational safety in a not small company.
When you work in occupational safety, half your job is pushing against the company culture so you can do the other half. The sales guy can point to all the $ he’s made the company, but the safety guy can’t as easily point to a specific $ he’s saved the company on Work Comp payouts.
My grandpa was a master electrician in several states. He worked from 14 until he couldn't anymore. What did he get from staying with the same company for 40 years? Nothing but a f**k you as they fored him once covid hit. They used him until his body was broke and then just kicked him out once the pandemic started leaving him without insurance.
Graduating during a global pandemic and living with my parents for almost two years because I couldn’t find work that paid me enough to live. Now I have a job and am moving out of my parents house, but I don’t believe the work I am doing is contributing anything good to society. And it certainly isn’t paying enough for me to buy a house or have a family.
I’ve realized that really useful, good, necessary jobs aren’t given the respect or pay that they deserve while evil people are getting rich. And when I try to talk about this, people openly don’t care.
We care; however, many of us had similar early career experiences as well. Hang in there. Get a roommate you can stand or really like. Start saving and do worthwhile causes to meet worthwhile people. Most first jobs, even if they feel useful, can be difficult or underpaid (thus the roommate). Hang in there. I did not get married until I was 38 and bought my first house at 40. Those goals were even sweeter because of the pains that came before them. But, I was an independent fully formed adult with a Divinity degree and great husband in the process.
Being laid off by a multi million dollar company along with 500 others, when the executive board and their salaries remained untouched. The CEO makes nearly $1M a year. Never got a single raise during my two years.
For me it was when my boss gave me attitude for wanting to take off time to take my mother to the hospital. He allowed it because I could've grieved it, but then later in meetings he would flippantly say stuff like "at least you have a mother". Just stuff like that made me not want to work there anymore.
My boss quit after being diagnosed with a burn out. All her duty fell on my desk. I agreed to help them for a little while by telling them i wanted to renegotiate my contract at their earliest convenience.
Well, we're 10 weeks later and even after weekly reminder i have not received a single answer or comment about my renegotiation.
Now general manager (my boss's boss) went to mexico during the holiday break and got covid, so he is stuck there. He started off loading his job on my desk while he is enjoying an extended vacation.
I demanded an immediate renogotiation of my contract. The only answer i got was that they appreciated me taking on additional work load.
Few days later, official corporate document started listing me with my old boss title and duty. Thats still without talking to me about it.
I'm handing my resignation today.
Edit: I'll give you all an update, but its probably not going to be as juicy as some of you expect. Real life is rarely that satisfying. I'll try to keep track of everyone who asked for an update and tag them in the thread i make, but this got a lot more traction than i expected.
---UPDATE---
Thank you all for the support. As I said earlier, real life is often not as dramatic as people would like it to be. General manager is back in the country. He called me a few minutes ago. He apologized about the situation and told me again how appreciated my effort were. He told me HR was swamped by other things and he would contact them to get the ball rolling toward my negotiation. I told him that my resignation letter was typed and ready to send and if I didn't get an update about the situation soon i would have to act. He assured me I would get an update on Monday and i requested to have a negotiation before end of next week.
A complete breakdown during my masters degree where I was expected to work 80 hours a week and then when I finally graduated seeing job ads for masters-required for 15$ an hour
Yeah. In my last master internship (unpaid and obligatory) I was expected to work from 8 to 6 5 days a week plus do my statistical analysis (20h week) ar home. They even demanded that I would come at night and in thw weekends to collect data. I couldnt because there was no train for me to go so I was excused but they graded me like s**t and called me irresponsible for it.
My first job was at a small conference company as an event manager. Management fostered a culture of micromanagement and bullying, my coworkers and I were regularly humiliated at company meetings when management would yell at us and pick apart our work in front of the entire company.
They also did this fun little thing where they would take away our lunch hour and forced us to have "team lunch and learn" where one of us would be forced to skip lunch and present to the team.
Oh. And a company VP had this habit of sitting next to the door into the office in the morning and writing down when each of us came in.
I was already radicalized before that but that really stole the show for me.
I notice a few people saying they were "radicalized" but it really isn't radical to want fair pay, health care, and the ability to keep a roof over your head.
When I realized my boss was pulling in almost 500k/yr for a store that I was running while he sat on his arse. Paid me 13$/hr. No benefits. No time off. I worked 6 days a week open-close every day for 4 years. No vacations or time off in 4 years. Told me he couldn’t give me a raise last year cause my performance was suffering; shocker I was pregnant! Then magically was going to offer me a week paid vacation and 2$/hr raise when I found job that offered me 17$/hr for a much less stressful and easier on my body job. F**k you The UPS Store (I know they’re franchise but still.).
That would be highly illegal here. Everything over 8 hours a day has to be compensated either with money, oder free time. Everything over 10 hours has to be compensated with free time. So you do not risk to work you in the ground and beyond that point. Pregnant woman are highly protected during the law. You can not be fired (of course short after that) or be forced to work during the end of pregnancy. We have a entire law for pregnant woman called Mutterschutzgesetz, or in short MuSchG.
Many things over the course of my life, but the course of 2021 really cemented things for me.
During the pandemic I pivoted to film/tv from live performance, and the money is great but the treatment is s**t. 12-14 hour days, with a maximum 10 hour turnaround. Plus if you’re shooting on location & it takes an hour just to get back into town, that eats into your time off. On your feet running around all day, and they feed you but it’s literally so you won’t be unavailable. I’m in a union, and I love my union, but the whole culture of film is toxic.
I also had some of the worst bosses I’ve ever had this year. An abusive alcoholic at the cop show, a micromanager who wouldn’t let me eat at the HBO series, and a pilot so poorly run that we went through five supervisors in two weeks.
I finally made it back to live performance, and my new supervisor was a poor communicator, disorganized, and too proud to accept help from his team. So I said “you know what? F**k this. I quit, actually.”
Got to spend the holidays with my family for the first time in years. I’ve been picking up some day playing here & there, but I’m only working for people I respect/people who respect me from now on. It’s not f**king worth it, otherwise.
During the pandemic, seeing and hearing how retail and food service workers were treated. And now they are still being mistreated because of staffing issues. I hate it for them. I worked in retail before my current job and it was hard even without the pandemic complications. I can’t imagine how stressful it is with all that added on. But other people, customers and managers alike, just expect them to carry on while getting paid hardly enough to live on. It’s disgusting. So now I’m anti work.
The US Military. It was awful and seemed to get worse every day. And we would do it to ourselves, drills every day, training every day, loads and loads of cleaning for time, and just overall disrespect. One day they had us doing drills well into the evening, so we were passed the time the night watch should have been sleeping. If we were to wake up at our normal time we would have gotten like an hour and a half of sleep. They originally told us they would wake us up after about 6 hours of sleep, give us a meal, and then have us take the watch. It turned out they woke us up about 2 hours in and didn't feed us, then we had to stand extra watch so the day shift could sleep more and get a meal. I'm glad for the day shift but it really f**ked us. I made a big stink about it and the 2 senior enlisted members at the command, who were both physically very large men, corned me in the bathroom to yell at me and threaten NJP. They even told me they were done negotiating with terrorists
My demands: eat and sleep in the same day.
I was a manager at a large coffee chain in Los Angeles. In the same day I had one barista become homeless because they could not afford to live anymore, and another I had to try to talk through not to kill themselves because they were suicidal. Hardest day of my life, and it completely broke me as a person.
Thinking “if I were a manager, I’d just pay the employees a living wage!” and then becoming a manager, and seeing that the labor budget I was given to work with was barely enough to give them $10/hr. And whenever sales were down, the only option allowed to me to save money was to cut peoples hours. I tried ordering fewer food items and was told I was “putting the stores sales at risk” as if understaffing wasn’t doing that
So maybe fight for more budget? Point out strengths of your employees and how important it is to keep them specifically? Point out where and when more budget is needed and what for. There are ways, but if you hit deaf ears, you still have a choice: to keep fighting, give in, give up, find a better employer.
Becoming a manager. Before then, I thought the reason work never felt meaningful was bad management, that I could change things and make at least one good place to work. Then I realized for every .01% I made employee’s lives easier I made my own 10% harder. The company would let me treat people like humans only as far as I could personally carry the slack on my own. And for half the pay of the boomer I replaced.
My radicalization started 8 years ago when my aunt was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer and worked until the day she passed away so she would have insurance.
I was teaching at that time, and the morning she passed away I had to give my finals, there aren't subs for professors. I had a student lay into me about how unfair it was that she failed my class (she plagiarized multiple times). I lost it. She was 60 years old and knew better, I told her as much. I got fired. No sympathy, no having my back on students that cheated. Just fired.
The second step in this radicalization was when I worked for a company that had a contract with Bayer. My team "made $2 million of mistakes," because insurance companies were weaseling out of paying for durable medical equipment. So, their solution was to raise the cost of the products, nearly $1k more each. This was the same week I was told I could not use bereavement time when my uncle passed away, because he wasn't close family. Who gets to judge that? I walked, and so did half the team.
My final metamorphosis, my full radicalization came after working for H&R Block. I have mentioned this in here before, but they only allowed 30 minutes to use the restroom each week, 6 minutes per day. I thought that was beyond inhumane. This made me realize how far I had let companies push me over the last 20+ years of my working life. I had put up with not getting time to grieve, working 70-80 hours with no OT pay at a company because they gave me 3 job titles/three employee numbers (so I also never made full time), I got fired for following the school code on plagiarism, etc. But, when they finally took away my right to use the restroom without permission it finally broke me.
I work at a better place now. Not perfect, but better. I'm hoping soon we will have more workers rights across the board.
I've been a leftist for a long time but after my first year as a PhD student (a job where I am) a senior researcher told me that none of her coworkers have ever taken out all their full vacation (5-7 weeks depending on age). That made me truly realize that academia is an exploitative gig economy and I decided I wouldn't want to work there or anywhere which was anywhere remotely like it. Finishing my doctorate in ca 2 yrs then I am going to work somewhere nice I hope.
When they fired the only other CAD guy right before xmas at our small 'family' business for being on his phone, after he asked for work and they said "find something to work on".. and then I was left to keep the mill afloat for an entire year as the only draftsman. I stumbled on this sub. Then noticed every security camera in our office is pointed at the workers, not the customers.
It's just bad. Currently looking for a new job from my current job while trying to figure out if there is a local union I can join.
in italy is illegal (unless is for security reasons and with a lot of limitations)
Getting two lumbagos, a hernia, a burnout and a depression for a company that put "people over profit". And then COVID hit. All of a sudden face masks were "off-putting and scaring customers". Didn't get anything for the health risks we took except for a chocolate Easter bunny. Never working retail or any large company again
I was 27 before all this happened.
Two promotions. Two unfulfilled promises of raises. Basically took on a whole second job. When I called out my boss, she said I should maybe look for another job. I did.
Bad management. Management that mistreated and abused me. Management that told me I was harming the company for giving them 4 weeks to replace me. Management for giving me a 50¢ raise every year. Management for watching 5 supervisors for me come and go because turnover is high and the money is low. Management management management.
Being told "you haven't been with the company long enough to be a manager" and then them hiring outside of the company for our store ASM. The person they hired has NO management experience while I have 20 years worth. I'm sticking with the job just long enough to buy our new house and get outta Dodge.
The realization that my parents cared more about the system I was working under than they did me.
My parents too. It’s really hard, I mean they are your parents. But in the pandemic my parents actually took my home. They had helped me buy my condo at a very low price, I took too long to save up my own down payment to take over the mortgage (according to them) and they now wanted me to buy them out at the much much higher market price. Even though I had invested everything I had, I couldn’t get a mortgage and they could and when I tried to get that mortagage for myself, so I could do all this stuff with owning my own place, I ended up having to pay twice as much and I couldn’t. Eventually they started raising the rent on me and so I moved out. They actually offered to let me live with them as long as I wasn’t living in their investment property anymore. They sold the condo last year for 3 times the original purchase price and bought land in Virginia to make themselves a second home…. They consider themselves very “blessed.”
Watched a close friend effectively get pushed out of her job for starting a union. The job she was at fired her entire group bc "budget" and then bought an entire company that effectively does the same thing her old division did.
I'm glad you clarified that. Unfortunately for the real world, working is our only choice if we want to eat and live indoors. But nobody should have to work for an abusive employer.
Load More Replies...
My mom was diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of breast cancer in October 2009. My dad lost his job in December of 2009 and the health insurance that went along with it. He was offered a supplemental insurance, which he took and I paid for so my mom could continue with her cancer treatment. The supplemental insurance refused to cover my moms cancer treatments because they said it was a "preexisting" condition that wasn't covered. She stopped getting her treatment in January because she couldn't afford $15,000 a month to pay for it. She was dead by April. Healthcare shouldn't be a f@%*ing privilege. Screw the US healthcare system.
I worked 14 years in the same company. Worked until the edge of depression, but was able to quit right before it broke me. First job, thought its normal. Overtime was cut, holidays with phone or sms nearly every day, sometimes started at 4 AM and finished 10 PM and much more things happened. Heard from colleagues that they replaced me with 280% (almost 3 people doing my old job) and don't get the same load done as me. Plus a 8 year younger person was hired which alone had more than 500$ more PER MONTH than me for faaar less tasks than i did. I then got to know that his salary was normal and mine very low for even normal circumstances.
I am anti taxes. I used to be extremely pro taxes and proud to pay them to help others. But now that I disabled the belgian or spanish government gives me s**t and refuses to even help me navigate their system. Forget about getting a single cent or get them to pay my health insurance. I paid high taxes for as long as I worked in all the countries I lived in . Meanwhile my partner is struggling to keep us afloat with 1 income but he still pays like half of his salary in taxes "for the social system". At the same time my BIL and SIL have a much higher combined income than us but they have two kids (that they chose to have) and get a s**t ton of money for the kids. SIL works for the social system so she knows how to navigate it; when I told her that not only we were getting nothing but that I was threatened with deportation just for asking for help all she said was "Ah, yeah...". Because she might be all "woke" but deep inside considers me a leech that deserves nothing. F**k this corrupt system.
For me it was the number of times I've seen illegal stuff. Owners/managers always people who support tough on crime politics, but they were all crooks. I've stood next to an owner while the fire marshal was telling him why he couldn't modify the building and deny his permit (storage area suspended from the rafters), then the second the guy left, he pays a contractor cash to do the job. I've seen owners hand auditors envelopes obviously stuffed with cash. I've seen sexual harassment ignored by bosses. I worked a job where all I did was drive around all week long and no one ever knew where I was or what I was doing. There were no safety check ins whatsoever. I've seen so many illegal things in the workplace, so much treating workers like s**t, so much exploitation. Us workers get starvation wages while the corrupt get rich. Just staggering corruption and dishonesty every time I see behind the curtain at every business I've ever worked. It's astounding.
they should change the name of this thread to 58 people who live in America because all these seem to be an American issue with health care being tied to work which should be a right not some privilege knowing this how can some Americans still say they are the greatest country in the world ironic isnt it the country calls it self land of the free but nothing there is free not even health care
But how an this be? The whole world is always told how great the USA is and how much more freedom you have than anyone else and that with just a little bit of hard work everyone can live the American dream. /s/
At least here in Canada if you lose your job you don't have to worry about health insurance. Plus there's up to a year of paid maternity leave laws
More people die from lack of affordable health care than guns in the US.
A few years ago, I was finishing my master's degree while working full time for a smaller company. I also traveled to conferences several times a year in which the company participated as a vendor. In my last semester, my boss was aware that I was working on my capstone project. There was a conference that overlapped with my capstone presentation. I told my boss I can't go this time but I would gladly help with the prep work for the conference like booth logistics, booth items, special promotion planning, etc. And I also told my boss I could be contacted pretty much anytime if the other team members needed help. Keep in mind that I wasn't a sales rep. I was usually there to help set up the booth, create and set up a video loop for a media display, and help answer questions from potential buyers. My boss berated me in an email saying as a salaried employee, I can't refuse to go to a conference (which is BS because my contract said nothing of that nature).
I sent my boss a very stern email essentially saying going on this conference meant jeopardizing my capstone project and my graduation. And I asked my boss point blank if I have to repeat my capstone project, would the company be willing to foot the bill? I ended up not going but I came to find out from the other team members my boss was moaning and whining that they were short one person. Screw it. I did what I had to do.
Load More Replies...
A bunch of years ago I worked for a small company of adult boutiques. It went from a part time job during college to something that I cared about. I fought to become manager of my location and had to go through hoops to get it. I had been acting management for over a year and officially manager for only 3 months. My location had the highest sales each month. I couldn't be beat. I was transferred to a store that could go days without anyone coming in the doors because of the sketchy part of the city it was located in. I was transferred because the girl who managed the second place store complained to the district manager, who she was best friends with. I had my rewards program yanked away, transferred to a location that genuinely scared me and asked to cancel my vacation which took place days from my transfer because it was confusing to schedule. All because bestie was jealous. I called the DM in for an "issue", handed her my key and walked out.
I did everything they asked to get that position and I was removed for favoritism. I wasn't anti-work by then but it was my first experience that I was really nothing to people in charge. My other jobs since then have only cemented that theory.
Load More Replies...
When I got hired at my job, I said the only day I can't work is Sunday and I wanted Sun-Mon as my weekend. Old manager respected this, but he left. Our "new" manager started scheduling me those days so I changed my availability to never in Sunday or Monday. Well, I f****d up by covering one or two Sunday shifts (being called in), and guess who's working Mon-Sun this week? Yeah, I checked, my availability is still set to never Sunday or Monday... yet here we are.
Lot of these are failures of the healthcare system, not necessarily of the workplace.
The antiwork movement is over. One of their mods did a stupid on Fox news this morning. Made such a fool of themselves that redditors were seeing red.That mod, and the others closed the sub down this afternoon
I'm glad you clarified that. Unfortunately for the real world, working is our only choice if we want to eat and live indoors. But nobody should have to work for an abusive employer.
Load More Replies... My mom was diagnosed with a rare and deadly form of breast cancer in October 2009. My dad lost his job in December of 2009 and the health insurance that went along with it. He was offered a supplemental insurance, which he took and I paid for so my mom could continue with her cancer treatment. The supplemental insurance refused to cover my moms cancer treatments because they said it was a "preexisting" condition that wasn't covered. She stopped getting her treatment in January because she couldn't afford $15,000 a month to pay for it. She was dead by April. Healthcare shouldn't be a f@%*ing privilege. Screw the US healthcare system.
I worked 14 years in the same company. Worked until the edge of depression, but was able to quit right before it broke me. First job, thought its normal. Overtime was cut, holidays with phone or sms nearly every day, sometimes started at 4 AM and finished 10 PM and much more things happened. Heard from colleagues that they replaced me with 280% (almost 3 people doing my old job) and don't get the same load done as me. Plus a 8 year younger person was hired which alone had more than 500$ more PER MONTH than me for faaar less tasks than i did. I then got to know that his salary was normal and mine very low for even normal circumstances.
I am anti taxes. I used to be extremely pro taxes and proud to pay them to help others. But now that I disabled the belgian or spanish government gives me s**t and refuses to even help me navigate their system. Forget about getting a single cent or get them to pay my health insurance. I paid high taxes for as long as I worked in all the countries I lived in . Meanwhile my partner is struggling to keep us afloat with 1 income but he still pays like half of his salary in taxes "for the social system". At the same time my BIL and SIL have a much higher combined income than us but they have two kids (that they chose to have) and get a s**t ton of money for the kids. SIL works for the social system so she knows how to navigate it; when I told her that not only we were getting nothing but that I was threatened with deportation just for asking for help all she said was "Ah, yeah...". Because she might be all "woke" but deep inside considers me a leech that deserves nothing. F**k this corrupt system.
For me it was the number of times I've seen illegal stuff. Owners/managers always people who support tough on crime politics, but they were all crooks. I've stood next to an owner while the fire marshal was telling him why he couldn't modify the building and deny his permit (storage area suspended from the rafters), then the second the guy left, he pays a contractor cash to do the job. I've seen owners hand auditors envelopes obviously stuffed with cash. I've seen sexual harassment ignored by bosses. I worked a job where all I did was drive around all week long and no one ever knew where I was or what I was doing. There were no safety check ins whatsoever. I've seen so many illegal things in the workplace, so much treating workers like s**t, so much exploitation. Us workers get starvation wages while the corrupt get rich. Just staggering corruption and dishonesty every time I see behind the curtain at every business I've ever worked. It's astounding.
they should change the name of this thread to 58 people who live in America because all these seem to be an American issue with health care being tied to work which should be a right not some privilege knowing this how can some Americans still say they are the greatest country in the world ironic isnt it the country calls it self land of the free but nothing there is free not even health care
But how an this be? The whole world is always told how great the USA is and how much more freedom you have than anyone else and that with just a little bit of hard work everyone can live the American dream. /s/
At least here in Canada if you lose your job you don't have to worry about health insurance. Plus there's up to a year of paid maternity leave laws
More people die from lack of affordable health care than guns in the US.
A few years ago, I was finishing my master's degree while working full time for a smaller company. I also traveled to conferences several times a year in which the company participated as a vendor. In my last semester, my boss was aware that I was working on my capstone project. There was a conference that overlapped with my capstone presentation. I told my boss I can't go this time but I would gladly help with the prep work for the conference like booth logistics, booth items, special promotion planning, etc. And I also told my boss I could be contacted pretty much anytime if the other team members needed help. Keep in mind that I wasn't a sales rep. I was usually there to help set up the booth, create and set up a video loop for a media display, and help answer questions from potential buyers. My boss berated me in an email saying as a salaried employee, I can't refuse to go to a conference (which is BS because my contract said nothing of that nature).
I sent my boss a very stern email essentially saying going on this conference meant jeopardizing my capstone project and my graduation. And I asked my boss point blank if I have to repeat my capstone project, would the company be willing to foot the bill? I ended up not going but I came to find out from the other team members my boss was moaning and whining that they were short one person. Screw it. I did what I had to do.
Load More Replies... A bunch of years ago I worked for a small company of adult boutiques. It went from a part time job during college to something that I cared about. I fought to become manager of my location and had to go through hoops to get it. I had been acting management for over a year and officially manager for only 3 months. My location had the highest sales each month. I couldn't be beat. I was transferred to a store that could go days without anyone coming in the doors because of the sketchy part of the city it was located in. I was transferred because the girl who managed the second place store complained to the district manager, who she was best friends with. I had my rewards program yanked away, transferred to a location that genuinely scared me and asked to cancel my vacation which took place days from my transfer because it was confusing to schedule. All because bestie was jealous. I called the DM in for an "issue", handed her my key and walked out.
I did everything they asked to get that position and I was removed for favoritism. I wasn't anti-work by then but it was my first experience that I was really nothing to people in charge. My other jobs since then have only cemented that theory.
Load More Replies... When I got hired at my job, I said the only day I can't work is Sunday and I wanted Sun-Mon as my weekend. Old manager respected this, but he left. Our "new" manager started scheduling me those days so I changed my availability to never in Sunday or Monday. Well, I f****d up by covering one or two Sunday shifts (being called in), and guess who's working Mon-Sun this week? Yeah, I checked, my availability is still set to never Sunday or Monday... yet here we are.
Lot of these are failures of the healthcare system, not necessarily of the workplace.
The antiwork movement is over. One of their mods did a stupid on Fox news this morning. Made such a fool of themselves that redditors were seeing red.That mod, and the others closed the sub down this afternoon
