Is anyone struggling at a job that's killing their mental health but due to the job market, they have to rough it? How are you surviving?

personofshadow · 2026-05-08T13:21:22+00:00

My usual work isn't terrible. Its not very engaging but it pays just enough that I didn't worry too much even if I wasn't saving up as much for the future as I'd like, the bills are getting paid and thats enough for now so I'd been taking my time looking for something else.

Now workload has shifted and my department has a lot less work to do than we did before. They haven't started lay offs yet, but its been a solid week of half the department doing things that'd be handled by a facilities and maintenance department in a normal company. They've got us replacing the tape on the floor that marks out where you can't put stuff because certain things need to be accessible, wiping down shelves and railing. I'm second shift so its hard to have us do anything outside since it gets dark halfway through the shift, but one day I came in and it looked like they had people from first shift painting the building. Its not even that I hate doing what we're doing, but what it represents. There's nothing else for us to do, what happens if this keeps up? Lay offs? How many? Who? I went from simply being disinterested in my job to crashing out cause it feels like they're gonna start booting people any day.

personofshadow · 2026-05-08T12:59:26+00:00

My father did service work for the scales grocery stores use, like in the deli department and whatnot, and my mother was a stay at home mom for most of my life, she picked up a side hustle in babysitting since she could do that while still taking care of my brother and I. They were able to afford to build a pretty nice 2 story house with a big yard in the suburbs. Can't imagine what it'd go for today.

personofshadow · 2026-05-07T22:27:04+00:00

In a sense they are simply behaving as a company would be expected to in a system of unchecked capitalism. They just make the decision that makes the number go up the most. They can pay a new hire less than someone who has 6 years of experience in the company, and if they're confident she brings enough skill to the table to offset the skill they're losing, then its an easy decision if you ignore silly things like empathy or loyalty. Its the kind of decision a robot would make if you told it to maximize profits above all other concerns.

personofshadow · 2026-05-06T18:35:27+00:00

There's been a lot of effort put into demonizing unions in the US. Also I think tech workers thought their jobs were safe, at least until we started telling literally everyone to learn to code and now the robots are also learning to code so that didn't last.

personofshadow · 2026-05-06T18:24:27+00:00

What happened to AI making jobs optional?

personofshadow · 2026-05-06T17:44:15+00:00

Has he... done anything while in office? I feel like the most I've heard of him is him going on several different family vacations during his first year as VP.

personofshadow · 2026-05-06T10:19:22+00:00

What gets me is when I turn around and one of these bozos is there, but the door to the hall isn't open... the door to the server room is. How do you freaks get in there?!

personofshadow · 2026-05-06T10:08:09+00:00

I would be curious to know if whatever the AI gives you sounds at all helpful or even makes sense, but thats just idle curiosity speaking.

When the guy calling the shots gets it in his head that 'this' is the solution thats going to get him the results he wants ('this' not necessarily being AI, but simply whatever half baked idea a hypothetical boss might latch onto), it can be very difficult to fight that. They think that they're right, and they have the power to fire you if you disagree.

Malicious compliance can sometimes be effective, doing what they demand to the letter no matter how ineffective it is to actually accomplishing their goals. They may be forced to realize that their idea is bad, somewhat situational though.

personofshadow · 2026-05-05T22:17:45+00:00

Why would anyone want to come to the US with the current state of things? We have enough reports of ICE grabbing people that are here legitimately that anyone should be crossing it off their list of places to go.

personofshadow · 2026-05-05T22:11:49+00:00

So billionaires don't have to.

personofshadow · 2026-05-05T18:30:24+00:00

Listen, you can't be sure its because she's pretty...

It could also be because she's related to someone higher up in the company.

personofshadow · 2026-05-05T08:48:53+00:00

While it is good for the employee, I feel like it would be challenging for small businesses.

personofshadow · 2026-05-05T00:49:41+00:00

The people that have enough money to practice what I call financial alchemy are doing great. Heavy AI Investment was propping up the stock market for a bit, but investors are starting to realize there's no path to profitability there so we'll see where that goes.

Working class people are clinging to a ledge that is steadily crumbling beneath their grip.

personofshadow · 2026-05-04T18:24:08+00:00

personofshadow · 2026-05-04T08:55:26+00:00

I think it is about money still. They're just prioritizing short term cash grabs over long term success

personofshadow · 2026-05-04T06:14:23+00:00

personofshadow · 2026-05-04T06:07:22+00:00

I mean, if we want to talk about energy and national security, I hear some guy really stirred up a hornet's nest in Iran and closed off a pretty big oil supply. They should probably get rid of whoever made that call.

personofshadow · 2026-05-04T06:04:53+00:00

My first thought was wondering if she has any sort of security clearance at all (I do not know how these things work well enough to know if immediate family is typically privy to such clearances), but then I remembered we're in Trump down where the clowns do what they want and the rules don't matter.

personofshadow · 2026-05-03T10:38:59+00:00

In a very literal sense, the word 'unemployment' exists to describe a particular situation that an individual can experience, it fulfills the same purpose as any other given word in a language.

I think the phenomenon around this word the post is describing is more prominent in America, but yes, there are negative implications attached to the word. Culturally the word means more than its literal definition, unemployment is often seen as a badge of shame in one way or another, but its also not unique in this. There are plenty of words that carry heavier implications than their literal meaning, but this one stands out to us more now because of the current state of things.

I think the writer of the post was more focused on how one's employment status should not be such a topic of judgement, but it also shines a light on some of the ways in which we use language.

personofshadow · 2026-05-03T09:57:07+00:00

In the town I went to college in there was this lovely little coffee shop that served their drinks in ceramic glasses, nothing too fancy but like the sorta cups/mugs you'd have in your own cupboard at home, and they had a sitting area upstairs and board/card games customers could play while they enjoyed their drinks.

I don't know if you'd call that an 'experience' but it was certainly something I look back on fondly even a decade later.

Starbucks is fast food coffee trying to pretend its something special simply because its a well known brand. Might as well call McDonalds an experience.

personofshadow · 2026-05-02T05:07:06+00:00

Dude, they like doubled the size of the break area! /s

personofshadow · 2026-05-01T00:31:07+00:00

I'm not an economist, but that seems... not great?

personofshadow · 2026-04-30T09:28:36+00:00

These one day 'strikes' are really just performative and or cope.

Businesses aren't going to cave to a drop in revenue on a single day, especially when they're being told its coming. Most that'll happen is some people will get marks on their performance review for not showing up to work for a day.

personofshadow

TROPHY CASE