That probably sounds a bit entitled, but I’ve always had jobs just sort of find me, so let me explain. I’ve recently been restructured out of a job after 16 years with the same company (my job was moved offshore).

In my 20s & early 30s, I worked a lot server jobs, some retail, and a few temp office gigs, and there was always some place hiring - no big effort required from me. Back in the day, that was enough to keep me comfortably in my one bedroom apartment. I am well aware that I would not be able to afford my former lifestyle today. Rent, gas, food, entertainment - everything was cheaper.

I finished a BA, and was hired shortly after I posted my resume to a provincial job board. After that, I kind of fell into an IT job as tech support until that company closed its local call centre (tax credits ran out).

Then I applied for one job, posted in the newspaper, and got it. It was at a tiny (and ever-shrinking) regional office of a small sector of a diversified holding for a largish, by my country’s standards, corporation (70K-105K employees). Because we were such a small office, we all wore many hats, but officially, I was still tech support.

I moved positions a couple of times after that, and was always able to avoid the layoffs. Our regional office had around 37 local, and 8 remote employees when I started. By the time I was let go, we were down to 13 local and 2 remote.

I started my last role 3.5 years ago, and the first year of it was utter chaos, but it got much better. I had 1.5 years that were very good, and then I was moved to the global corporation, starting July 2023. When I was told, I cried. Everyone else in my new global department was offshore.

I swear my (second) last manager’s goal was to get me to quit. It was awful to the point that I took stress leave for the first time ever in my life. It continued to spiral until I contacted HR, only because if I was going down (which I knew I was), I wanted to register my discontent, and prevent being fired for cause. I was determined to get severance, which I knew from former coworkers was pretty good.

By the time HR replied, my manager had moved. They supposedly opened an investigation, even though they never asked for my documentation. I never heard back from the HR lady until the day I had a meeting first thing in the morning with the director. No thank you for anything, just “we’ve restructured and there is no longer a position for you. I will now pass you to HR”. Oh, that’s the HR lady who never got back to me about my complaint now explaining the whole off-boarding process. I did get a good severance package.

I feel stuck in anger and bitterness, and I’m scared. I’ve been looking for work for three months, and I’m old, and it’s all so very different from the last time I looked. I took some career coaching, but it was utterly depressing because it was mostly GenX workers learning how to make themselves appear younger in their resumes. But eventually, they’re going to see you and realize you’re not 35, even if you look young for your age. Seriously, one guy asked about dying his hair and another asked about shaving his head.

I don’t have any qualifications, really, other than I have a BA. I’ve learned to do very many different things, but I have no courses, certificates, diplomas, anything other than work experience, and digital submission doesn’t account for commensurate experience.

Mostly just a vent out into the void, but if anyone has advice, I’ll consider it. Thanks.

So I'm planning to quit tomorrow. The management here is horrible and have fired people without notice or reason before. For example: we no longer have an AR clerk, she was told to grab her things and leave a few months ago. Our controller was also demoted and then 2 new hires were made for the same position (accountants)... we have taken on so much work with no training or patience granted.

They denied my PTO vacation request for NYE week (something I requested in October and had followed up every week on) only just last Friday, we were losing the deposit and were ending up without family on NYE.

Then yesterday they denied my request for 2 hours off next week for my kids' xmas shows. They said I had taken too much time off... because I asked for a week when my father died and I had to plan a funeral while finding time to grieve right before Thanksgiving.

I was denied my raise back in August which was promised at 6 months after hire, no review no reason.

There is soooo much more than just these key notable moments but I don't have all day...

I'm done with this place. I want to quit but I don't want there to be a "show". One of the managers can be loud and condescending and I don't want to deal with her mouth. My friends say I should call out and then subsequently quit when they will surely threaten me or something. Others have said I should just send a text. I kind of want to do this just to screw them as badly as they have screwed me. If I do this, what should I write/say?

All I’m saying is, yeah…healthcare insurance company CEOs are pretty shitty people. But I can think of far more evil people than the ceo of a health insurance company. And the fact that pharma execs are generally left off the hook is very telling of society…they’ve literally bought almost all of us off and manipulated us into thinking they’re the “good science guys.”

No, I’m not advocating for violence. But sometimes I do wonder if the anger is slightly misplaced.

We need to take action. Small acts of resistance. Let's throw out some ideas in a language that won't get us in trouble w/reddit. Be creative, be clever, read between the lines. Imagine whatever you say being printed and held up in court. Plausible deniability.

Here are mine:

• Wear conversation starting shirts that trigger other's curiosity (Medicare for all, anti-capitalism shirts)

• Sometimes I write cute little messages with wet erase markers on the bathroom mirror to remind my fellow travelers about class consciousness.

• Soapboxing: Bring out inner midwestern and start talking to everyone you interact with about solidarity and class consciousness. Use things relative in the moment. "Gosh, i can barely afford these groceries?" "I'm looking for a job, ya paid well here?" "ugh capitalism is so abusive"

*Start talking about class consciousness at your job. Doesn't have to be union talk if job is at risk. You are just spreading a new idea about class consciousness and anti-capitalism

*Be a performance artist about it. Be creative and be clever. Yes, you who never considered themselves an artist.

Change happens with us. Not at the top. You and me have more power than we know, that's why they spend billions to try to convince us we don't.

Anyone other ideas??

Disclaimer: I don’t condone violence, nor does this post. This is meant to be a discussion post about the likelihood (or lack thereof) of revolution in the near future.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the whole Luigi Mangione case and what it could mean going forward, and I keep coming back to this quote from his review of the Unabomber manifesto that rings true the more I think about it:

"'Violence never solved anything' is a statement uttered by cowards and predators."

This of course aligns with many revolutions in the past like the French and American revolutions - Without violence, significant change arguably never would have been made, or at least not as fast as it did due to the use of violence. It would be a lie to say that violence was not necessary to make change in those examples among many more.

Alternatively, peaceful protest is what most people consider an “ideal” way to make change, but time and time again, we’ve seen it fail since it a) requires a lot of people to band together despite social polarization designed by the media to divide us and b) requires people in positions of power to have a willingness to listen and change. Because of this, change on a larger scale seems impossible through conventional means when it comes to most large-scale issues.

However, what’s different here is that Luigi showed just how easy it is to make massive change through a single act of violence that he carried out alone rather than through organized, peaceful means. A quote from his alleged manifesto:

“This was fairly trivial: some elementary social engineering, basic CAD, a lot of patience.”

Assuming this manifesto is real, Luigi admits himself that what he did was “trivial,” and I think more people should be paying attention to that line. All it took was a single action from a single person to get nationwide attention on the corruption of for-profit healthcare, as well as CEOs fearing for their lives, taking their pictures off their websites.

Even when rich people pay for security, they can never truly be protected 24/7 because life is one of the few things that money can’t guarantee. There will always be an opening. Even before this assassination, there were recently two (three?) assassination attempts on Donald Trump with the first one seemingly coming the closest to succeeding. All a world-changing assassination takes is the right person in the right place at the right time. Getting away with assassinations is considered incredibly difficult, but the act of assassination on its own seems significantly easier…

My question is, where will things go from here? I think that even in the worst-case scenario in which the media stops talking about Luigi Mangione after a week and 99% of society quickly forgets him as well and moves on to the next big thing in the news, I believe that going forward, there will always be at least one person out there who has nothing to lose, remembers this story and now knows how easy it is to to kill a CEO (or any one of the roughly 2000 billionaires in the world), and would go through it to reignite the discussion and pressure the elite further. Regardless of what tricks the media pulls to misinform and divide people, it still only takes one person with enough motivation, and it can happen at any time.

But maybe I’m giving humanity too much credit and absolutely nothing will happen. Time will tell, I guess.

Well today was a lunch gathering for my boss who is retiring. The CEO/owner has not seen me since before pandemic and made a mark about my weight... Yes arse hat I have gained a little weight but you clearly dont have manners to keeping your mouth shut... I was going to respond but kept my mouth shut... Would you answer that? I am furious because I have lost 35 lbs in a year and this just crushes me!

I work customer service for a company and business has been very slow. I get paid $22 an hour to sit around and watch YouTube all day and maybe answer 10 emails in an 8 hour shift. They recently laid off 100 employees and business is still insanely slow and they are laying off more after Christmas. Today they sent an email saying those of us who survive the layoffs are getting a pay cut to $18 an hour and we can leave if that's not acceptable. To me it sounds like they want people to quit instead of laying people off. My question is can they actually cut your pay like that?

For clarification I applied to an administrative role, not chiropractor assistant and they chose someone else for said role, so they're slapping themselves for this. But nah "nobody wants to work" boomer mentality.

We need to Louigi the assholes that moved citizens United.

I had 3 work injuries this year, and I filed Works Comp for all of them (for medical treatment), yesterday my manager talked with me implying that I claimed a lot of works comp and let's not do it again. I was confused for a bit. I'm still recovering from a recent injury that I had at work (heavy lifting), as my manager scheduled me to do lifting twice a week (we usually do once a week per person), it was almost two days in a row (with only one day resting between), and one of the days I lifted more weight than usual, and apparently that was too much for my lower back to handle and I had a muscles strain.

To be fair the other two injuries one of them was my co-worker fault and my manager knows that, the third injury I would say it was 100% my fault as I should be more precautions with what's around me when I move/walk.

All my injuries are minor, but I always file a claim because it happened at work and that what we should do, no(?) I mean I live paycheck-to-paycheck and I don't have to pay extra expense for injuries happened during me doing my job.

Him saying that to me made me wondering if that's possible, my performance is good at work. I never had any long off days for my injuries (as they are minor). I always come on time. Never called in sick or didn't show up.

***I live in at-will employment state***

So irritating. Company policy is 1 month. I was going to begin a project that takes just over a month before I decided to resign, so I offered to allot extra time to begin and wrap up that project. I informed my supervisor I was not planning to abandon the project because I'm resigning, and can stay til X date to complete it which ended up giving 2 months notice. They wanted to allot extra time in case there's any delays so I'm not down to the wire and if I don't finish in the expected time it's completed as no one else could. And then said if I'm staying so long to wrap up the last project may be assigned new short term tasks rather than just wrapping up my existing things.

I want to tell them forget it and just give 6 weeks notice (allotting for the holidays and then the month after i.e. January to wrap up). What job is going to want to wait for me to start til March? Like I'm trying to leave. So irritating. Why can't accepting my generous offer be enough, gotta try to push it..exactly why I'm leaving. No appreciation whatsoever.

So they left me with the option, stay extra time so it's like 10 weeks notice or don't do the project I was gunna start and leave sooner, which for me would end up being like 5-6 weeks notice..

I am so fed up with this job I don't even care if I have a gap in payment between jobs, and already interviewed today. It looks well and they said they'd let me know by Christmas.

Wwyd?

My birthday was forgotten! 12/11

At first, it was just me and my manager at my current job. Last year, around my birthday, she said, “Oops, I forgot it was your birthday. I want to take you out for lunch.” So we went out, and this was about six months into her time at the company. Fast-forward: We added another team member internally, and her birthday was well-planned.

Today, I didn’t even get a wish or acknowledgment from my manager.

For context, last week, I directly asked her, “What are we doing for my birthday?” She vaguely said, “Oh, I need to figure it out,” and then asked if I had RSVP’d for the team dinner on Monday, 12/10. During that dinner, she brought up in front of the team that I had asked what we were doing for my birthday and then went on to say, “I’m so bad at this; I suck.”

I don’t know if this is disrespectful, but I feel a little hurt.

Thoughts? Have you been in this situation?

UPDATE: 12/12

I walked into work today at @8:15 AM, and my manager called me in at @825 saying these exact words

“If you want to quit, I totally understand because I didn't wish you a happy birthday or even remember you yesterday. You are so precious and appreciated. I am sorry I missed this, but the other peer likes to be vocal about their birthday and book nice places. She started sobbing and felt so bad that she would like to take me to Lunch only. It doesn't have to be with the team, just me and her to celebrate me. “

I feel like I am at a loss for words, or my mental health is not excellent because I believe this was all done on purpose. I have been in the company for about 2.5 years.

Sad how easily this was identified as an internal phishing test.

So today, my upper manager got on my nerves pretty bad while I was suffering from a migraine. First, it was because I made a glass of water with a Starbucks cup instead of a regular plastic cup like it was the end of the world (don't worry, I work at a hotel, not a Starbucks for the boycotters). Then she critiqued the fact that I used another cup to make a coffee, and then made a snide remark about how I should pay for all the stuff I throw out. I told her "I would quit the day that happened," but she probably didn't hear me and that was the last I saw of her in any major way. But the last part of me quitting really stuck in my mind because I've been going back and forth with this lady for literal months and I'm convinced she's the reason why I contracted these migraines, but back to the meat and potatoes. I decided to write my 2 week notice bc obviously I know my worth. But here's the problem: I left it at work, and I wanted to stay composed as I layed out every single reason why I have more hate for her and my place of work, but if anyone finds it and McSnitches on me before my grandiose plan, I'm kinda gonna be on the spot. Not to get me wrong, I'll still cuss my upper management out bc I have a chip off my shoulder that needs alleviation, but it's kinda like shooting a gun, you need ammo for it to work. Anyways, this was my TEDtalk

Let's say the government said 'there can be no unemployment'. Then companies wouldn't be able to be so selective when hiring people.. the qualification would be to have a heart that is beating. Not 300 people applying for the same job. Discrimination and disability wouldn't be a thing since you have to hire the person.

I've been looking for a new role since March and have noticed that recent posted salary ranges are way down the past month. Like, not even worth applying for with the requirements and responsibilities.
Anecdotal evidence; anyone else noticing this?

I’m not a lawyer, damn I can’t even afford healthcare let alone any real procedure. My husband keeps a stocked first aid kit with fish mox and skin staplers and superglue.

I’ve been reading about what happens when they deny the coverage doctors prescribed. Even the doctors are fed up. Important medical decisions should be made with the client and their doctor and not be tampered by some dude (or ai program) who thinks they know better.

The system is corrupt and broken. We need to fight back and make them pay. People should not die because they can’t afford insulin. People should not go into debilitating debt for a joy ride in an ambulance.

Where are the lawyers who are going to step up and carve back our rights to healthcare that is equitable and fair!