Month: July 2023

This week I pulled a double yesterday and today, on my one day off, one employee called off sick so I had to come in and close when I'm scheduled to open tomorrow. I will get four hours of sleep. I asked another employee why she wouldn't take it, and I only asked her because she asked for more hours right after letting me take the shift because no one else wanted to. She turned it around on me, like how dare I even ask. She started swearing at me and everything. I told management because I've had problems with her not doing her job and catching random attitudes with other people before, and they're doing jack fucking shit. Theres not a single shift I can put this girl on and expect her to get anything done. My usual manager is out sick and has been for awhile and I've…

The title basically says it all. I also find it kind of weird that when it lightnings, they make pool patrons leave the entire pool area and make them go home for the patrons safety, but when there are severe weather warnings, such as tornados, lifeguards are still required to work outside. Idk, seems a little unsafe to me.

Basically title. I'm supposed to also have tomorrow off as well for the full two weeks but a few people are sick and it's unlikely I'll have cover. My job isn't even that bad, but holy shit not having to deal with the bullshit for two weeks has been phenomenal. I never want to go back. If I had these two weeks off and I didn't have kids, I genuinely would probably unalive myself than go back to the life-sapping drudgery of retail.

The gig doesn’t even pay that well. I’m really debating going back.

I had been working at Company A for the past few years. A few months ago they outsourced my department to Company B. On Friday I found out my position with Company A was being eliminated. No prior notice was given nor was there any sign this was happening. The plan is for me to work for Company B while still working in Company A’s office. But I don’t know how much Company B will pay me or what benefits, if any, they have. I found some Indeed.com reviews that say there’s no medical benefits, no sick days and only 5 vacation days a year that don’t rollover. I updated my resume and applied for one job. I’m not looking forward to job searching, telling the same story over and over again and getting rejected or ghosted, especially when I got let go and it wasn’t my fault. I feel…

I'm a server in a restaurant in PA, USA We recently had a menu change and when this happens, my boss will give us servers these little daily quizzes to help us learn the new stuff. It's usually simple stuff, but sometimes there's a couple of questions that trip you up. It used to be really helpful, cause once something was in a quiz question I never forgot it. Except this time, for no reason at all, boss has decided to make this a punishment. This isn't in response to anything, in fact this is coming after two consecutive 100% evaluations on our quality of service. This time around, if you “fail” the daily quiz, you get sent home. Point blank, you don't get to work your shift, try again next time. And this is infuriating for a multitude of reasons. Not the least of which is that some people…

TL;DR Understanding why US work conditions are so much worse than in Europe starts with understanding the difference between “freedom to” (US) and “freedom from” (Europe). The US from its inception as break-away colonies was built around the idea of “freedom to.”  As in freedom to speak freely, own guns, practice the religion of one's choice or, less harmoniously, freedom to own other human beings, pay the lowest wage possible, create sub-standard work conditions, enjoy more material benefits than tens of millions of your countrymen combined. The “freedom to” ethos — so immortalized in everything from Clint Eastwood spaghetti westerns to the Marlboro Man to Zane Grey novels to the 1883 / Yellowstone franchises — has been successfully captured and repurposed by America's shareholder class as justification for the shitty work life we all endure.  Our oligarch overlords (think Koch brothers) would have us believe all our precious “freedom to”…