I finally decided to make my first post after subbing here for a little while. I really appreciate the modern attitude of this reddit, if not the reasons we all have to be this way.
The reason for finally posting are as good as they get: I finally quit my job and this is something I now have the courage to do after decades of essentially waiting for one corporate master or another to thoroughly suck the economic juices out of me and promptly discarding my empty shell on the street next the unemployment office.
I worked at a dollar store in downtown Montreal for this guy who essentially wants every one who works there to do twice the work of a normal worker so he can get twice the bonus.
We are constantly being told that we don't meet the goals even as we work our asses off every day. Over the course of the few months I worked there, I showed up on time and returned from my breaks in a timely manner. I never had any time to slack off from the first early hours of the morning until the afternoon. It's four straight hours of work until your 15 minute break and you're waking up at 4:30 AM. I'm stocking shelves and on my feet all day.
And somehow this ain't enough. My lower back started aching so bad I couldn't go on any longer.
I saw first hand how clever psychopath propaganda is used to diminish workers and keep them down. If you keep microaggressions and random moments of unnecessary micromanaging going on at regular intervals, you can gaslight a worker into doing the work of two. I began to see the tactic for what it was only after a recent hire was able to speak out about it. He was the first to quit…but not the last.
I also saw shoplifters become more and more brazen. Blood stains visible on the floor and shelves that wasn't washed over from the last time a client had a scuffle. 3 security guards, 2 of them undercover and the place is still getting lifted on a daily and almost hourly basis. The manager calls the cops but they are starting to ignore most calls. This is the kind of store that would save a lot of unnecessary traffic if they just put the reusable glass straws and the baking soda on one display, if you catch my drift. The row that always had a guard was the one where they put the ramen noodles and cell phone chargers.
The take away from that experience was that I could see why the sparks are flying and why The Big Machine is about to break. The unstoppable force of psycho-greedy late capitalism is colliding with the immovable object of boomers leaving the workforce, hyperinflation and a generation that will sooner get acquainted with the concept of a general strike than be one more batch of bitchslaves for the rich. They are demanding 50k worth of effort from people who are smart enough to know that minimum wage should equal minimum effort.
And l can see firsthand that they obviously won't win because we outnumber them.