I did what I was told. I went to college and scrounged enough food to live. I wore filthy clothes to save money. I wore them until they fell apart. I didn't have streaming services so I could save money. I drank tap water because it was free. All of the bullshit I put myself through to save and get out only to find that I'll have to live the rest of my life like that just to pay back the loans. I genuinely think about driving into oncoming traffic every day I go to work.
I have a shitty job at a shitty company, surrounded by shitty people. I have wasted the one resource that I will never get back. My time. I burned through the best years of my life trying to make whatever I had left slightly better. I'll never get that time back.
That's why people here are so pissed about wages. We have handed our precious, irreplaceable, time to a company and they have begrudgingly and maliciously complied in handing is just enough money and security to stay alive. Not live. I simply do bot have the will or energy to be sick and tired of being sick and tired anymore.