I started working at 16 at a local grocery store during a worker’s strike. At the time, I was anti-union because of the treatment me and my fellow young employees received by the strikers (being yelled at every day before clocking in, having some employees’ vehicles vandalized, including my own). We were making minimum wage to sweep floors and bag groceries, and I couldn’t understand why these people were so entitled. Was told multiple times by management that top performers would be offered regular jobs when the labor dispute was settled. That was (obviously, in hindsight) a lie. None of us got to stay. Not a one.
That’s when I first considered it was all bullshit and maybe the union was right. Subsequent years of working shit jobs and having promotions/raises dangled in front of me only to have them torn away would solidify that sentiment.
Then going back to school and wasting more than $100,000 in loans to be a “professional,” only in order for me to earn $30k a year was the final nail in the coffin.
Just curious what others’ turning points were, as I started out my life completely buying into the bullshit, only to realize in my 20s that “work hard and be rewarded” only truly applied to my parents/grandparents, and that my generation had been thrown to the wolves.