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Antiwork

Another depressed existential rant for your Wednesday evening

I can't do this anymore. I work 8-5 as an apprentice mechanic. I earn minimum wage, and my job consists mostly of mopping the floors, doing oil changes and vacuuming cars, despite the fact that I'm fully capable of rebuilding engines. I have 3 years of study to go before I qualify, which allows me to continue to be underpaid for 40 hours of hard physical labour every week. I don't want this to be my career anymore, I feel undervalued and used. My manager is a man-child who has a hissy fit whenever something goes the slightest bit wrong, he berates me for being 5 minutes late in the morning, he consistently treats me like it's my first day on the job and I've never seen a car before, and he blames me for anything he can. This job is an improvement over the workshop I quit a month…


I can't do this anymore.

I work 8-5 as an apprentice mechanic. I earn minimum wage, and my job consists mostly of mopping the floors, doing oil changes and vacuuming cars, despite the fact that I'm fully capable of rebuilding engines. I have 3 years of study to go before I qualify, which allows me to continue to be underpaid for 40 hours of hard physical labour every week. I don't want this to be my career anymore, I feel undervalued and used.

My manager is a man-child who has a hissy fit whenever something goes the slightest bit wrong, he berates me for being 5 minutes late in the morning, he consistently treats me like it's my first day on the job and I've never seen a car before, and he blames me for anything he can. This job is an improvement over the workshop I quit a month ago.

My partner is disabled and suffers from severe mental health issues. She often needs me to come home early to look after her, which creates more problems at work, especially since I only recently started this job and have built up little to no annual leave. Welfare gets her barely half of what I earn, they don't even consider her disabled because she can still walk and talk. We're drowning in debt, we pay 40% of our income in rent (and we got a really lucky rental), we barely eat on the last day or two of my pay cycle and almost as soon as the money hits our accounts it's gone.

I've thought about quitting my job and trying to pay the bills by doing food delivery driving, which I know would never work, I already have to do 5+ hours of it a week to pay the bills. I apply for multiple jobs every day, sometimes upwards of 10, anything that seems like less physical labour and higher pay. But every time I hit apply, I know I won't be happy there either, and so far, I've heard nothing back anyway.

I desperately want to teach myself to code and become a web developer or a software developer of some kind, because I'm passionate about that field and I know plenty of places let you work from home which would let me provide care for my partner while making us enough money to pay off our debts. But every evening I get home and I sit down and I'm too fucking exhausted to think, let alone test my brain and problem solve. I end up sitting at my desk until midnight, going to bed terrified about tomorrow, and then rolling out of bed at 7:50 to show up at work at 8.

I feel just as tired showing up in the morning as I did leaving the previous day, and when the weekend finally comes around, by the time I feel rested again it's Monday morning. I can't keep doing this. What can I do?

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