I apologize for the grabby title and a long post. I've read this sub a while, I'm curious if people are here not because they're “antiwork”, but because the American labor force just doesn't want them. This is a negativity dump.
I went to college for a really stupid major. I've tried to make up for it in a few (too advanced, fast-moving) in person excel courses, a python workshop here, a sql workshop there (years ago) where I couldn't even follow the class as it executed tasks, and to this day, I really fucking struggle in any environment that tests for it…I say it because the courses are the only reason I even got contract work.
I fail every shitty timed excel assessment forced on me, but it's now become guranteed in so many jobs. It's humiliating. (I have used it in a job – but use it and lose it, that job was a long time ago. How can I be forgetting this shit now, I ask?)
It has been over 10 years since college graduation, I wasted the whole time due to depression and a skin condition (one I still struggle with…that's another story), my health has declined precipitiously after a really ill-chosen hernia repair surgery 4 years ago that's led to chronic back pain….and I was laid off from a pretty shitty job in August. I gave them 5 years of my life.
No promotions to be had despite good performance reviews, a “meh” salary (the best I would ever earn, though, over $50k in a city), and a manager who lied to me about my request to be hybrid and qualifying for a 2% raise before he gleefully volunteered I be laid off.
The last thing my team lead said before I left, after jerking me around my last paranoid year? “Wash your hands of this place.” He hasn't spoken to me since I was fired. The guy was a friend but he was STEM. I was the assistant to a STEM team.
How can someone wash their hands of a huge chunk of their work history?
I wanted to be an office drone. I still do. I'm surrounded by attractive young people with school friends, work friends, partners…their lives are predictable. They're healthy. They have accomplishments and clear distinctions between work and play. They have personalities. They don't agonize for years of their lives about how fucking stupid they are, that querying a spreadsheet still flummoxes them.
They get to live in that nice space in a career where they figure out some valuable white collar skills, learn on the job/be trained…and then do that for 10-20 years.
I worked for my company 5 years and now I'm not skilled enough for my own job title.
I have failure. I have sickness. I'm alone. I am the least successful person in my high school graduating class (I use that as a touchstone because it was the last time I felt competent in anything).
If I liked my job and had my health, I think I could work towards a few things with more consistency.
…I'm too stupid, and I get stupid with age, and in a labor market, if you're stupid and over 30…well, the future is too dark to think about.
It's not a way to live, spending all your time trying to distract yourself (or vomiting up in posts, like on this site) to not think about being “so old”, feeling so old, and having made so many mistakes or feeling so trapped.
This is what it matters: at a certain point, interviews know you're a loser.
At a certain point, if you have a serious health problem in your 30s – well, you may never fix it and the only “solutions” come with serious problems. (God, do I regret the surgery that worsened childhood scoliosis.)
recently I took a job paying a salary I was earning in temp roles because x-rays confirm I have back arthritis that has been making mornings agonizingly painful for six months (longer) and because the role is remote, but…you know? I don't get offers from “good” employers and worst, my options have been cut in half thanks to the back problems.
All I ever wanted was to be like other people I went to high school with: they got white collar jobs, were promoted and invested in, and got to have lives, even with stupid degrees. They're not thinking about killing themselves because they can't population a spreadsheet with financial functions and have never used SQL to do BigQuery in a job – stuff an entry level sales analyst can do. I don't have that job, though.
I didn't think I could be more suicidal than I was in college, but being over 35, getting offers for minimum wage Bullshit Jobs, only finding remote jobs that send up red flags (claustrophobic, tiny team; no set schedule or hours of expected overtime every month; “newly created” role/entry level salary)….waking up in pain and wondering what in the fuck am I gonna do, what if my back just gets worse, what if I need surgery….
I am overwhelmingly suicidal. I'm exhausted and suicidal and isolated and ashamed. And Jesus, looking for a job is horrible.
I don't smoke weed at work, I don't question the notion someone needs to work to live if they're healthy. (I'm no longer healthy, that's a big part of this rambling post.) I'm in exhausting, all over bodily pain every day that muscle relaxers and NSAIDs only aggravate.
I don't have a life outside work, and my life has been defined by only having enough stamina for dead-end jobs for a long time. Probably for the last 5 or 6 years. This surgery made that a guarantee.
I know this is a rant – did any of you try to mimic medium successful people, try to be agreeable, bookmark softwares, “skill up”, improve yourself, in the hopes of getting a “normal” job with some perks, like being able to sit down, a livable “white collar wage”, etc…and still fail miserably?
I've never worked for a company I actually really wanted to work for.