Author: Olivia

The place I work spends our tips for us instead of giving them directly to us. We have a tip jar next to the checkouts, supervisors and managers use this money for whatever reason they want but we cannot take even a penny for ourselves. Last week a supervisor took £9 out of the tips to balance her cash drawer. Now our manager wants to use them for monthly team events, which we get no say in and if we don’t want to or cannot go to the event then we still don’t get our share. I’m getting so tired of this, we get paid minimum wage and it feels like without a union nothing will change either.

A while ago I saw a job ad by the Economist looking to hire a writer. I thought it looked interesting so I applied. The interview process dragged on since March and supposedly they will pick someone in July. Each of us was required to come up with ideas, do background research, and write a full article that they can publish. All this work so one of us gets to chat with the editor in the end. And they didn't publish any salary information. I found a job elsewhere and just couldn't be bothered to go through the process. It disgusts me when companies ask job applicants to do free work.

It's 9pm Saturday night in my timezone. Slept until about 11am because I'm always tired by the end of the week from 5 days of having to wake up on capitalism's clock (I have Delayed Sleep Phase Disorder and my body's natural clock is 2-3am to 10-11am but I have to be logged in by 8:15am), by the time I showered and had some lunch, it was 1pm. I then had to go get groceries, buy some stuff from Target, go to the pharmacy and clean my apartment and then I bought dinner because I had no energy to make it. I'm exhausted. Tomorrow I won't want to do anything. And then Monday is back to the wage slaving for 5 straight days. 2 days is just not enough to do chores, run errands, rest, relax, do something fun, socialise and see family. All by design – keep us tired…

It seems like an obvious answer, endlessly enjoy yourself, but how do you in reality? Might you need more? Edit: Lets say you have equivalent of good middle class income for life, maybe even upper middle class

I've had many jobs. Most of which required me to use all of my sensory components to adhere to the system and become it. I never completely escaped this in any job. However, some allowed me to have enough comfort and autonomy to say, read a book. Dishwashing jobs were the answer. Yet, I've worked dishwashing jobs where that wasn't the case, where slavery was the golden rule. I'm considering security positions now because I've never done it and maybe there's a good chunk of alone time. Tell your experiences of working low wage jobs where you could have lengthy periods of alone time.