Author: Olivia

Me: *applies for server at a restaurant Hiring manager: that job pays $60k/year which means we would have to give you a lower-paying job to start Me: the pay was the whole reason I applied dipshit. If I'm going to work my ass off all night I better be able to pay for food, gas, mortgage, utilities, etc.

I work at a small bar. As of February 22nd, half of our staff will be working full-time without a roof over their heads. Our owner take several vacations out of the country every year, but we don’t get any kind of vacation days. We are yelled at nearly every day. Our bosses have installed a shower in the bathroom. I don’t know what else to say.

The Bay Area is one of the most expensive places in the world to live and work, with many businesses offering next to nothing for pay. The cost to rent just a room in many places is over $1000 per month – and often in a situation where you live with 4 to 7 people. $16 to $20ph is piddle for these kinds of costs. And the quality of the rental selection is severely lacking in most of California. The next time I interview for a job that pays anything less than $25ph is getting a photo album.

If work is so amazingly dignifying and good for you, then why did we invent all those labour-saving machinery in the last 10 000 years, and why did workers fight tooth and nail for the 8-hour workday? (12-hours was the norm before that) Checkmate, critics of the anti-work ideology. All humans implicitly agree, that the less work the better: the anti-work ideology is just taking this to its logical conclusion. We may not necessarily have all the answers to how will we get there – as in, to a world where no one has to work anymore – but we sure know, that we ought to be striving for it. To shame “laziness” is to shame human nature. Pro-work capitalists like to use “muh human nature” as some sort of gotcha against Communism, but the modern idea of work – sitting in a cubicle for longer and longer hours for…

My fiancé works for a UK charity. Recently, a senior policy officer job came up within the charity that involved advising MPs on policy and helping draft legislation for presentation to parliament (the charity is related to poverty relief – sorry, I won't name it while he still works there). Some of the people in the external affais department mentioned to him that he'd be a shoe-in for the role (he's gone above and beyond in submitting evidence for policy changes to their team, which he isn't contractually required to do), so he decided to throw his hat into the ring. He was turned down by HR, and was a little disappointed, but also he knew they'd had a lot of applications, and assumed they'd decided to shortlist people with more political/legislative experience without discussing it with the team. NOPE. On Friday they announced that the role had been filled.…