Author: Olivia

Today I came home and almost collapsed from how sore my feet were. It was the kind of pain where I would prefer to have my feet cut off than face it again. Tomorrow I have to walk 45 minutes to work, stand on my feet for three hours straight, and walk home again. And I'm only going to make $24. Fuck.

So firstly, I’ve been on this subreddit for a month or two now after a friend introduced me it. I really find it insightful reading into other peoples work interactions and how immature adult bosses can really be. Now. I have an assessment that is coming up soon for my commerce class. Without doxing myself here, part of this assessment requires us to take the role of a “financial adviser” to a person named Trevor. Trevor earns 1200 a month which he spends on his electricity, water, internet, phone, clothing and entertainment bills leaving him $60 after all those expenses. Trevor needs to buy a new air conditioner and part of our assignment is to help him find the most affordable using a reliable payment method. So good so far right? Well, in order for him to afford this air conditioner he needs to “watch his spending” as in, cut…

I work for a pretty large multinational corporation. I work at a facility with about 60 employees. I've spoken to most of the non management staff and many if not most of us want to unionize. We are all angry and want better conditions. I seem to be the the biggest pusher for this idea and want to learn where to actually go from here? How do I make this go from just idle angry breakroom ranting to actually making something happen?

I went to college to work in my dream field, which is something I am profoundly ardent about, so it was a way for me to deepen my involvement in a hobby I’d had for years. I relished learning new concepts, working on projects, and attending events. I spent all of my weekends furthering my knowledge, graduating with a 4.7 GPA. It’s been two years since I graduated, and I’m still earning just over minimum wage for what is supposed to be the highest remunerated job in my country. While I have only recently begun my professional career, it is disheartening and saddening that all of my hard work, college debt, and alacrity to work have gone to waste. Living in a shitty third-world country doesn’t help either.

I want to work. I want to give my labor. I want to give my time, effort, to my community and the people around me. I want to help people, have wanted to my whole life. But my labor is just taken from me, with the expectation that I continue giving all of myself just to survive and I hate it. I hate how much capitalism has made me fear and hate giving my labor to others, all because of a system that's designed to take everything you have and demand more. I'm barely an adult and I'm already exhausted.

It's one of the most infuriating things. As soon as you get any entry level job, everyone and their brother starts telling you, “work hard, you could be management someday!” And like, management is the only retail/food/whatever position that's really respected, because everyone else gets considered as something less than human. But not everyone can be a manager. And I'm not saying that in regard to personal ability, I mean structurally; managers help a larger place run, managers assist multiple other people in doing their job, there HAS to be a lower number of managers to staff ratio. You can have a whole team of fantastic workers who all work really hard and have a lengthy skillset. You can't make the entire team all managers. But people act like the management position is the only one worth having, and if you get a job in that area your goal MUST…

Five years of my life have been given to my employer. At the beginning I used to feel so bad for my friends that worked at call centers for big corporate companies. They’d complain 24/7 about their jobs, while I was feeling high on life. I had the relaxed work atmosphere with the awesome, down to earth bosses. There was so much freedom. I felt like the lucky one while I heard about them being miserable. Well, five years go by and my friends have all moved up in their companies. They’re making awesome wages while I was blinded by comfort. The owners of my company have been spouting a bunch of stuff this whole time about me taking over the company eventually. The tasks and responsibilities have been added and added until I’ve taken over 90% of the tasks the owner herself had. I help manage employees, do all…