I had recently left employment with At Home who only paid 11.75$ and cut my hours every month to the point I dropped from 30 to 18, and ultimately left due to their shitty policy regarding bereavement, it's only 4 days, and a few other key issues. It was a 25-minute drive to get there that costed me about 20$ a ride as I use Uber, and that's not counting the tip to the driver, so practically half of every shift went straight to transportation fees. I won't lie, I have been lucky in many ways, for years I was able to get rides from family, some of them free, others I'd give in 10$ for gas money, and I had lived with my mother who graciously did not ask for rent, although there were still tight months where I chipped in my fair share.
Following her death and then me quitting my job all in July, my father gave me an unofficial contract of sorts, that I'd start paying 400$ a month, increased to 800$ after 6 months, then after another 6 months he would kick me out without question. For context, I'm 21 at the time of posting, soon to be 22 in October. He says he's doing it for my best interest, that I have no idea what the real world looks like, that I need to suffer and earn my place like everybody else. My luck saved me as I was able to find new employment just weeks after with Marshalls, in fact today was my very first day. It was typical, told the basic spiel that they tell everybody else, told of how the company values honesty and hard work, given a tour of the store and sat in their office to fill out forms for pretty much the entirety of my first day. I was thankful, truly, to have work as now the fear and threat of becoming homeless is quite real, but frankly I was holding back tears the entire time. I'd be given 20 hours at 12$ an hour, a nice improvement from my last job, but hardly enough to survive off of, after taxes I'll make somewhere around 850$ a month, and due to store policy the most the manager can give me is an extra 4 hours a week.
All I could think of is how now I'll need to find another job, balance it out with Marshalls, deal with the pressures of making sure I have enough for rent and transportation fees, start looking for a place to live that I know I'll need at least 2 roommates to afford because the cheapest rent around here is a one-bedroom apartment for 950$. Never mind trying to even consider fitting health care into my budget, I haven't seen a doctor in over 7 years and that's not looking to change anytime soon, so here's praying nothing happens. How am I supposed to live like this? How does anybody? Giving away every available hour until work is all we have, because a month of a paid job isn't even enough to cover the rent.
I've never had issues with working, my issues have never been that I don't want to work, it's that I don't want to work every fucking minute of my life because I'm paid poverty wages. I feel that's all any of us want, despite the name being “Antiwork”, all we really want is to be paid and treated like human beings that deserve more than existing in a constant state of financial panic. That we're not admonished and ridiculed as being lazy or unmotivated by men who make more in a day than we will in a lifetime. That we have the freedom to enjoy what little time we have on this planet, to pursue that which we love, instead of growing old and realizing our lives were spent in service to a system that exploited us.
I just want to live, that's all anybody wants.