I'm in America, and as it's well known, it's bad and it's only getting worse. Worst off, I'm in California, where I appreciate a lot of the values in this state but it's so hard to afford to live.
I worked a salaried managerial position for a popular company in Los Angeles for a while and was becoming so fed up with being overworked and underpaid, and devastated by the high cost of living. I was about to file for bankruptcy when instead I decided to quit my job, leave the city, and move far north to work in the California Conservation Corps where I would be housed, fed, and paid, and I could focus on paying off my debts.
I did that for several months but it was also pretty shitty lol, although I do appreciate the position the program put me in and everything I got out of it.
I applied to nearly 50-60 jobs in the span of a week and got ONE interview. And I got hired. It was an executive assistant position but ultimately I would be doing IT work, with no experience in IT. They took this weird chance on me straight out of slingin' pulaskis, paid me really well and provided me with full health care benefits, gave me all this valuable knowledge, paid for me to become a certified admin in a certain software. After 3 months I got $1.75 raise. I got more experience, I was given more accessibility to work from home, they bought me the best equipment, allowed me time off with no questions asked if I was simply just mentally unwell every once in a while. Every Friday my extremely busy boss takes an hour just to ask me how I'm doing and how I still feel about my job.
I've worked SO MANY jobs. I have never been treated so good and this shouldn't be unusual to me, but it is in this country. This is the standard I will hold if I go anywhere else, but at this point I have no plans to leave and my loyalty for this company is greater than I would've expected to have for any company. I work my ass off for them because I want to. And sometimes I take a day to slack because I need to. And they get better quality work from me because of it. And I don't get in any trouble about it. It's just understood that some days we are not at our peak performance.
It's really fucking funny how that works, isn't it? I can't believe the abuse I took from so many employers for so many years.