I have no idea how many people have had this happen to them, but I didn't go to college for 4 fucking years, just to end at a dead end job that pays me 15,000 a year. I didn't learn how to draw in Elementary School to end up here. I didn't take AP Art and expand on my drawing and animation skills for this BS. I didn't dream of being someone who creates things to end up in a soulless pit. Even an entry level animator, or hell, a paid internship for one, is AT LEAST 28k a year. Still not great, but leagues better than my dishwashing job. The average animator for anything – not just television, but ads and motion graphics on websites, is at least 70k a year. In the state of Iowa, you can afford comfortably on a mortgage for a studio apartment. You still would be at most lower middle class on your own, but you have more of a net.
Not only that, but the store I work for is incredibly toxic. It relies on a high turnover rate of high schoolers to try to keep positions filled, which it no longer does anymore. It lobbied the state to loosen child labor laws – paid more money to lobby this than to pay off their child labor offense fines***.*** You are bullied by full-timers and managers because “you're part-time, you have no say around here!!”. The more I am stuck here, the shorter the window of actually getting a job to my degree gets. This is because employers won't consider someone who had no experience until 12 years after their degree. They will feel like they have lost their skills, even if they have kept up on it. This place kills any soul for creativity, because you are cog in their machine.
I feel like this is a deliberate effect from blaspheming younger generations that they are lazy entitled brats, where “””””skilled””””” work employers have become picky to only hire people already in the field, no matter how bad and out of touch they are at their job, over fresh young grads with a strong mindset. This makes “”””””unskilled”””””” (these skill vs unskilled pejoratives aiding in the shit wages and treatment justification) lower their standards and pay and lobby politicians to rid safety nets, so they essentially force people to work under third world conditions. Which they will probably die at there too, just slower. They know they got nowhere else to turn, so they make the conditions as horrifying as possible. If you die, they'll get someone else to replace you, until they die.
Thank you Boomers and half of Gen X for making this all possible because you were afraid of a gay couple at the local store. Hope you're glad with what you done. You're going to be the reason why you have no grandchildren and why you're kids are on the street, while also blaming everyone else but yourselves to justify these conditions.