I work for a PR agency and have been in the industry for about 5 1/2 years now, after being put through the typical unpaid internship BS and micromanaging disguised as a “fast-paced environment,” and am already burnt out AF at 29.
I’m at a new agency and was pretty excited at first, knowing I’d be completely remote with health insurance and double the pay (my previous agency had zero benefits). Anyway, the honeymoon is over after only six months, and I’m being pushed by my supervisor to deter one of the employees I oversee from taking her PTO… simply because senior leadership has “seen a pattern” and it looks bad to other junior staff at her level (mind you, who also have unused PTO they could easily use…)
Anyway, I have never understood the obsession companies have with sick days and PTO, especially when the work is still being done (because god forbid we miss a day of the world-altering work we do at a PR agency).
That all aside, I’m so sick and tired of working and pretending like we didn’t all just learn a valuable lesson about life’s fragility and the capitalistic BS that dictates how we spend the one life we get on this earth. My dad has stage 4 cancer and instead of spending my time with him, I’m spamming inboxes to get journalists to begrudgingly write about buying my clients’ shit. Wtf is productivity and why should I care anymore? I have this same existential crisis every day, as I’m sure many of you do as well. I’m glad I found this page. I thought I was alone.