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Antiwork

In the past 6 months, 10 members our group of 50 at my job has left. Mine and several other’s mental health is reaching a breaking point. (vent)

I work for a top 500 company and I'm heavily bound by NDA. I will try to water it down a lot so I don't get sued or terminated, but it's a very stressful situation I am in and I'm actually not sure what to do anymore, so I kinda just need to vent anywhere. I just need it off my chest. I'm 25. I speak 3 languages fluently, but understand 4. I am learning a fifth. I have a bachelors degree. I'm fresh out of university. And I've been working at this company for a year now. I basically did full-time university while I worked full-time (40h/week) to afford my studies. I am also a foreigner in this country (Netherlands), international-student turned worker immigrant. When I got hired, it was via an outsourced firm with no bonuses : 15/hour with absolutely no vacations, sick leave benefits or even options…


I work for a top 500 company and I'm heavily bound by NDA. I will try to water it down a lot so I don't get sued or terminated, but it's a very stressful situation I am in and I'm actually not sure what to do anymore, so I kinda just need to vent anywhere. I just need it off my chest.

I'm 25. I speak 3 languages fluently, but understand 4. I am learning a fifth. I have a bachelors degree. I'm fresh out of university. And I've been working at this company for a year now. I basically did full-time university while I worked full-time (40h/week) to afford my studies. I am also a foreigner in this country (Netherlands), international-student turned worker immigrant.
When I got hired, it was via an outsourced firm with no bonuses : 15/hour with absolutely no vacations, sick leave benefits or even options to progress. However, after my contract ended, got hired directly from the firm itself with a salary of 33750e/year (not adjusted for inflation) with benefits and so on. This was earlier this year. My project is mainly located in a different country, so I don't really have the same ways to advance as others.

In the past 12 months, the longest “vacation” I've had was 1 week sick leave after I got my booster (with like 45% pay that week). I've had a few days SL since, but for the most part I cannot afford to take vacation days and need to be on stand-by company phone Teams all the time. Why? Because the project is so severely understaffed and I'm the first person people contact if they have questions. I've asked for my vacation to be had in a month because I will have family come over. I asked it last month. But I haven't even gotten an approval for that yet.

When I was hired I was essentially hired to take care of one market. It was one market per person in my region. But a month into my job my colleague quit. We were able to hire someone to fill that position, but then another member left. And then the last member of our team. So for the past 12 months, I've essentially been taking care of 2 or 3 markets at once, and I can't afford to give proper care to either portfolio because I try to do one thing but then forget as something more urgent pops up.

I am severely struggling because we haven't met our targets at all, and when that happens, we get yelled at. Despite being so understaffed and they are aware of it. And as our highest team leader left last month, we are stuck with as substitute from who is super harsh and won't take any explanations as of why we are not hitting the targets. And on top of that, they keep adding some stupid targets we need to reach or do: imagine this to be a game of Papers, Please, but daily, and not fun.
Every time they introduce something, it's something more absurd that has no purpose but to be tedious. For example, were told we needed to label everything in the mailboxes and it needs to be correctly labelled. But the issue here is, every mailbox has their own labels. And everyone interprets the labels differently.

And like a slap across the face we also get graded for how well we do our job with quality checks that will impact our bonuses: some of the quality checks I've gotten are so harsh as I've done everything right, but the grader finds small discrepancies they latch onto, or “it's not according to our process”, and severely downgrades me which impacts my bonuses. I raised this to the reviewer, kindly, that I had done everything according to how it was requested, but they just shrugged it off as “We can't change it anymore”. The worst part is that hey also grade the mailbox labelling and, it's so fucking absurd how we were just told yeah label this as you feel is the most correct WITHOUT any guidelines, but then we get bad quality score grading if it's wrong.

I'm super tired, I keep having nightmares of being back in school and wanting to do stuff but just feeling so tired and drained and always in a hurry to get back to work but can't ever do so because I'm stuck. When the year ended, I was at work from 8-20 just to properly get everything done on time. I try not to do too much OT. But it's just.. impossible as otherwise I don't get anything done. When the day ends I have done so much but it all starts again the next day.

Anyway… To this week.

This week my team leader is on vacation. And so is all of my colleagues, so I am fully alone in 4 markets. I'm so overwhelmed I don't know where to start. I talked with one of my colleagues from different markets, she said one of the guys who I've been talking with – who's been very vocal about how the project is not working, and who I wholeheartedly agree with – is now quitting. He's had enough. So she will be stuck with a market that has been analysed to require at least 10 people to properly function – but for the past several months, it has only been 2 people taking care of it if that.

She's not doing well mentally. I'm not doing well mentally either and considering to quit and get a new job – but I'm so fucking terrified because I haven't had the time or opportunity – and now the energy after working on this project – to properly learn the Dutch language. So if I quit, I won't have enough to pay my bills as I will be like 3 months away from being homeless. Since I'm not a Dutch citizen, I won't have the same rights for welfare as others and because I don't speak the Dutch language natively, I don't have a lot of job opportunities. The few offers I have had offered to me, where they list the salary in the description, is 22000/year and would require me to relocate to Dublin or somewhere else. So I would be paid 10k less than what I am making now and I would have to stop being full-time WFH as so many offices only offer “hybrid” or “full-time office” which, to be honest, as a very neurodivergent person is not a great option for my mental health. Moving back to my home country, while it is an option, is also terrible for my mental health as I felt so isolated and alone there.

I just… The only thing that I've been waiting for is a promotion or just salary increase. The job is great when I'm just taking care of my own portfolio. But now as I'm basically the first back-up for my team leader and I have a lot of other tasks I take care of which should be enough grounds for a promotion. The entity I work for, from what I've been told, loves to work with me and actually consider me higher than my team leader in some instances. But without the authority to do stuff.
I've yet to have the promotion discussions and I really need the promotion – even just a salary increase would be good enough as inflation is closer to 12%. My rent went up 6%. 1kg of chicken is 10€. Everything is so much more expensive and I've never been a big spender – I only spend money on food, rent and the vet (chronically ill pet) – but I sure as hell am tight every month with barely more than 100€ saved up. I budget everything. I just feel so defeated.

I just feel so at lost. I want to switch jobs but I know I can't. I feel like I'm trying to pull my weight and several others but it's not paying my bills anymore. I live paycheck to paycheck. I don't know what kind of superhuman I need to be to get any kind of salary increase or better job. I don't know what degrees I need to have. I know two people in my life who bought a house pre-2020 and they bought it with less of a salary than I have. But I can't even rent a place and I get turned down from renters as much as I get turned down from dates. It's tiresome. I just don't feel happy. I just need to vent, sorry.

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