Antiwork

I went to college to work in my dream field, which is something I am profoundly ardent about, so it was a way for me to deepen my involvement in a hobby I’d had for years. I relished learning new concepts, working on projects, and attending events. I spent all of my weekends furthering my knowledge, graduating with a 4.7 GPA. It’s been two years since I graduated, and I’m still earning just over minimum wage for what is supposed to be the highest remunerated job in my country. While I have only recently begun my professional career, it is disheartening and saddening that all of my hard work, college debt, and alacrity to work have gone to waste. Living in a shitty third-world country doesn’t help either.

I want to work. I want to give my labor. I want to give my time, effort, to my community and the people around me. I want to help people, have wanted to my whole life. But my labor is just taken from me, with the expectation that I continue giving all of myself just to survive and I hate it. I hate how much capitalism has made me fear and hate giving my labor to others, all because of a system that's designed to take everything you have and demand more. I'm barely an adult and I'm already exhausted.

It's one of the most infuriating things. As soon as you get any entry level job, everyone and their brother starts telling you, “work hard, you could be management someday!” And like, management is the only retail/food/whatever position that's really respected, because everyone else gets considered as something less than human. But not everyone can be a manager. And I'm not saying that in regard to personal ability, I mean structurally; managers help a larger place run, managers assist multiple other people in doing their job, there HAS to be a lower number of managers to staff ratio. You can have a whole team of fantastic workers who all work really hard and have a lengthy skillset. You can't make the entire team all managers. But people act like the management position is the only one worth having, and if you get a job in that area your goal MUST…

Five years of my life have been given to my employer. At the beginning I used to feel so bad for my friends that worked at call centers for big corporate companies. They’d complain 24/7 about their jobs, while I was feeling high on life. I had the relaxed work atmosphere with the awesome, down to earth bosses. There was so much freedom. I felt like the lucky one while I heard about them being miserable. Well, five years go by and my friends have all moved up in their companies. They’re making awesome wages while I was blinded by comfort. The owners of my company have been spouting a bunch of stuff this whole time about me taking over the company eventually. The tasks and responsibilities have been added and added until I’ve taken over 90% of the tasks the owner herself had. I help manage employees, do all…

I was having problems with my current Restraunt not providing deserved raises after cross training for the whole kitchen (plenty of previous experience) so I just to look around got on indeed and just drooped in a few applications not expecting much.. 5 job interviews within 6 hours of applying to any of them, I negotiated wages with every single one of them, something I had never done before but stuck to it today with all my interviews, knowing I deserve more. I had 1 company that was for a GM position, he sounded interested but had 11 other interviews after me today and that place won't be open for 3 months he said he would call and let me know the status of any offer Another company that has been playing phone tag since the application day, I won't be working under that Another that refused to pay more…

Today was just too much and I need to vent. I am a doctoral student in a Psyd program. What does that mean? It means I pay thousands of dollars to provide psychotherapy, take classes, do research, teach, organize, volunteer, and mentor others. We are not paid for our work. Our program is a full-time commitment. During the course of the pandemic, my cohort of approximately 20 students has provided THOUSANDS of hours of therapy to our community. We have worked with the homeless, the sick, the poor, students, physicians, and our nation's veterans. Through COVID, we have literally kept suicidal people alive and out of overburdened hospitals. For no compensation. Many of the organizations we work for bill for our services at the same rate as licensed psychologists. Our supervisors and bosses are paid for our labor. Did I mention we pay thousands in tuition to do this? Tuition…