Antiwork

The boss makes a dollar, I make a dime. That’s why I shit on company time.

I called out from a shift yesterday because my partner found an injured bird on the side of the road and rushed it to our nearest wildlife center. They had 2 hours of notice, and said it was fine the day of, but when I came in today they fired me. It was only the third time I'd called out since starting almost a year ago, and when I asked her if she'd rather I let it die cold, wet and bleading out, she said yes.

I had been with the company for five years, in my most recent position for a year and a half. I had a very difficult, demanding, time consuming role in the company, but I was great at it – everyone has always validated that for me. My direct supervisor (Laurie in this story) has been with the company for a decade. She is in her 40s but very much has a Mean Girls, high school drama attitude. She is exceptional at what she does, but her mouth has a habit of spewing hateful nonsense and gossip. On a good day, she was dare I say enjoyable, on a bad day she was a nightmare. I won’t hash it out too much here but I ended up feeling like I was in an abusive situation, constantly walking on eggshells, knowing she was talking poorly of me behind my back, it was…

I'm burned out. A lot of us are. Last year I worked 1,377 hours of overtime. My coworkers are as well. We're all patriots and our jobs are very important, technically specific and necessary. It would take about 18 months to get a new hire ready to do my job. I have a job offer coming up, doing a walkthrough of a facility and meeting the team after a second interview. Just down to negotiations on salary. I just feel awful about the bind I'm going to put on the few good people I'm leaving, and the strain that's doing to create in their lives. Two of my buddies swore me to secrecy as we've been looking for a way out. One is waiting for his house to sell and he's out. I bought his car, and he's burning his PTO before he bounces. The other is banking cash and…

I am over 40 years old, been doing wage work since I was legally old enough to work and I’m over it. I’m over being a profitable commodity for business owners to exploit. I’m opening a tiny bicycle repair shop that provides an objectively positive service to my area and frees me from being a number on a spreadsheet for an entity that cares next to nothing about anything beyond the profit they can make off of the minutes of my life. Wish me luck. I don’t give a fuck about being rich, but I do care a whole lot about making people happy and healthy while making my own mental health and sense of self worth a priority. I’m done letting people profit off of my skill to the detriment of my own freedom in however many years left I’ve got in this existence.