Antiwork

Hello. I am a senior-year undergraduate student majoring in neurobiology & physiology (it's just 1 major but sounded like it's 2) and I'm graduating this December. I'm an international student with an F-1 visa, studying at a university in California. I am 26 years old. I am older than the average college student because I repeated a year in kindergarten (because my mother wanted me to advance academically along with my autistic twin brother who failed in class). I also repeated a year in middle school because I didn't know English when I went to India to study. I also took half a year of a break after high school (due to the lack of purpose, depression, and social anxiety) before going to college, and I lost a year in college because I decided to change my major from art to science. I'm depressed, aimless, and have social anxiety. I…

I've been a long-time lurker here and never thought I'd have content of my own to post, but here goes. I've been working for a relatively small company for over 5 years, in a position that is considered to be a project manager but without the title or the salary. We hired someone a few months ago as a COO and they've been nonstop pitching new clients, and signing new clients, while the company hasn't bothered to really add employees in order to both support our existing clients, and to handle the increased workload that the new clients bring. I wear about 10 different hats in this role and do the job of at least 4 people. My coworkers have told me multiple times that I need an assistant, and I agree. Our team is too small for existing colleagues to pick up the slack for me. A month and…

Fuck these companies, honestly. I served out a three-month notice period and was looking forward to a 10k pay bump. Two days – two days! – prior to starting, they told me my start date would be a month later than expected. Nice. Wait until the last minute why don’t you. A month passes. Two days before I start, guess what happens? Another 8 week delay. I kicked up a fuss. I mean, the economy is on FIRE, and they just didn’t care that I wasn’t being paid. By this point, I didn’t want to work there anyway. I’m lucky in that I am self-employed and bring in another income on the side (no longer “on the side” I guess). They admitted they had hired too many people right before this economic shitshow. So I told them to pay me 3 months salary or I’d sue them. TL;DR, I just…

So then, what’s middle class?

Story time: I called my tax software helpline bc there was a bug on it and couldn't figure out why it wasn't working. The phone rep answers my call and says “hello this is software provider, how can I help you?”. Then the song Alcohol by DAX started playing in the background. It went on for a couple seconds very loudly as she tried to ignore her phone ringing. She told me that she was supposed to pick up her aunt from the airport and then couldn't get the day off. Now her friend was circling the airport looking for her aunt but they don't speak the same language. It was a whole kerfuffle! I felt bad for her and asked “wanna keep me on the line so it helps your call numbers and go deal with it?”. She said “are you sure? Thank you so much!” So I sat…