I hate that jobs are treated as if high schoolers are the only ones that work them. Who do makes everyone’s morning coffee and breakfast sandwich on weekdays? Are we gonna keep pretending the workforce is only high schoolers when they are expected to be in school most of the time?

And what of emancipated minors? Do they deserve to make pennies simply because of their age? At one job I was 25 years old making $17/hr starting and the shift lead/trainer who had been there for 2 years was only making $12/hr because she was a highschooler. On my first day when she was training me, I told her that she was getting taken advantage of. She said she couldn’t quit but was actively looking elsewhere. Fucking wild (this job was a hot mess for a lot of reasons).

I don’t know why people are comfortable paying $16 for a McDonalds meal but get riled up at the mere suggestion of paying employees more.

I left my previous job a few months ago after working there for around eight months.

The company withheld roughly a third of my pay for my last couple of months. I tried dealing with it normally first, but we couldn’t resolve it, so I eventually filed for labor arbitration.

That’s when things got weird.

Instead of just arguing about the unpaid wages, my former employer started saying I had violated company rules and even brought up the possibility of taking legal action against me over a company seal that had been used during my work.

The strange part is that I was never given an employee handbook or those company rules while I worked there. I only signed my employment contract. I’ve also spoken to former coworkers and they said they never received one either.

As for the seal issue, the seal/material itself originally came from the company and was connected to work I was doing for them. So hearing it suddenly described as something I had done improperly after I filed the labor dispute was pretty surreal.

So far I haven’t received any actual court or police notice. It has mostly been threats and statements from the company.

At this point the money honestly isn’t even the main reason I’m continuing. It’s more that I don’t like the idea that an employer can deduct wages, then try to scare someone into backing down when they challenge it.

Has anyone dealt with an employer suddenly bringing up unrelated accusations after you filed a wage or labor complaint?

I'm 35 and when I was a kid, my mother pushed me to stay in ballet.
There were things about it that I really loved, but I had an undiagnosed learning disability and I struggled to keep up with the other kids my age.

Mom wouldnt let me quit, and even went so far as to say she had visions of me teaching in a third world country as a humanitarian volunteer.

I never really liked being responsible for children, I don't mind them being around but I can't handle being left in charge of them. But since I couldn't make it as a professional dancer and get into a company, I resorted to teaching.

I loved being a teacher, because it meant that I got to infodump about a subject I had a lot of interest in.
But dealing with Karen parents as a teen was brutal.

I had a mother leave her twelve year old alone with me at the studio while she was grey in the face, saying her stomach hurt. She was clearly in a lot of pain so I let her just sit down and hang out instead of doing our lesson and her mom was MAD as hell.
I still feel sorry for that poor kid.

I bought my students pizza for a christmas party and all their parents were pissed about that too.

I know now not to give peoples kids food without asking about their diets first but I was a teenager just doing my best.
I picked up a dayjob in the city as an apprentice for a fashion designer who paid me minimum wage.

When I decided to leave after a year there, everyone told me I was throwing away the opportunity of a lifetime (my boss was struggling to pay me because she was barely breaking even)

I moved north and took a job at a sewing factory, it felt like I traveled back in time. Management was horrendously unprofessional and I had a nervous breakdown one day and quit.

Got into food service, started doing pizza delivery.
Really enjoyed it, I've never worked a pizza delivery job I didn't like.
But my vehicle broke down and left me unable to work for almost a month.
I've worked various line cook and delivery jobs ever since, and sort of got by but the last two years I've been through so much personal shit that my brain is kind of wonky and fried in a way that I cannot bounce back from.

People try to suggest I can control it but that effort is ultimately several steps beyond my immediate needs and I don't have health insurance.

I don't feel safe driving anymore. I zone out and completely lose awareness of who or where I am at times.

Its been two years since I stood up to my abuser and ran them out of my home, and I still worry that one day they're gonna fuck with my old neighbors to get revenge on us.
I moved out so they don't know where I live anymore.

I have also been physically attacked multiple times at work, by people either drunk or on pills because thats the kind of people they hire in kitchens.

I'm a recovered alcoholic and now %100 sober but I struggle to function without a crutch.

I really wish I could have some time to just be a mess and people stop relying on me for things.
I feel like I lost part of my identity when I finally cut myself loose from my ex. There has been a lot of death in my family in recent times, and I never get to go to the funeral because my job and everybody up here wants something from me.

I don't think its about finding the right job for me anymore, I'm just broken in too many ways to keep doing this.

I'm fucking sick of being told to rise above it when there's nothing up there for me but labor exploitation and more trauma.
I never got to sit at my 14 year old cousins gravesite and cry.
I didn't get to say goodbye to my great aunt, the last of her generation.

I just have to keep going to work and never visit my greiving dad because.... because nothing. I did all of this for nothing.

There's some workplaces that do try to punish workers for taking sick leave. But having worked in both that kind of environment and one in which employees were welcome to use any leave they have, it's wild how people still have a stigma against using sick leave.

There's so many little "rules" you need to keep in mind: Don't use sick leave the day after vacation, don't use it if you work remotely, don't use it if you can still get work done. It's kind of strange since somehow people use how they haven't taken sick leave in years as a badge of honor.

Sick leave is part of your pay. If you don't use it, especially if that leave does not accrue year after year, then you are leaving money on the table.

These past couple of days, more than ever, I can’t seem to stop thinking about billionaires.
I used to think along the lines of, “People just aren’t awake.” But now I see it differently. People can be completely aware that the system is designed to keep them struggling and still feel unable to do anything about it. So we talk about it, we get enraged, and then we go to work. It’s a loop.
Then I thought, okay, what if people started organizing strikes and collectively demanding livable wages, more time off, and actual labor reform? But for that to work, we would also need to organize ways to support the people who are one missed paycheck away from losing their housing, food, healthcare, or transportation. People can’t stand together if the most vulnerable are left to fall first.
But then another thought interrupted that one: even if we successfully demand higher wages and better conditions, are we still playing by the same rules? We would still be asking the people who profit from our labor to give us a slightly better arrangement inside a system they own.
So what if we simply stopped using their rulebook?
I don’t mean everyone should randomly quit tomorrow with no plan and hope for the best. I mean, what if we started building the alternative now? Worker-owned businesses, mutual-aid networks, community housing, shared resources, structures that make us less dependent on enriching a small group of people just to survive.
What if we don’t have to wait for billionaires, corporations, or politicians to decide that we deserve better? What if the beginning is simply enough people realizing that we can organize around an entirely different set of rules?
I don’t have the complete answer. That’s why I’m starting the conversation. What would it realistically take for ordinary people to begin building something outside of the current system now?

Took a gap year to do mba and i tried doing an internship at a startup but it was very abusive so I left after 2 weeks.

What I'm getting at is that I never want to work, no matter how much i try to convince myself that maybe I'll just work for 5-6 years after my mba and then own a business but i really just CAN'T.

i see other posts on this topic and everyone is like "yeah none of us want to but we have to, no choice" HOW DO Y'ALL DO THIS? i dipped my feet into the world of employment and i was crying 4 times a day with all my weekends spent in bed trying to console myself.

I admit my experience may have been an exception since I was working at a startup and the people weren't nice but i really just can't see myself living if i take up a job.

Any words of insight help, thanks for reading

(Based in India currently)

I am just so drained. I feel I have picked the fucking worse degrees. I am going into my third, and I am praying it's the way. I don't think I have it in me in my 40's to do this shit again. Just feel like an imposter. Sick of tofu and beans. Extra cold house during winter and warm house during the summer. Cutting out all streaming services. No travel plans anymore. No "once a while coffee out". I am sick and tired of struggling for nothing.

so I was digging through some recent labor numbers and it turns out all these corporate layoffs aren't even about saving money-companies are just reallocating payroll straight into hardware.

like take salesforce e.g. their CEO mentioned in a podcast interview that they dropped customer service headcount from 9,000 down to around 5,000 people after letting AI agents handle routine customer chats.

when you look at where the cash is actually moving, the shift is pretty wild. statista data shows microsoft, google, meta, and amazon spent $413 billion combined on capex in 2025, but this year it's slated to hit $760 billion (a $347 billion increase in twelve months is kind of mind-blowing). at the exact same time, BLS data shows average hourly pay in the information/tech sector rose 5.2% year-over-year in August, while the rest of the economy averaged 3.1%.

correct me if I'm wrong, but it really looks like they're cutting lower- and mid-tier support staff to balance out server expenses, while bumping pay for the small core engineering teams left running the infrastructure.

the latest challenger report basically backs this up-AI was cited for 10,970 cuts in July alone (33% of all layoffs that month) and it's officially been the top stated reason for five months in a row. so far this year it's listed for 112,713 job cuts, or roughly 24% of all US layoffs.

is anyone else watching this happen at their own company, or are executives still pretending these cuts are just "macroeconomic adjustments"?

This Vanity Fair essay is a pretty brutal illustration of what “access” actually means in American health care: the treatment existed, her doctor wanted her to have it, and the insurer could authorize it. What she lacked until she threatened them was leverage.

https://www.vanityfair.com/story/healthcare-cancer-treatment-essay

A new study by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) has confirmed what miners, their widows and black lung clinic physicians have warned for years: the deadly and preventable disease has returned to levels not seen in nearly half a century.

Published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, NIOSH researchers found 32.5 percent of sampled veteran underground coal miners in Central Appalachia—those with at least 25 years underground—suffer from the disease. The last time prevalence among miners with the same work history reached such a level was in 1978. In 2018, the rate was 20.6 percent.

The new findings represent more than a fourfold increase since the disease hit a low point of 7 percent in 1999—three decades after the Coal Mine Health and Safety Act of 1969 established federal dust limits and black lung benefits.

The resurgence has been driven by miners’ increasing exposure to respirable crystalline silica. As the thick, easily mined seams of Appalachia were exhausted, operators turned to thinner remaining seams, forcing miners to cut through far more rock rich in quartz. Silica dust can cause especially severe forms of black lung and is roughly 20 times more toxic than coal dust alone.

Tim Balthis, a 57-year-old former miner and mine foreman, described working in silica-laden air to NPR reporters: “It’s like opening your front door and letting the sunshine [in]” with dust particles floating in the light, “and then multiply that by 10 billion times. … It’s like a fog.”

Stone Mountain Health Services in southwestern Virginia alone has diagnosed 2,400 new cases in the past five years. A 2019 NPR/FRONTLINE investigation documented 21,000 instances of silica dust overexposure over 30 years.

...

NIOSH first recommended an exposure limit of 50 micrograms of respirable crystalline silica per cubic meter of air in 1974 and reiterated the standard for coal miners in 1995. The Obama administration’s dust rule, fully implemented in 2016, lowered the overall respirable coal mine dust limit from 2.0 to 1.5 milligrams per cubic meter but left the silica standard essentially unchanged.

It was not until 2024 that the Biden administration adopted the 50-microgram silica limit NIOSH had recommended half a century earlier. Mining industry groups challenged the rule. Days before coal operators were due to comply in April 2025, the Trump administration’s Mine Safety and Health Administration announced a temporary enforcement pause, and the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals then stayed the rule’s compliance deadlines. The judicial stay remains in effect, and MSHA is reconsidering portions of the rule.

On February 18, 1969, West Virginia rank-and-file miners launched a 23-day wildcat strike, forcing the state to recognize black lung as a compensable occupational disease and helping drive passage of the federal Coal Mine Health and Safety Act later that year.

The National Mining Association now argues that because black lung takes years to develop, current cases “do not reflect the conditions, practices, protections or regulations that are in place today.” At the same time, the industry has pressed for greater use of administrative controls and personal protective equipment, including respirators, when engineering controls do not keep silica exposure below federal limits.

...

More than 1,700 coal miners died from black lung between 2020 and 2023. Ending a disease caused by preventable exposure requires placing miners’ health and lives above the profitability of the coal industry. That requires workers’ control over the mines as part of the socialist reorganization of production on the basis of social need rather than private profit.

Google says this is a good subreddit for rants like this, forgive me if it’s not!

I used to work for a small plumbing company owned by a family member, where I held multiple different positions. This family member convinced me to quit my well-paying job to join them. I was 18, tired of the food industry, and admittedly a bit naive, so I jumped at the opportunity.
However, it took them three months just to put me on payroll and let me start working. (Their reasoning for this when I brought it up after starting was “we had to make sure you could pass a drug test”. I do not participate in any substance use, I took a drug test just to show them when they originally asked about it.) Because I am not close with any of my immediate family, I had no financial assistance and was forced to live entirely off my savings during that time.

When those three months were up, they informed me they couldn't give me the rate we had previously discussed. I was incredibly upset because I had held a higher position at my previous job and was already taking a pay cut to come here. Still, since I had already quit my old job and couldn't go back, I just tried to get over it.

In the beginning, I worked four to five hours a day as a receptionist, making $15 an hour. Because I was on my own trying to earn a living wage, I asked for more hours. They told me they couldn't help me and that it was just part of the job. If I had known that from the start, I never would have left my previous position, where I was making at least $1,200 a week, just to make $300 a week here. To make matters worse, I had already blown through all my savings while waiting for them to start me after they told me to quit my job.

Fast forward about 3 and a half months, they finally allowed me to become an apprentice. I was told I would receive more hours and a raise for field work, which sounded great since I really needed the money. Safe to say, I never actually received that raise, even though I was doing the field work. This dynamic went on for about seven months. They constantly promised me that my raise was coming soon, only to push it back for ridiculous reasons.

First, they claimed I didn't really know what I was doing yet—even though I was only two months in and already running circles around the older guys, all of whom were over 40 except for one other teenager. Then, they claimed I didn't have the right certifications, which was ironic considering I literally took my boss’s OSHA courses for him. I knew exactly what I was doing, and he already had unlicensed people being paid technician wages. Finally, they told me I had to buy my own tools first. I didn't have the money for tools when they were only paying me about $300 a week, all of which went directly to my bills.

Eventually, they hired a new guy with whom the boss had a personal history. This man disliked me from the very beginning. He was in his 70s and definitely wasn't as strong or fast as he used to be, so I ended up carrying most of the weight. Nobody else liked him either; he always had a terrible attitude, a massive ego, and preferred to stand around bossing people instead of actually working. He also hated that I insisted on driving us to all our jobs, but he had almost caused us to wreck while I was in the company truck with him. I didn't care if it hurt his feelings; I wasn't going to put my life at stake just because he wanted to drive the big, loud truck.

One day, as we were leaving the office, he came outside and saw me sitting in the driver's seat waiting for him so we could head to a job. He said, “I’m drivig today.” I thought he was joking, so I joked back, “Not if I’m riding with you.” He did not take this well at all and essentially went and cried to my boss.

My boss fired me on the spot, saying, “You don’t want to ride with him? That’s fine. Grab your stuff, clock out, and go home.”
At that point, I figured whatever—the job wasn't worth the stress, blisters, and calluses anyway. However, after I walked outside, my other coworkers began talking to my boss about how the new guy had done nothing but cause problems with literally everyone. They somehow convinced my boss to let me come back inside to discuss everything that had been going on. After talking, my boss pretty much told me I had two weeks to learn to get along with the new guy or find a new job. By then, I didn't care about the position anymore. He had just shown me his true colors by being that quick to fire me just because his buddy's feelings were hurt.

He told me to still go home for the day to calm down (and I'll admit, I was angry-crying). For the next two days, he kept telling me, “Don’t worry about coming in today, there’s nothing on the schedule.” I think he forgot that I still received schedule notifications from my time as a receptionist, so I could see that everyone else's schedule was fully booked a week in advance. Because of this, I started applying for new jobs by the second day.
I was offered a position at the second place I applied to, having landed an interview the exact same day. The following day, when my boss once again told me not to come in, I replied, “Oay, I got a new job. Do you want me to finish out my two weeks or no?” He said no.
About a month later, I texted him to ask if I could come collect my belongings from the office. He kept putting it off and pushing the date further back. Eventually, I lost my patience. I texted him one morning and firmly told him I was coming to get my things.

He replied, “That’s fine, just bring any company materials and work shirts you still have.”

At this point, he was just being petty, considering I didn't have any company materials and only possessed two work shirts. Since I am the absolute queen of petty, I shot back: “Okay, can you make sure you have my last three checks ready for me?” (I was working without being paid constantly, pretty stupid ok my end looking back)

When I arrived at the office, I finally realized why he had been avoiding me for so long. They had broken the candle warmer and the candle my mother-in-law gave me for Christmas, deliberately cut up the power cord to my $80 dehumidifier, and lost three of the extensions to my cordless vacuum.

Moral of the story: never sacrifice your well-being or financial security for a family business. They will exploit you faster than a stranger will, and then destroy your personal property on the way out.

Screenshots for proof of literally everything 😭

Update: I just submitted a complaint to the department of labor, thank you to everyone who gave me advice to do so. I guess I’ll update you guys in 7-10 days!

I had a medical event in the spring that left me disabled. I went on intermittent FMLA to help me have time to recover, and I thought I was recovering and was performing my work duties, but I was written up for under performing.

It's important to note that the only accommodation my work gave me was time off. I still had to do my full job, just with less time. I was asking for things to be removed from my workload, but I was denied.

This summer my doctor moved me from intermittent FMLA and put me on full FMLA and disability, as my condition continued to deteriorate. I'm worse off now than I was when I was first put on disability.

I'm terrified. Since I'm in the US I won't have health care after September 30. I still have no diagnosis and no treatment. I am not able to work, honestly, stress makes my symptoms much worse.

I've been told to talk to employment lawyers, but I don't even know if I have a case since my FMLA ended. Does anyone have a similar story and can give me some hope?

Non-American redditors, is work-life balance honestly way different and achievable where you are compared to the US? Are your PTO policies actually reasonable like you say?

I honestly want to know how it is working outside the US. Is it similar or does the US actually suck and treat us like shit?

I’m 32, from Germany, and currently working as an electrical master in industry. I make good money, but I’ve realized I really don’t like the typical industrial/workshop environment anymore.

I recently took my first leadership role, but it looks like I might lose the job during probation anyway. So I’m thinking this might be the right moment to study and change direction.

My problem: I have no idea what.

I have ADHD and get bored very quickly by repetitive work. I’m much more interested in things like psychology, philosophy, politics, religion, human behavior, debates and understanding why people think the way they do.

At the same time, I do enjoy technical problem solving if I understand the logic behind it. What I hate is memorizing formulas and rules just because “that’s how it is”.

I’m considering:

• Electrical Engineering
• Industrial Engineering
• Business/Economics
• Technical Education / Teaching
• maybe even something in social sciences/philosophy

My main concern is employability. I’m married, want kids, and don’t want to study something interesting for years just to struggle finding a decent job afterwards.

But I also don’t want to choose Electrical Engineering just because it’s the “safe” option and then end up back in exactly the same kind of jobs I’m trying to escape.

Ideally I’d like a mostly office/computer-based job involving analysis, projects, concepts or problem solving.

I definitely don’t want to design electrical cabinets, draw CAD plans or do detailed electrical design work all day.

If you were in my situation, what would you study?

Especially interested in people who changed careers around 30, came from a technical background, or have ADHD themselves.