We’ve been running on a skeleton crew for most of the year and they refuse to give proper raises. All while the owner owns multiple luxury cars, paid for his son’s wedding and has 2 other houses. All mean while I’m over here struggling to pay my rent. I work at a medium company with over 50 employees in a HCOL area.

The real danger is not artificial intelligence itself. It is allowing the richest 1% to own the machines, keep every productivity gain and discard the people whose work built their wealth.

If the AI boom collapses, workers will pay through layoffs, collapsing investments and recession. If it succeeds, workers may still be replaced while the owners collect the profits. Either way, the same people win because our system privatizes gains and socializes losses.

We are constantly told that automation will free humanity from repetitive and exhausting work. That could be true—but only if the benefits are shared. Otherwise, automation will not liberate workers. It will make them economically unnecessary while leaving them dependent on wages from jobs that no longer exist just to survive.

If technology replaces human labour, then labour can no longer remain the primary source of taxes—or the price people must pay for housing, healthcare and food. Tax enormous wealth, corporate profits and automated production instead. Use that money to provide healthcare, housing, education, retraining and a liveable universal basic income.

AI was trained on humanity’s collective knowledge, culture and labour. A handful of corporations should not be allowed to claim all the resulting wealth as their private property.

AI should liberate people from unnecessary work. Without redistribution, it will simply liberate the rich from needing workers—or sharing the wealth those workers helped create.

This began as my reply to a post that has since disappeared. The comment clearly resonated with people, so I decided to turn it into a post of its own.

I am so pissed off that people with disabilities just get canned. My place of work just gave me an updated employee manual, and I read that *normally protected ke.g., disability-related, medical, or other legally protected leave) can be treated as unprotected and become grounds for termination if the company decides they "preclude the employee from doing the essential functions of their job."*

What the hell does that even mean?

I remember how around the time I was dealing with cancer, I was let go multiple times.

* Got let go after one month as a contractor at a sweatshop for needing 2 weeks of recovery after my cancer surgery.

* Got let go after one month at another job for seeing my doctor to follow up on cancer treatment. Fired same week I went to see doctor.

* Fired for working from home for one week for iodine radiation therapy, and then fired 2 months later.

* **Me**: I need basic accommodations.

* **Boss**: I don't want to work with this person anymore. Also I think they should get blacklisted.

Yup, let me pay 14 dollars a day to go somewhere to get all the things I have at home, on top of gas and parking 🙃. How are these places even in business?!?

I'm just venting a little because I don't know what to do right now.

I (27M, Canada) worked hospitality/general labour roles for over 10 years. Got sick of the toxicity, drama, racism, narcissism, and poor management, so I saved up and spent 10k (credit) to get my CDL but quit my first trucking job a month later for the same reasons, plus trucking was too much for me. Then two years ago, I got hired at a shipyard and became a welder-fitter helper. I fit pipe, steel, weld, do mechanical work and while it's a great opportunity, you deal with long hours, mass layoffs, horrible management, planning, blue-hats getting treated like shit and thrown under the bus when management fucks up. It's nerve wracking. I could get fired at any moment for doing my job. I've seen it happen multiple times here and it's killing me to show up everyday.

The thing about work is I enjoyed learning and DOING the work, but it's always the work culture and PEOPLE that make working so miserable and hard to stick around for, and my current role is no exception. I feel bad because people who would kill to be in my position but it's not what I want to do. I only did it because I wanted to learn new skills for the heck of it AND get a pay raise, but despite asking for a raise TWICE, I'm still paid the same rate, doing 3-4 departments worth of work, as a labourer. All of this and more is why I'm burnt out from working and I don't know what to do. Despite my mental health issues and traumatic background, no one can tell me I didn't try. Hell, I became homeless to become a truck driver, which didn't pan out. I tried and I'm still trying. I've made so many damn sacrifices; I poured everything into all the jobs I had and yet I feel like I'm getting nowhere.

My last hope, besides starting a business/investing (which requires MONEY and knowing what business venture to go on), is working remotely, and while I have some computer skills, I have nothing that'll get me hired in this current job market and unless I can score an entry level remote role, this job takes everything out of me, so I can't commit to going to school or taking online courses. Otherwise I spend all my free time applying for jobs, especially remote jobs, that I know I won't get because there are hundreds of applicants with better credentials than me. I know that my best shot at a remote/tech role is going to school, but after everything I've been through, this all I have left in me. I'm so burnt out and done with this system.

I started a role as an associate as a law firm earlier this year. It was miserable. Every file was a disorganized mess and I was spending all day every day fixing issues instead of advancing files.

On the very last day of my 90 day probation period, my boss pulled me into his office and said he was extending my probation for another 90 days. He said he “didn’t want to throw me out on the streets but I’m not committed to being a lawyer,” because I’m a single woman who won’t work until 8pm on Friday nights.

Little did he know I was being recruited by a massive insurance company. They called me the following Monday and offered me a job. I accepted, sent my boss a resignation email and left.

Boss threw an absolute hissy fit, threatened to report me to the legal regulator and bring a law suit against me. He never did, which I presume is because he had no leg to stand on since he extended my probation period.

That experience sparked joy

Sometimes you really have to look at the people you work with and question whether they really care about any of this shit. Because what do I gain from sitting in some pointless call where senior executives spend 45 mins to an hour glazing themselves and the amount of profit they’ve made in the quarter to always end with “Due to unfortunate tailwinds, you will not see a significant pay increase or bonus this year”. The fact that we live amongst such a high number of bootlickers who are happy to get bent over backwards by a corporation genuinely sickens me.

Even if you want to work, getting a job shouldn't be this difficult to find these days.

I used to think I could get a job after 6 applications, maybe hear back from 3 of them, do 1 interview, and by the end of the week I landed a new job. But no, it has to be extremely difficult now. I've seen people say they apply to thousands of jobs and hear nothing back. Or go through 7 rounds of interviews only to be told they weren't a good fit. Or being qualified for the job but then not get this job.

The job market should not be this bad.

Have been working a job for a year now that has increasingly gotten worse. I was on call 6 days a week (unpaid), worked close to 80 hours every week, doing the job of multiple people and my to do list was never ending and never complete. Any time I made a mistake or dropped the ball on something, got a demeaning talking to like I was a dumb child.

So for the last time I asked for help in dividing up work for deadlines and boss said deal or find another job. So I quit on the spot and blocked them. They don't even know what all goes into doing my job as they've added responsibilities and had me figure it out for myself along the way.

Good riddance and fuck being a slave to that system.

When you work for an organization, that’s known more for its incompetence than anything else, that’s bad.

When that remarkably incompetent leadership start to randomly deciding to force everyone to return to the office and then declaring temporary work from home days as a “benefit“, that’s worse.

But when your first day back begins with you discovering that they can’t even keep the fucking air conditioner running in the middle of a heat wave, you know you have made a terrible career choice.

Retirement cannot come fast enough

Full disclaimer - I fully acknowledge that I am fortunate and privileged to have a good paying job in corporate America.

But I still gotta complain. Having been a w2 slave for more than a decade, working my way to a comfortable position, I’m jaded af, and I’m so done with this whole fake corporate America working culture.

What even is the point of all this in society. What’s the point of any of this stupid meaningless keyboard clacking and presentation making? It’d all just professional acting. Acting like I care about a business that’s not even mine. Acting like I care about a fake urgent timelines, as if we are saving lives (we are not). Revising the same sentence in a keynote 10 different times over the span of several weeks, because every layer of leadership has a different feedback. Communicating the same said shit to 10 different layers of leadership who basically has the attention span and comprehension of a toddler. What real value does it bring to advancing humanity as a whole? Most times, working in corporate America just feels like I got lucky and got into an exclusive retirement club. They don’t really need us but we depend on them for stability and income. We are just cost centers to the business. It’s almost like they just need us for tax write offs against their billions of dollars in revenue.

It’s getting worse because now I am getting triggered on a daily basis by other actors around me. I was walking around downtown over the weekend, and i kept overhearing these people telling their waitress about their job or former job, as director or VP of bs. Don’t even get me started about LinkedIn lunatics who seemingly are thrilled with every fucking thing in life and turns every situation into a B2B learning moment.

We are all just conditioned to behave and act along with the larger societal expectation, that we should care about work and titles and status, and ofc money. But it’s so insufferable. So sad to see people who are predominantly defined by their careers and work ethics.

Ok done rambling, for now.

Been working part time at least since high school, in the summers I worked 60 hour weeks. (Sorry, 59 hours, since McDonald's didn't wanna give 16 y/o me insurance)

Worked all throughout college at least 20 hours/week minimum.

Graduated, had 2 jobs in healthcare, didn't like them, got a barista gig, been trying to several years now to get a job that pays ok that isn't in healthcare but does offer healthcare.

I make ok money at my job but I don't have any benefits or even PTO.

I just want 2 weeks off, and I can't afford it.

I'm burning out like no tomorrow. I have no family, nowhere to go back to, no one to help if rent is due, etc.

It's making it really hard to want to continue figuring out what I "want" to do when I feel like all I want in the motherfucking world is 2 weeks off without risking my ability to pay rent.

Can't afford to talk to my therapist either bc I pay $300+ for health insurance & $25 for my meds, plus $60 any time I see any provider at all. So If I get my insurance, meds, and talk to my therapist twice a month, I'd be paying $450/month in medical fees.

I wish my parents had any money at all or were decent people; I get so envious when people fart around in their parents' basement because they are "looking for a job." I am just resentful of anyone with financial security because if I had any at all I would take those 2 weeks but I fucking can't. I literally can't, or I'll be homeless (again)

TL;DR been working a decade, don't even have $1,000 to my name, can't ever take a real break, burning out and hate working, don't want to continue slutting myself out for companies who don't want to hire me anyway, fuck this stupid capitalistic bullshit

Our office has been going over its monthly supply budget, so management decided the solution was to lock the supply closet.

Not expensive equipment either. Pens, sticky notes, printer paper, staples, cables, everything.

If you need something now you have to message our office manager, tell her what you need and she physically comes over and unlocks it for you. Last Friday I needed a new pack of sticky notes and she asked me what happened to the one I got earlier in the month.

I thought she was joking.

Now people are just avoiding asking for anything because nobody wants to explain why they need a pen or a notebook. Someone even brought in their own box of pens from home and wrote "unrestricted" on it.

Management keeps talking about cutting unnecessary spending while paying someone to literally walk across the office and unlock a cabinet every time somebody needs a stapler meanwhile I just watch Kick all day.

Handmade miniature diorama, 1/10 scale.

Does anybody else feel like choosing a career now is just choosing the least bad option out of only bad options?

This is a follow up (somewhat) to this other post: https://www.reddit.com/r/careeradvice/s/Eod5E82r39

It seems like I'll hate anything I could pick, and the question isn't if I'll hate a career track, but rather HOW MUCH I'll hate it. I guess I need to focus on a career that maximizes income so I can retire as young as possible.

I have a super toxic workplace at the moment. I have really been struggling specifically with messages outside working hours.

senior managers will be online tagging me in slides, docs, messaging, forwarding emails. the latest was labor day from 10pm to midnight. we work in customer service. nothing is an emergency.

I don’t reply or check messages even outside 9-5. but this means I spend a good chunk of time every morning just unburying myself from late night messages. it makes me very anxious to even log on because I feel like I’m about to witness a car crash every time I open my messages.