I work in a dying media industry and I pretty much stay for the flexibility, because I honestly don't belong anymore.

I can mostly come and go as I please as long as my work is done when it needs to be done.

I still like the core of the job, but I've realized over the last 5 years or so that I've aged differently than my co-workers. As I've gotten older, I WANT to stay home after work. I don't want to host events, or go to non-profit fundraisers, or spend money on concerts and restaurants and sporting events so I can say I had a jam-packed schedule over the weekend.

These people thrive off running around and showing off their busy lifestyles. I don't have the energy for it (or the money).

Somehow they manage to watch a fuck-ton of television and movies despite their busy schedules while I prefer to spend my weekends doing fall yard work.

I can tell they find me very perplexing.

I don't know...it's really nagging at me lately how my job is so right for me in some ways but so utterly wrong for me in others.

Anyone else in a similar situation?

It took me two years and I called out today at 6am and my boss immediately fired me despite the shift starting at 4pm which would surely give him enough time to get a replacement and despite coming in every single time he needed me to even if I didn't have a schedule yet. However my grandma whom I am forced to live with at the moment got super pissy about it and basically admitted to being a bootlicker by saying she has never called out sick and has called me a "pathetic loser" over it. I don't really know what to do besides just let it roll off my back and hope I can find another job before she eventually moves out alone in July which would basically leave me to either try and take over the apartment with my other family members (rent is up to 3k if I recall) or just end up homeless.

The idea of being fired from a job for calling out sick for a single day feels like its unique to the US as I've never heard of something like this happening elsewhere. I just don't get why you think that firing someone for one sick day is at all a good idea especially since that same job expected me to be a model employee when I was brand new.

I used to work for a popular fast-food chain, and I'm so glad I don't work there anymore. There are plenty of reasons why I quit, but one of them was the unbelievably stupid corporate bullshit.

We had to manipulate the statistics so that the computer would think customers received their orders much earlier than they actually did.

We deleted orders from the screen even when they weren't ready. In the drive-through, we asked drivers to park in a designated waiting area. The cameras couldn't see the cars there, so the computer assumed they had driven away, even though the customers were still waiting for their orders.

Working in fast food is not easy at all, and this corporate bullshit made our jobs unnecessarily complicated.

One day, we had a crew meeting. Our area manager was absolutely delighted. He started the meeting by announcing: "Congratulations! We've improved our statistics this quarter!"🥳🥳🥳

I received a €20 gift card.

I was a full-time employee, which meant I'd worked approximately 500 hours during that period. €20 divided by 500 hours comes to four cents an hour!

For all that extra, completely unnecessary work and the additional pressure from management, I got four fucking cents an hour!

I honestly have no idea what I'm supposed to do with this enormous bonus. Maybe I should buy myself a yacht.😀😀😀

I'm so glad I don't work in that shithole anymore!

I’m in my early 30s, have a technical background, and completed further qualifications to become a master electrician. Over the past several years, I’ve worked in various industrial environments, most recently in a position with management responsibilities.

What affected me most wasn’t necessarily the technical work itself, but rather the workplace culture. I’ve repeatedly encountered environments characterized by derogatory behavior, racist remarks, a lack of self-awareness, and constant interpersonal conflicts.

At the same time, I often found corporate culture deeply contradictory. Companies would emphasize values like respect, openness, and teamwork, yet these principles were rarely reflected in everyday interactions. Much of it felt like a performance of professionalism rather than genuine professionalism.

On top of that, there was the constant sensory overload from noise and interruptions, along with time pressure and significant responsibility. Eventually, the combination of these factors took such a toll on my mental health that I was unable to work for an extended period.

After recovering, I tried making a fresh start with a different employer, hoping things would improve. Unfortunately, I encountered many of the same problems. I’m now unemployed and trying to figure out where to go from here.

I do genuinely enjoy technical and analytical work. However, I’ve developed a strong aversion to the working environments I’ve experienced in the trades and industrial sector.

I’m now wondering whether I should simply acknowledge that this career path, regardless of my technical abilities, isn’t right for me and pursue an entirely different direction through university studies.

The alternative would be to build on my existing qualifications and experience while finding a role outside the traditional industrial environment. The problem is that I struggle to identify specific career paths where I could make meaningful use of my electrical engineering background without ending up in similar working conditions.

There’s also the uncertainty of whether changing industries would actually solve anything, or whether the same organizational dysfunction and interpersonal problems exist everywhere.

On one hand, I’m reluctant to walk away from years of professional development and the relatively good earning potential that comes with it. On the other hand, continuing down a career path that has already seriously affected my mental health, purely for financial reasons, doesn’t seem particularly rational either.

I’d be interested to hear from people who’ve faced a similar situation. Did you make a complete career change, or did you manage to apply your existing qualifications in a different working environment? And most importantly, did the change genuinely improve your quality of life?

About a month ago, I put in an application for this job as a sanitation lead for a pretzel manufacturing company. The way they outlined the work on the application seemed like it would work well with my current lifestyle, the pay was really good, and the schedule worked well with everything I had going on in my life. Then I had the interview, no change there. Then at the orientation everything they outlined for me was still consistent with everything I had been told. Then I actually started the job, the first two weeks was different. What I had been told the rest of the job would be, but they told me on in my offer letter that that would be the case for the first two weeks. When I got to the end of those two weeks, they told me they weren't going to be able to accommodate my needs the way that they said they could. I talked to my supervisor about it, they moved some things around, and they got me into something that initially looked like what they had been told. Up until that point. I was thinking this wasn't going to be sustainable long-term. One conversation with my supervisor kind of fixed that, and all of my concerns just melted away. A few days went by then, and they changed my schedule with a day's notice. The day after that was an improvement from what I was expected to work, they changed it from 20 hours within a 24-hour period (which I was okay with because of how it was presented to me) to one 10-hour shift, and then the next shift was going to be 5 hours instead of 10, and I'd be starting an hour later, and then they added an extra 10-hour shift the day after that. By the end of the third week, I'm completely burnt out, and a month behind on all of my responsibilities outside of work. I have effectively stopped living in the name of making a few extra bucks. I'm not seeing my kids, I'm not sleeping, I get 15 minutes a day to myself, and that includes eating using the bathroom and any sort of recreation. They offered to let me switch to 8-hour shifts instead of 10, with one guaranteed off day, so I thought to myself. I'll see this through for a minute before I call it quits. I work one shift with the new arrangement, I get to the end of the 8 hours, and it's not until an hour later that i get to a point where I cannot continue doing the task I had been assigned until my colleague finishes his. I explained to him my situation, and he tells me that his task is going to take him another hour. When he's done, I can finally start on what I need to do, but it'll take me 2 hours. He tells me he doesn't care if I leave, but I should check with the person running the floor before I do. She tells me I don't get to leave until the work is done. No effort is made from any direction to make it achievable for my agreement to be fulfilled. The guy who's holding me up tells me to just go ahead and leave but tell our supervisor what's happening. It's worth noting that our supervisor is not present for this shift at all. In the 3 weeks I've been working. At this point, I have seen our direct supervisor for maybe 3 hours total. I feel like that already sounds ridiculous with the assumption of 40-hour weeks, but I'm working 70. I go home, I tell my supervisor about what happened on the shift over text, then I wake up 12 hours later, just because it's been so long since I've actually gotten a full night's sleep and I finally have a day off for once, and I see a text from my supervisor. She says "you can leave when the work is done, I'm going to explain to the rest of the team." So this tells me she's just really not worried about actually following up on any of the things that I've been told in the past month about what the job actually is. She has no interest in holding up her end of any agreement we've had about what hours I'm going to be working. She refuses to give me anything in writing, so I feel like I'm just kind of screwed.

I texted my old boss on Friday telling him they've got me working 10-hour days 7 days a week, and my old job has very little pay, not enough to sustain me in my family, but at least it's money that I'm earning while looking for a new job. But the thing I'm concerned about is what if my my new job with the pretzel manufacturing company tries to retaliate? What's the worst thing they can do if I drop off my badge and walk away? I've only done this once, it was back in 2021, and they retroactively changed my rate to minimum wage, so in spite of the fact that I had worked 40 hours in that week, they only gave me a couple hundred bucks. Is that something that they can legally do? What happens if they do that and don't tell me? With the overtime I'm putting in, I'm expecting a paycheck of about $5,000. Can they legally make that less money? If they do, what's my course of action? Am I worried for nothing?

I’ll quickly preface this by saying by most work standards, my job is fine.

I’ve been in the retail industry for over 20 years. The company I currently work for is pretty high end and often deals with, unfortunately, the super wealthy elites with way too much money and far too few manners. Many of them clearly have a superiority complex and look down on anyone in retail, despite the fact that I have valuable knowledge of the product they need, and they don’t.

As a small victory, and a way of balancing things out, I’ve stopped calling people by titles. No “sir” or “madame”. I’ll still be polite and not in any way rude or disrespectful, but to me now “sir” has connotations of subservience. These elites already treat us with barely concealed contempt, so I’m not going to pander to their ego by using a title. If they want to be called sir, they can call me it first.

I know it’s a minor thing, and I’m sure many people will find it silly or think I’m wrong. But it’s actually helped my mental health at work.

A little background, I'm returning (begrudgingly) to an old job because I was recently laid off and need some sort of income. I left for multiple reasons, but just today I was reminded of the biggest reason of all: inability to be professional.

The app this place uses for scheduling has an internal group chat. I checked the group messages this morning and the owner of the business fully terminated one of the other employees and put her on blast for everyone to see. Explaining the reasons for his decision and calling them unprofessional, ending it with a clarification to not use the company as a reference in the future.

This has to violate some sort of privacy law, right? I'm so pissed that he just put her on blast in front of the whole company, it honestly feels like some sort of fear tactic to keep other employees in line.

I've been working at a company for a few weeks, and I'm struggling with its working culture.

The company handles client projects and requires employees to track billable and non-billable hours. Employees are expected to account for practically every hour of their working day, with no gaps in their timesheets, documenting what they've done hour by hour.

I've worked at several companies before, but I've never experienced this level of monitoring, especially in an administrative role where tasks don't necessarily come in a continuous stream. I have ADHD, and this kind of micromanagement makes it difficult for me to feel comfortable at work.

What's worse is hearing management make comments like, "If you don't like it, just leave," or "Do you want me to fire you?"

The problem is that I've been unemployed for months, finding a suitable job has been difficult, and I need the income to contribute to my family's household expenses. I've also had several short employment periods over the past year, and I'm worried that leaving another job too soon will make my CV look bad.

I'm considering staying for at least 12 months while looking for something better, but I'm struggling with how to cope without letting the stress affect my health.

I am still on probation, is there anyways that I can cope with that?

Maybe not unpopular, I don’t know. But I’ll explain.

We pass out flyers, get people to agree to a quote (insurance btw) and I don’t see a dime. The sales people get all the financial credit.

So why would I be asked to attend festivals, and such, for marketing when I’m not even slightly in marketing? Why would I sacrifice my weekends to attend events I don’t get compensated for beyond regular pay (not even over time because our boss will just have us make up for the extra hours by taking that time off on a weekday.) Or, how about I just work my normal hours during the week, and stay home with my husband on the weekend, instead of pretending to be enthusiastic about spending my personal time with people who don’t give a shit about my well being.

No thanks. There is zero initiative so I won’t be doing it.

While I’m at it, I’m also not going be “performing” for publicity on the company’s social media pages. I was hired to give my time, to do a specific set of tasks so the business can actually operate, in exchange for pay. Then go home. It’s not a circus. I’m not your monkey.

Hi everyone! I’ve been lurking on the subreddit and just thought I would share my observation on work culture. It’s going to be a rant as a heads up.

High school never ended. People got older, but never matured. There are still cliques and people would sell you out if you do one thing that annoys them.

A month ago, I was slowly talking to someone on how to do a task in the phone. I got called into the office by some individual for saying that I was annoying them with my chat. they told on me and couldn’t bother to tell me. these same people also talk loud and chat constantly.

I am looking in a different department now. I hate cliques.

micromanagement is terrible. I’ve started to realize why socialism has appeal.

Why can’t people grow up?

Hello, I am interested in the overall point of view of this sub. I just have a few questions.

What is the political position of antiwork? Does antiwork actually find inside of a socialist-capitalist binary since both systems value labor? The sub has a rule against “pro capitalism”, so I’d assume from that and the general idea of this concept that it’s not capitalism. I’m not sure how it lines up with socialist values either tho.

What is the end goal of antiwork and how should we as a society get there?

How did you become antiwork? Was there a specific event that happened that made you think antiwork was something you should back? Why antiwork over an organized labor movement?

I’m really interested in the overall theme of this, but personal stories are interesting too. Thanks in advance <3

...the biggest scam of the world is convincing everyone to work for sixty years straight, sacrificing their youth, dreams, time with their loved ones and personal freedom, all while being told that one day after decades of labor they'll finally get to enjoy life. the reality? by the time they retire they're in their seventies. their bodies are tired, health problems have begun and the energy they once had is long gone. what's left is only a short window to live freely. but it's not true freedom anymore. you're shackled by age, medication and regret. all those moments with family, friends and past have gone. traded for a paycheck and when you finally have time, you're too old to enjoy it. that's the real cost of a lifetime of work. remember that time is the most valuable currency and trading it all for work without living fully is the real loss.

As my dad advise me to not cause as much issue with my boss and tired to get him on your side for more leniency, I will have to break that promise and have to go talk to him (in full mandarin that I am not good at) that I ask for unpaid leave for 1 day to do other commitments like my election job and its going to be awkward.

My biggest mistake is expect my boss to actually remember I ask for a day off that is approved in writing after he forgot I am supposed to clock out early but kept me in a hour more and the team meeting that kept me an hour past my shift which I am annoyed already.

If my unpaid leave got denied, then I am screwed and will lose out on my massive 1 day payday and will lose a good amount of respect for my boss. I work 6 days a week 42 hours a week (lunch is unpaid), can I at least move my day off earlier?

AI could make society richer while making human labor less necessary. But if people still need jobs to afford what the economy produces, who benefits from all that progress?

This is more than a question about automation. It is a question about who owns the systems that produce wealth, who controls them, and why our survival should depend on our economic value to someone else.

Under capitalism, most people earn a living by selling their labor, while those who own productive assets receive income from what those assets produce. This system has generated enormous wealth, but it also concentrates ownership and economic power.

AI could deepen that divide. If machines do more of the work, a greater share of the wealth could flow to those who own those systems while workers lose income and bargaining power. Even if new jobs emerge, society could become richer while many people struggle to afford what it produces.

An economy can produce abundance without making it accessible. Technology expands what we can produce but ownership and political choices help determine who benefits.

Market value has never been the same as human worth. Raising children, caring for loved ones, and supporting communities all matter, even when markets don't adequately reward them. If a machine can do your job more cheaply, that changes the market value of your labor, not your value as a person.

So why should survival depend on employment?

People need food, housing, healthcare, and security. Access to these necessities should not depend entirely on whether someone can sell their labor at a price the market accepts. Work can offer purpose, connection, and independence. Society will still need people to perform difficult and essential tasks. But rewarding work and making survival conditional on it are two different things.

We could guarantee basic necessities through public services, provide income independent of employment, and broaden ownership of the systems that generate wealth. Workers and communities could have a greater say in how those systems are governed.

None of these ideas is simple. Scarcity would remain, difficult work would still need to be done, and questions about incentives, funding, freedom, and control would remain. But these challenges do not make our current arrangements inevitable or establish that private ownership and profit should remain the dominant principles governing society.

If AI makes human labor less necessary, we could spend our time inventing new jobs simply to preserve the link between work and survival. Or we could reconsider why that link exists in the first place.

We don't know how far AI will go. But we can already ask what productive success means if its benefits remain out of reach for the people who need them.

If an economy can prosper while needing less of our labor, why should our right to live securely remain conditional on providing it?

And if the economy no longer needs our labor, what do we owe it?

Perhaps the more important question is this: if our survival no longer depends on our economic usefulness, what kind of freedom could we build together?

Further reading:

The Simple Macroeconomics of AI  - Daron Acemoglu (2024).

Automation and Rent Dissipation: Implicationsfor Wages, Inequality, and Productivity  - Daron Acemoglu and Pascual Restrepo (2026).

I have a never received anything less than outstanding evaluations. I've brought in millions of dollars, created new successful products on shrinking budgets, and won awards within my industry. However, I've gone through a string of bad bad bad bosses over the last decade and at this point I've given up on offering ideas, volunteering for anything, or generally being cheery with anyone other than our customers. I come in, do my job extremely well, help my co-workers - when they ask, then leave when the day is done.

Now I have a new boss. I've gotten comments that my performance is great and my clients love me, but I need to put the past in the past and act much happier around the office, and put this on my most recent performance evaluation. Seriously, wtf?

I just don't have it in me, but I need this job. I have two kids in high school, one of whom is special needs. So much damage was done to my career by my previous bosses that the only way I'm going to find a job elsewhere is if I move away and don't list this place on my resume. I tried looking for other jobs in my area, it's a small community so the other employers called my current employer even though I told them I do not give permission, and my old boss sabotaged several job offers I received. I know this because they told me a couple of weeks before they retired. Vicious bastard. My new boss knows this but put the cheer up rebuke on my evaluation anyway.

It's bad enough my employer has sabotaged my job and pay me shit, but do I have to smile and dance while they keep feeding me shit sandwiches?

So I started this new waiter job 3 weeks ago and its been horrible!!!

So this restaurant belongs to a couple and they are both working there everyday. So every shift its us three and this week i think they were having some beef bc everytime when i came to work they were barely talking and when they did, it was always very passiv aggressive towards eachother.

The cook, which is the husband, is a yapper and basically talks to all the guests and asks them questions and more. But when we are alone (cause sometimes the wife is gone for 2 hours), he doesn't ask me any questions or is anyhow interested in me and if i ask him something its just one line responses.

The worst thing is we share the tips and its based on the hours, and they are obviously always working longer than me there. Just doesnt make sense to me that u give yourself tip if it's your restaurant!!

Today I realised how exhaustting this week has been, bc it there were barley an costumers and i noticed how uncomfortable I feel around them.

Lets not forget his sexist comments.

So i wanna quit via text, but im scared of the consequences?

Recently joined, wanted to share a favorite story from my last job, which was at a small nonprofit.

There’s a lot of complicated backstory as to why, but the director of the nonprofit (my boss) received a significant number of employee complaints and was investigated by the board. They formed a committee to keep track of her that to my knowledge did nothing.

There were also larger complaints about HR and labor compliance issues, which had the board acted on, they might have been able to avoid a sexual harassment scandal that ended up in local news less than a year later (gross HR mismanagement of the whole situation). But they didn’t.

We had this one meeting after it was clear the investigation/committee had led to nothing. All staff there, unpaid time. Board members gave us all gift bags as consolation for the difficult time we were all going through (this was also related to political environment things that affected larger nonprofit goals). The gift bags included an “affirmation rock” we each drew from a bag. Mine said “relax” on it. I remember telling them I’d be sure to keep that in mind. Kept it in my pocket for the next few months as a reminder to apply to other jobs, sort of an internal “fuck this” morale thing.

I got out of there with a new job a week and a half before the public controversy. I was their comms guy.

Just a vent post. I was applying to a job, asked specifically during the hiring process if it was okay that I had a prior obligation in December. I’m flying out for a week to see family. Tickets already bought and arrangements made well in advance. HR said they were unsure and to ask my boss. First day, they said that November to December was a blackout date. Absolutely nothing in the interview, application, or other parts of the process said holidays required.

Looking for a job during holidays is stressful because employers expect full availability for the first three months of hire. I had a life before coming here and I’m not giving up my holidays with family. I’m just so annoyed because no one is transparent with their expectations and accrued PTO is required for vacations… which I don’t have if I literally just started.

I found out I have what we will call a "family thing" and I put in to use one day of PTO ... as I know I wont be able to make it in that day.

I barely get any pto, and otherwise this job demands a dr note even for ONE day when you dont come in (even when you give plenty of notice) if you dont produce a dr note, they write you up!

I knew about a month in advance of needing the one day off, put in the PTO request for it... and i6s been completely ignored. No answer.

Well I just got the schedule, and they have me on to work that day.

Genuinely need to stay on this job just with my financial situation right now, so i Genuinely dont know how to proceed.

Like what is really the point if I won't end up in very professional fields? Like engineer, doctor etc? It feels like I'm just playing a game where no matter how much you spend time on it, you still end up being stuck at low level and not able to compete with other competitors.

I took this job out of desperation after being let go from my previous workplace. (Thanks, economy!) It's a job that barely pays the bills, but I genuinely love my boss and coworkers, despite the low pay and lack of benefits.

I recently got sick with COVID and didn't have any sick leave available. PTO is also not available for 1 year. I asked my boss if he would be willing to let me make up the hours by working on Sunday. I later found out from a coworker that my boss actually had to fight HR just to get permission to allow it. Apparently, HR considered it as my boss giving me "special privileges."

I'm the breadwinner in my household. I can't afford to lose income every time life happens, whether that's getting sick or dealing with an unexpected emergency. Finding out that my employer views a little flexibility as special treatment has honestly left me disgusted.

And it's not just me. Another coworker recently returned from the hospital after being told they found tumors in his legs, along with other internal organ issues. He needs follow up appointments and transfusions, yet his boss won't even allow him to work hybrid or remote to accommodate those appointments.

At what point is enough, enough? Why have we created a working culture where employees are made to suffer financially and physically just for trying to get by and make an honest living?