Anyone else having any crazy increases?

I work customer support for an internet provider. Last week an older customer emailed our department thanking my coworker for spending 40 minutes helping her reconnect her router.

Our manager shared the email in the team chat, congratulating him for providing excellent customer service.

That same afternoon he called my coworker into a meeting because his average call time was too high. He actually used that exact call as an example.

My coworker asked if he was supposed to hang up before the customer got her internet working.

Manager said "that's not what I'm saying" but couldn't explain what he should've done differently.

So apparently we're supposed to solve every problem, just make sure it takes less than 6 minutes.

Have you guys noticed how switching jobs in the same industry now feels like walking right back into the exact same HR department you just left? Same skeleton crews doing the work of three people, same 2% "merit" raises while the company brags about record revenue, and the exact same gaslighting from middle management when you burn out.

I used to think all these CEOs were just copying each other until I read this breakdown earlier today on the Swiss university study that mapped out 43,060 global companies. It turns out just 147 interlocking financial firms and asset managers like BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Street control nearly 40% of the entire corporate network through overlapping shares

What really opened my eyes in that writeup is how the loud tech billionaires on the Forbes list are basically paid heat shields. The media puts Musk and Bezos on TV every day to soak up our anger while multi generational family trusts and those 147 institutional boards stay completely invisible, forcing every company you can possibly apply to into cutting labor costs at the exact same time.

And now they aren't just taking our time at work, they want our paychecks back as rent too. Since 1971 worker productivity grew 3.5x faster than wages (starter homes would literally cost $138,000 today if prices followed pay), and MetLife forecasts that Wall Street institutions are on track to own 40% of single family rental homes by 2030. The second half of this article goes deep into how they engineered this modern company town so workers are too exhausted and one paycheck from eviction to ever organize or fight back before 2030.

How are we supposed to negotiate for fair pay when the exact same institutional shareholders own our bosses AND the corporate landlords buying up our neighborhoods?

I work at a small print shop. Our regional manager visited last month and complained that the stacks of finished orders behind the counter made the place look messy.

Everything was sorted by last name and ready for pickup. Nobody had complained.

Now we're required to move all completed orders into a storage room every morning and retrieve them individually when customers show up.

Yesterday a customer waited almost 20 minutes because someone had put his order in the wrong stack. Our manager blamed us for being disorganized.

We had a perfectly functioning system until someone who visits twice a year decided it looked bad.

I made a LinkedIn in college and have since really only used it to look for jobs. I don't have the subscription or anything, but I get the notifications for profile views.

Every single week. I get an email saying the HR person (singular - also the founder... no conflict of interest there whatsoever /s) has viewed my profile in the past 24 hours. Also 4+ different people from my old company are viewing my profile every week. I've checked, and these are not duplicate emails or notifications from the past 90 days. It's always from the past week.

What could possibly be the reason for them doing this?

It's mildly annoying because I do use those emails to look out for new jobs. I didn't think about blocking them until recently, but I'd have to block 20+ people individually and that just seems tedious.

Reposting because I didn’t realize a whole name was in the original screenshot

So a bit of backround, I was working at a law firm. The main lawyer(Larry) is 80 years old and does eviction law. I should have walked out during the interview but I was so desperate for a job. He literally told me “black people like to put letters in a scrabble bag and pick out what they draw.”

At the time, I was like oh wow that’s absolutely insane but the hours are good and the pay is meh so this will help me get through college. As time went on, he told me he was a reformed confederate and called the holocaust the “holocrap.”

So today, I left at 9 like I do every Tuesday morning for my class, and while I was at school I let him know that I got an email reminder about my honors society meeting so I wouldn’t be back until 2. At first, he told me to take the rest of the day off. About 20 minutes later he sent me this.

I just find it absolutely insane how he claims he didn’t know about my Tuesday class even though I have been going every single Tuesday since the semester started. When he talks about “reassigning” my coworker, I got moved to the reception desk last week because this office is a revolving door(no surprise there) and two people quit. I just asked her to watch it until I got back and she always does when I go on my lunch break.

I literally have no idea what he means by “all the other issues with you” because I have never been written up or disciplined for anything.

Oh well, I hated that job anyways. Luckily my school is holding a job fair tomorrow. I guess I’ll just collect unemployment until I find something new. I have in text messages that he knew about my Tuesday class anyways soooo idk. I’m so sick of boomers

8 hours a day with a 1 hour break,now that could seem like a decent work hour if it wasn't for the fact we are in a fucking factory,you don't know how many times I had to run to the bathroom and lock me there for 5/10 minutes just beacouse my body was about to collapse from working hard jobs non stop,I personally believe factory jobs should either start at 8 am and end at 4 pm or give 20 minutes breaks every 2 hours (in our factory we Don't even have the 10 min break every 2 hours btw 😊🤦🫩) hopefully with the rise of ai certain jobs won't be given to humans anymore,like to make you understand how much I hate this job I'd rather work as a janitor with minimum wage rather than working there a single day

I quit my job this morning effective immediately. I’m going to try and keep this short. I got hired as a Logistics, Fulfillment, and Inventory Specialist and i was there for about a month and a half before quitting today. Although the job description had about 50 bullet points of what the position consisted of, the more time I worked the more I felt like it was a bait and switch. They have me building RV style seats and that’s mainly it, most of the other products they sell are either small and quickly boxed up and shipped or drop shipped from other factories meaning we don’t hold the physical product in our warehouse. They just changed the design of the hardware components right before I got brought on as the seats were failing Department Of Transportation Pull Tests meaning they’d fail in a crash. So now most of my job is just hand fabricating specialized nuts that haven’t been pull tested, so we don’t know if they even work. This process adds about 2-3 hrs to each seat that already takes 2 ish hours to put together. These seats are also the bottom of the barrel Chinese crap that’s universal meaning I’m having to DIY and drill stuff to make it fit.

It felt like I was building stuff that I knew was janky, this was exacerbated by the fact that they are profiting $3500 off these chairs which is insane margin. They sell these for like $5k and it just feels so janky and cheap but they label it as a “luxury”. I had go workers tell me they wouldn’t put their child in the seat. Which made me sick once I saw a clients van with the seat in it with a child’s booster seat on top.

They also promised me a lot, forklift certification that was always “this Friday” but never happened. I’ve been chasing my manager down for a 30 day review which was always “this friday” and never happened. I asked to take on more responsibility as is was stressed that I’d be taking things off my managers and the business owners plate, I told them I could handle client and customer communication and updates and they just said “eventually”. So pretty much all I was doing was hand cranking through .25 inch steel all day and putting together janky seats that they were charging a premium for.

I quit this morning and got a text from my boss pretty much saying “ X told us you would no longer be working at x company, I’m sorry to hear that. Would you like to chat?” And then 15 minutes later after no response hits me with “ I was planning a review with pay bump and more responsibilities this week “. My bullshit detector is flying off at this point because I’ve been asking for a review, and why would you give someone a raise you just hired a month ago? Why not just start them at that wage with the full responsibilities of the job?

I’m feeling uneasy as I have nothing lined up and haven’t even began looking for something else, however I’m confident I’ll find something and thankfully I have a slight savings to help me transition to a new job over the next couple months.

I quit because I couldn’t stomach putting together janky shit while every option I gave them to clear the bottleneck was pushed to the side. I quickly felt like I was just hired to put seats together and shut up. The product itself was so janky it made me sick putting it together just thinking about the possibility of it being involved in a wreck. They always said “well it’s an RV seat so it doesn’t have the same level of certifications as a traditional DOT car seat”. I hated that they operated in the gray area just so they could profit.

Anywho, I’d like input, advice, stories of shitty jobs that went against your inner convictions. Thanks for reading and I hope you’re doing well today 🤘🏻

Following up on a previous post (not mine) about a dentist who closed his practice abruptly and sent out a letter to 1,000 patients blaming (and naming) his former office manager https://archive.ph/2026.10.21-145320/https://sgfcitizen.org/steve-pokin-columns-2/springfield-dental-office-closure/

Maybe I’m burnt out from being in my field for so long (massage therapy) but I don’t know where to go from here now that I can’t really do my job anymore (physically it hurts too much). I’m thinking about what to do next, or what I will settle for in order to make ends meet (massage is the most money I’ve ever made averaging around $40 an hour in a better economy, and currently around $25 an hour plus tips) but I just don’t want to pretend that I care about the work I do. How do you mask “work ethic”?

More than 9,000 workers across Stellantis’ operations in Canada have voted by 97.3 percent for strike action to fight layoffs and the automaker’s plan to sell off the Brampton Assembly Plant to a producer of military vehicles.

Pictures and worker reports confirmed a massive turnout at Caesars Colosseum in Windsor, where the 6,400 workers employed at the Windsor Assembly Plant got a negotiations update before casting their strike-vote ballots. Workers at the shuttered Brampton Assembly Plant and the casting plant in Etobicoke also voted last weekend to give Unifor a strike mandate.

Given the opportunity to express their determination to fight job cuts and eroding living standards, autoworkers filled the 5,000-seat auditorium to near capacity and cast an almost unanimous vote to strike. The huge turnout of rank-and-file workers stands in sharp contrast to the boycott of the United Auto Workers election across the border in the US where nine out of 10 workers abstained from the vote.

UAW President Shawn Fain, a vocal advocate of Trump’s “America First” tariffs, was “re-elected” with the votes of just 6 percent of the membership. This was not due to “apathy” but the broad hostility of rank-and-file workers to the UAW apparatus, which has colluded with the attack on their jobs and living standards. Opposed to a common fight by workers across the borders, the UAW has not informed workers in the US about the strike vote in Canada.

For its part, the Unifor bureaucracy, like the UAW in the US, is committed to blocking any industrial action at all costs. In announcing the results of the vote, Unifor officials declared that a strike would only be the “last resort” and that outstanding issues with Stellantis could be resolved at the “bargaining table.”

Even though the three-year contract for Stellantis workers expired a month ago on September 21, Unifor has yet to file a request for a “no board” report, a government-imposed requirement before any legal strike action can be taken. It would take 17 days after a conciliator issues such a report before Stellantis workers would be legally entitled to strike, meaning that the earliest they could walk off the job would be the second week of November.

None of the issues that motivated Stellantis workers to vote for a strike can be resolved within the framework of a collective bargaining struggle. That requires the waging of an industrial and political counteroffensive against the global restructuring of the auto industry being carried out by the Detroit Three and their competitors, and the class war agenda of the ruling elites across North America. The push to boost corporate profits amid the transition to electric vehicles and to convert vast swathes of civilian production to manufacturing armaments for war confront autoworkers with the prospect of job losses, real wage cuts and worsening conditions in the plants. Opposing this requires mobilizing autoworkers in the US, Canada and Mexico—as well as other manufacturing workers in steel and related industries—in a common fight against the global corporations and the capitalist governments that defend them.

...

Unifor’s determination to prevent a strike flows from its Canadian nationalism and corporatism. The bureaucracy’s main concern is to retain its “partnership” with the auto bosses, and the federal Liberal and Ontario Progressive Conservative governments, with which it works closely to protect the interests of Canadian big business. Payne sits on Prime Minister Mark Carney’s Canada-US trade war Advisory Council and heads a union that is one of the loudest champions of the corporatist “Team Canada” alliance that suppresses the class struggle in the interests of corporate Canada.

This nationalist propaganda aims to subordinate the working class to the interests of Canadian capital by convincing workers that they are “in it together” in a “common struggle”  with their capitalist exploiters in opposing Trump. In reality, Canada’s corporate elite has broad agreement with Trump’s social policies, including attacks on workers’ rights, massive cuts to public services and the redirection of society’s resources to waging war around the world. They merely complain that Trump’s “America First” agenda, summed up in his repeated threats to annex Canada, cuts Canadian capitalism out of profits at home and abroad.

For over four decades, Unifor has worked tirelessly to split autoworkers in Canada from their class brothers and sisters in the US. The nationalist split by the Canadian division of the UAW in 1985 to form the Canadian Auto Workers (CAW), Unifor’s predecessor, was an integral element in the union bureaucracy’s trampling on all the militant traditions forged by North American autoworkers in the mass organizing struggles of the 1930s and 1940s. It set in motion a decades-long race to the bottom that was facilitated by the whipsawing of wages, benefits and jobs back and forth across the border with the complicity of both the UAW and CAW/Unifor.

...

Rank-and-file autoworkers have consistently spoken out against this foul nationalism when given the chance. Mack Trucks worker and socialist candidate for UAW president Will Lehman’s recent statement calling for a joint struggle of US and Canadian autoworkers to stop the job cuts at Brampton Assembly was warmly received by Stellantis workers in Windsor. When a campaign team visited Windsor Assembly earlier this month to discuss Lehman’s program of abolishing the union apparatus, returning power to the shop floor, and uniting American, Canadian and Mexican autoworkers, one Stellantis worker responded, “The whole industry in North America has always been integrated. Now, throwing tariffs on, like they are a ‘Canadian product,’ it’s not fair. It’s better to be always united together, like as one supply chain and one auto manufacturer.”

Another added, “At one time US and Canadian workers were in the same union. We can’t win if we are separated. We need to get back together because the governments and companies, the big money, are destroying us.”

The powerful strike vote by Stellantis workers shows that they are determined to fight the job cuts. That sentiment must now be oriented to a program of struggle, mobilizing autoworkers across North America against the dictates of the auto bosses, their partners in the government, and the Unifor and UAW bureaucracies.

No genuine struggle in defence of jobs will take place unless Stellantis workers build rank-and-file committees in Windsor, Brampton and Etobicoke to seize control of the fight from the pro-corporate, nationalist Unifor apparatus. These committees must coordinate strike action and construct a joint movement with autoworkers in the US, Mexico and internationally through the International Workers Alliance of Rank-and-File Committees (IWA-RFC).

Resistance is spreading across North America. Twelve hundred workers at National Steel Car in Hamilton, North America’s principal rail car manufacturer, are now in their third month of strike action, fighting to put an end to a murderous piece-rate pay regime. Some 500 steelworkers at Stelco in Hamilton and Nanticoke face layoff, while some 23,000 workers at US Steel and Cleveland-Cliffs, which owns Stelco and is throwing the Canadian workers out of their jobs, are being forced to continue on the job on contract extensions—now more than six weeks old—agreed to by the United Steelworkers to block a strike.

The task is to mobilize workers internationally to defend all jobs, and link this to the fight for workers’ control over production and political power. Only then can society’s vast resources be deployed to obtain secure, well-paid modern industrial jobs for all, rather than to fill the pockets of the oligarchs and big shareholders.

Who has dealt with U.S unemployment (California is where we are) with their expectations you be actively looking for work? Best tips to performatively and unsuccessfully fulfill work search requirements without gaining a job? Any tips to draw TF out of unemployment. Asking for a friend who would have otherwise been having a paternity leave in a couple months= no point getting a job as you wouldn’t get paid or even job protected leave . How to write a shitty but passable resume which is technically true and looks like legit effort but will never get you a job? Any advice would be appreciated.

I just hired a trans woman, she was by far the best candidate. I work at a place that has a diverse group of both employees and customers, many of which lean or are far right. I am terrified at the possible fallout that may happen. I worked hard to get to the point I'm at, and, it pisses me off that I have to be worried to hire someone so qualified because of bigots. I did my best to warn her, and she seems to be ready and willing.

I just hope for the best.

I work in an office setting where all my work is done on the computer, and I schedule appointments with all my customers. There is a front desk that manages all the walk-ins, and maybe twice a week I'll get pulled to the front for a quick 10-second answer. I attend all my appointments and get all my work done. If I finish my work or get tired of sitting in my cramped cubicle, I'll go find a conference room elsewhere in the building where it's quieter, or take my virtual meetings in the courtyard.

I rarely interact with my boss. He's upper management, so he doesn't even look at my work or check if I'm doing ok. I probably only talk with him for 1-2 minutes every month. While I'm working away from my desk, he just sends me a Teams chat out of thin air. Knowing him, he's basically implying that since I'm not sitting at my desk, it means I'm not working. No evidence, no mention of any problems, just asking if I'm still working. And when I ask him what he needs, he just folds. It blows my mind that these types of people exist. Passive aggressive prick.

What happens when people can no longer afford to do their jobs?

Hey everyone! 👋 We're EUobserver, an independent European newsroom, and we've been following protests in southern Italy that haven't received much attention outside the region.

Farmers and truck drivers have been blocking roads as rising fuel and production costs make it increasingly difficult to earn a living. Some supermarkets have even been left with empty shelves.

Our reporter spoke with workers in Sicily about the pressures they're facing.

And there's something quite striking about this situation: these are people producing food and transporting essential goods, yet they're struggling to make their own work financially sustainable.

How did we get to a point where working hard doesn't necessarily mean being able to make a decent living?

And have you seen similar situations among workers in your own country?

Here's our reporting for anyone interested in the situation in Italy. We'd be interested in discussing it here, too, let us know what you're thinking :)

Has anyone done this, or currently doing this?

I am sick to death of my passive aggressive boss taking his anger out on the wrong people (mainly me). He’s manager and I’m the assistant manager.

He’s a lazy, fat piece of shit who seems to only favour 2 of my colleagues, they’re all similar personality wise.

I am his doormat, he tries to fuck around with my holiday, makes me do all the work while he sits back and takes his big salary (found him playing darts in the warehouse today whilst we were busy). He bombards me with information and tasks then snaps if anything is done incorrectly. Infront of others.

He’s more than capable of pulling his own weight, I was extremely close to walking straight out on him today, it felt freeing.

I have saved enough money to last me a good few months if I wanted to walk without notice. But I don’t want to be jobless or spend my limited free time looking for another job just because of him. The work is fine when he’s not there.

I am thinking I should just stop communicating with him unless he speaks to me. Just gray rock the fuck out of him. He’s a sad, pathetic man. He is impossible to reason with. He’s full of his own self pity and arrogance.

Absolute worst case scenario, I keep taking the salary and completely ease off. I have gone above and beyond forever but I think that will stop as of today.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated

God bless ✌️

This is just a vent post. It’s been weeks and I’m still unbelievably besides myself.

I used to work for a college in the student financial department. When I first started there almost 5 years ago I was working in the bursar department and then we combined with financial aid to make student financial services. I learned everything diligently, I followed the rules, I did the best I could. I even got a masters degree during it in management and communication.

At the end of last year my one coworker in my portion of the department had to leave for a medical emergency so I had to run student accounts on my own for a couple of months. I had to piece together processes my ex coworker used to do because she left no instructions, I trained new people, I pioneered new and more efficient ways of doing things. At every meeting I had with the director of my department, she always said how good of a job I did. She praised me for my efforts and was astonished at what I accomplished. Her and I kept pushing to gain a higher title or acknowledgment but it was shot down by the uppers.

All of that didn’t matter. I came back from a vacation on 10/1/26 and was fired 10/2/26 by the VP of the department. The official reason was that we’re in an at will state. In my termination letter it states that I had multiple one on one meetings stating I didn’t meet expectations (when asked they refused to show documentation of these supposed meetings). But the reason that was told to the director (that she was told not to tell me)? Because I “had my head down” at 4:30 (we close at 5 and most of the people in the building weren’t even there) the Thursday I was back. I was taking a 5 minute break looking at a recipe on my phone from working all day catching up on what I missed from when I was on vacation.

But officially, it’s because we’re in an at will state. Just because they can.

My director tried to fight for me but the decision was already made by the uppers before she even stepped foot in the office that morning.

I know what some people might say “what do you expect, capitalism” and yes those people might be right but it doesn’t change the fact that I unexpectedly lost my job for a BS reason. I lost my source of income to pay my mortgage and bills and all they told me officially was “just because we can”.

Thank you for reading my vent. Still figuring things out.

I had been unemployed since the end of January when a coworker illegally accessed one of my personal accounts and reported private stuff to HR and I was fired. sucks, but we move on.

I guess the job market was really fucking bad because I was barely getting any interviews, and even when I did, I wasn't getting chosen. Finally got hired in July to start in September at a call center for the state, it was an hour + commute in heavy traffic and it was kind of a miserable fucking gig.

So when a recruiter from a staffing agency reached out to me about a job just like the one I was fired from, I was thrilled! Long story short, they loved me and wanted me and would be in touch with my start date so I could give my two week notice. Was told I'd start on the 20th of this month, so I gave my notice accordingly. Eventually it was pushed back to the 28th, no big deal. Then my recruiter calls me again and says actually, I can start immediately but the job is a little different but the pay and hours are all the same! Sounds good! I double checked with her that it was still a desk job because she knew of my physical limitations due to a disability and she said yep! I get my own desk in the warehouse! that should've been my first clue.

I showed up today and no, it's not a desk job. there is no desk at all nor anywhere to sit. I was on my feet the entire shift and was in so much pain I had to have my husband pick me up because I couldn't drive. Learned that the company ended up just assigning the original job I had been hired for to a new supervisor they hired so this was the only position they had for me, but they loved me and really wanted me so they figured they'd just hire me for this one. But I can't do this job. I physically can't.

I quit my job for this. Now I don't have anything, and the recruiter hasn't returned my calls or emails yet so later on I'll probably call and ask to speak to her supervisor about this whole situation because I'm pretty fucked right now. It's not the agency's fault, it's the company's, but still. I can't even get unemployment. I was so looking forward to this job. I don't know what to do now.

Every time a freelancer says a client is late or weird aobut scope, or they vanish after asking for a rush thing, somebody pops up with "raise your rates."

I have raised mine. I have the spreadsheet open right now, plus the invoicing app I pay for and half use, and some clients still act like paying a solo person is optional once the deck is in their inbox.

Higher rates do not magically turn a messy client into a grown up.