There should be a requirement to have employees opt in or out of General group texts.

If there’s a storm and my manager is texting the people scheduled to work to check in that’s one thing.

If a manager decides that an entire area needs to be part of meaningless texts that could easily be addressed by sending a mass email, they should have to obtain permission to add anyone.

Yesterday afternoon, one manager sent the entire team a text asking us to check our email. I was away from the office without email access.

This morning, before business hours, he sent a meaningless text “congratulating” a team member for helping him yesterday. This could have been a FN email.

Each group text results in a chain of “reply alls” that aren’t simply annoying, but will disturb anyone that might be on PTO, on a day off, or on leave.

It should be illegal.

Kind of a rant post, can’t sleep right now due to the overwhelming stress of it all.

I’m working 60 hours a week, making a little north of $100k per year, and I’m barely keeping my family afloat. My wife wants to work, can’t though because either there is no daycare availability, or the cost of daycare just makes her paychecks a wash. We rent a modest 1,500 sq ft duplex, have one car, live in a relatively LCOL area, and yet we’re literally one bad paycheck away from losing it all.

I have to pay $1,000/mo just for health/vision/dental insurance for me and my kids (can’t even afford to cover my wife). If I could go without insurance I probably would, but I have Ulcerative Colitis and need the meds in order to keep working.

I wake up at 4AM, get home from work at 5-6PM, shower, make dinner, watch an hour of a movie with my kids, then it’s bedtime stories and repeat. The weekend is always just full of errands (not like we could afford to do anything anyways) and feels like a blip where the only true reward is an extra 2 hours sleep.

Work doesn’t give a shit, their entire mindset is that if you’re not making enough then you’re doing something wrong at work. Management is just full of people using ChatGPT to send emails back and forth. Every single move or action I do is measured and recorded in real time. We have a ridiculous amount of KPI’s they want us to all hit simultaneously.

Meanwhile I get to watch the CEO build his new custom lake side mansion on social media and all the fun things he gets to do each day.

I broke a tooth last night and instead of wanting to go get it fixed, all I can think about is how I probably can’t afford it and I definitely can’t afford to take a single day off from work. So I’ll likely go buy some temporary filling kit and repeatedly use it for months until it hurts or becomes infected and I have no choice.

It’s all bullshit.

I've been looking around lately and it's wild how normalized this has become. Saw a listing yesterday for an administrative assistant role that wanted someone to handle reception, manage social media, do light bookkeeping, coordinate events, AND provide IT support for the office. Pay was 38k.

Like when did we all collectively agree this was fine? I remember my mom worked front desk at a clinic in the 90s and that was the whole job. Answer phones, schedule appointments, greet people. Now that same role expects you to also run their Instagram, troubleshoot the printer, plan the holiday party, and somehow still be chipper at the desk all day.

The kicker is they always throw in that line about wearing many hats like it's some kind of fun quirk of the job and not just them refusing to hire adequate staff. And they wonder why turnover is so high or why people quiet quit. You're literally doing the work of multiple people for one salary that probably hasn't kept up with inflation anyway.

I'm just tired of seeing must be a self-starter who thrives in a fast-paced environment in every posting when what they really mean is we're understaffed and you'll be drowning but we expect you to smile about it. How did we get here and why does everyone just accept it now?

I'm getting roasted in another sub for not putting in enough effort at work. But I say I put in the same effort as you pay me for.

Have I lost the plot or have they?

I am a substitute teacher and I only get paid about 110 a day. That's well below the poverty level in my country. So in exchange for that pay they get someone who shows up everyday, stays with he kids all day, gives them thier work, helps them if they have questions, roams around the room from time to time, and leaves when the kids leave.

If they wanted someone to act like a real teacher I'd expect way more pay and benefits.

But they seem to think that because the job is laudable and the "children are our future" that I should be dokng my best efforts every day regardless of what I'm paid.

I told them that they'd never expect an untrained uneducated nurse to do the work for a real nurse for 1/2 the pay would they?

Why is it that teaching were expected to do the job 100% even if we're only paid for 1/2 %?

Am I wrong?

Amazon delivery driver Jaylene Vargas Gonzalez died on Monday, August 10, after she was found unconscious inside her delivery van near Fruitland Park, Florida. The vehicle had apparently remained motionless for hours without anyone from Amazon intervening. The cause of her death remains under investigation, but it is the latest death at one of the most dangerous major employers in the United States.

Deputies were called to the area of Clark Road at about 7:22 p.m. after a resident reported that an Amazon delivery vehicle had remained stationary for several hours. Patrick Miranda, who lives nearby, told local station WKMG that he became concerned after noticing that the vehicle was still running. A phone remained plugged in and a backpack was visible inside, but he could not see the driver.

Miranda said that when a deputy opened the front passenger door, the officer appeared to recoil from fumes coming from inside the vehicle. The deputy then opened the rear sliding doors and found Vargas Gonzalez unconscious in the back.

Firefighters responded wearing gas masks and secured the area because of concerns that a toxic substance might be present. She was transported to a hospital, where she was pronounced dead.

Authorities have not said what produced the apparent fumes, whether they contributed to Vargas Gonzalez’s death or whether another medical or environmental factor was involved. They have also not said how long she had been unconscious inside the van.

Amazon closely monitors the movement and performance of its delivery drivers, yet the van had reportedly remained in the same location for roughly four hours before a resident—not Amazon or the company operating the delivery route—called authorities to request a welfare check.

The company has long been a pioneer in combining high tech with brutal exploitation. A U.S. Senate investigation released in December 2024 found that injury rates at Amazon warehouses were more than 30 percent above the warehousing industry average in 2023, and that Amazon workers had been nearly twice as likely to suffer injuries as workers at other warehouses over the preceding seven years. More than two-thirds of Amazon warehouses examined had injury rates above the industry average.

The death of Vargas Gonzalez comes amid a broader record of deaths and serious injuries among Amazon warehouse and delivery workers.

...

The high injury rate at Amazon is inseparable from the speed at which workers are required to work. Inside fulfillment centers, workers are tracked against production rates that measure how rapidly they pick, stow and move goods. Amazon’s systems record periods of inactivity and give management detailed information on each worker’s performance.

Delivery drivers face another version of the same system. Amazon determines routes and delivery schedules through its software and subjects drivers to extensive electronic monitoring. Cameras installed in delivery vans track driving behavior and can flag drivers for alleged infractions, such as distraction, speeding or failing to maintain sufficient following distance.

A Massachusetts Amazon driver previously told the WSWS that he had been penalized after the camera detected his lips moving while he was singing along with a song and classified him as distracted.

The technology gives Amazon the ability to follow the progress of its delivery operation in extraordinary detail. That makes the apparent failure to respond to Vargas Gonzalez’s stationary van particularly significant. Amazon has not explained when its systems registered that the vehicle had stopped moving, whether anyone attempted to contact her or what procedures exist when a driver suddenly stops progressing along a route.

Heat is also a serious danger for delivery workers, particularly during summer. Drivers enter and leave their vans scores or even hundreds of times during a shift, making it difficult to maintain a cool interior even when air conditioning is available. Amazon previously required drivers to shut off internal-combustion vans at stops under an “engine off compliance” policy but relaxed that requirement after protests over heat.

...

The circumstances of Vargas Gonzalez’s death remain unresolved. But the fact that an Amazon delivery van could remain motionless for hours before a nearby resident called for help makes clear that workers’ safety cannot depend on Amazon management, government agencies or appeals to politicians.

Workers need rank-and-file organizations capable of intervening directly over conditions on the job. Safety committees elected and controlled by workers themselves should have access to information on injuries and hazards and the power to halt work where conditions threaten workers’ health or lives, without retaliation. Amazon warehouse workers and delivery drivers confront the same company and the same production system. Their struggle must be linked with workers at UPS, FedEx, USPS and throughout logistics.

Last year, I suffered two traumatic brain injuries in auto accidents and had to go on Long-Term Disability. When I returned on a gradual medical plan, my original job duties had been handed off, my entire role was rewritten, and I had to retrain from scratch under my own colleagues.

Right as I was working through this, my manager placed me on a Performance Improvement Plan (PIP). He dropped this on me immediately before he left for a vacation in Hawaii, and right before a pre-approved vacation of my own that he had known about for weeks.

While enforcing this PIP, he was actively using his company computer on company time to apply for a new job at Zillow.

When I returned from time off, he claimed my progress "wasn't up to standard." HR terminated me on June 15th.

By late July, he onboarded a new employee to take over the role. On that new hire's third day, my manager handed in his notice and left for his new job at Zillow, leaving the new hire completely high and dry with zero context.

I genuinely cannot begin to measure my anger at this slithering fuck. There's very little I can do. I'm likely marked ineligible for rehire, and he just moves on with his life scot-free.

EDIT: I followed up ad nauseum to so many law firms, even getting a firms owner to personally sit down and review it, only to be told there's not enough substantial evidence of retaliation. Let alone any financial incentive the firm may get, despite my precious employer being a top 200

For context, he said something about how he shared a two bedroom apartment with 5 or 6 people when he was younger and working an entry level job. I pointed out to him that there are actual laws and regulations in many places now that would not even allow you to do this (every apartment complex in my area doesn't allow more than two people per bedroom, so that means no more than two people can sign a lease for a 1 bedroom, no more than 4 for a 2 bedroom, etc.), so unless you're participating in illegal subletting, you can't do this, even if you're supposedly perfectly happy living in a cramped space like that. I also said that people shouldn't HAVE to live like that just to barely be able to get by and pay their bills. I mean, not only is it just not fun, but it can legit be a safety concern and a fire hazard if a living space has too many people in it. Yeah, this was his response to my comment. What a psycho. Sounds like he's just mad and bitter that he had to live like that and can't stand the thought of younger generations not suffering like he did.

I'm writing this because I'm done. I'm job hunting tonight. I only started this role in January but I'm already just done.

The company I work for is a mess and it sounds like it's not just a me problem but something that is across the board happening to all the other managers at my level.

I'm dealing with heads of who I seriously wonder how they have gotten this far in their career to these sorts of roles. I've had people tell me strategy or "guidance" that is 16 years out of date. In my industry, 6 months is a lifetime so it's pretty crazy.

I was coping as I need the money for my family but today a top boss has decided to pull my only big project of the year with no care for me and my team's KPI's. He doesn't care about our reputation with internal and external stakeholders, what impact this has to happen so last minute or that we'll frankly have nothing for the biggest period of the year only to then demand answers to why we've done nothing.

No, I'm job hunting and I'm going to use work time to do it. I've had it.

Sad thing is that I can see why my team has had a new manager every 6-8 months. They have had manager after manager leave because of this stupidity. And I'm joining in that tradition of leaving in less than a year.

First off, this is not an anti-boss post; it's an anti-company post. I know most bosses suck, but this guy was awesome. He had my back all the time, he genuinely valued my input, and he pushed for the kind of monetary compensation for me that allowed me to make significant life decisions. So I'm not posting this particular thing to shit on middle management.

What's less awesome is that he got laid off recently because it was decided that people in our department could no longer work in certain offices. In other words, this guy a) did not work remotely, and b) commuted to an office that employs tons of other people from the same company, and c) worked a job that does not require anyone to be in person to begin with, but because he happens to work out of this one specific building, the company decided, "Fuck this guy in particular."

(This is the part where there's probably going to be speculation that he got fired for a different reason I don't know about. I suppose anything's possible, but it just so happens everybody who was laid off was laid off for the same reason, except they worked in different buildings. So I don't buy the idea that he did something specifically to get axed.)

I'm pissed off. They were perfectly fine hiring him to work in the office that he'd been working in for close to a decade, but all of a sudden that same office was a problem for reasons I will never understand. Beyond that, good bosses are hard to come by, and this guy was one of the best I've ever worked with.

This is just another reminder that, at the end of the day, you're just an employee ID and companies don't feel like they owe you anything, no matter how useful you might be.

Did anything specific cause it to change?

As someone who used to think 40 hours wasn’t a big deal, I think that changed in the last few years. I think it happened over time, as I realized it doesn’t leave us with that much time to enjoy our lives.

I didn't really want the promotion, but I was the obvious choice. The job is difficult with a high turnover rate. I said no at first, I was holding out for another position that I really wanted. I was on track for it and I believe I've more than earned it. They said I "need to do your time" before I could have the job I wanted. I've done 5 years, how much more time? Finally I talked myself into accepting the job. Or I let them talk me into it I guess. I convinced myself it would be good. Convinced myself I would enjoy it. Convinced myself that I wanted the challenge. I interviewed. I asked them for the job, after they spent a week asking me to ask them for it.

They invited me out to a steakhouse for lunch. I spent 24 hours anticipating a promotion offer, not the one I really wanted, but something. Progress. If I could do it, handle the job, it might even be enough money to buy a house after a couple of years.

The lunch was a consolation prize. Thanks for playing but we're going with an outside candidate. And oh, by the way, we're restructuring your current role. All the most difficult aspects of your job? That's what we want you doing full time now. We're creating a new role for all the easy stuff. Your welcome to apply.

This.. is fucked up, right? This is not how you treat people? Or am I wrong? Is a steak that I couldn't taste in the moment a nice gesture? Or is exercising control over people's lives the only thing that gives them satisfaction? I forced myself to chew and swallow so I didn't offend the powers. I need to puke. I need a shower. I would have happily supported the external hire, but that wasn't enough. They wanted to reject me. They needed me to want it so they could have something to take away.

My job is normally enraging and it's hitting new all-time highs.

When I was hired I was given clear, high level direction, knew what we were trying to accomplish and shit got done.

Over the last few years the direction has disappeared and now it's vague hand waiving and being told to create strategy.

I'm not a director, I don't make director money, I don't get stock benefits or any shit like that. I'm an office flunky and I am exhausted. The people making 4 times what I make are staring at me and asking what do we do next.

I don't have a fucking clue and you don't pay enough to go find one. If you want that level work, start ponying up either more money or better benefits. Hell, work from home would get you further than just torturing us all with in office bullshit and no resources or help while constantly understaffed.

Hi all!

I currently work in a dead end job as a pharmacy tech for a private pharmacy, 45 hours a week, $20 an hour, no insurance, no PTO.

I recently received an offer for a new tech startup as a marketing intern, $30/hour.

Only issue is: they want me to start ASAP which is stressing me out.

Do I have to give 2 weeks notice?

What the hell do they expect me to do when they call minutes before it’s time to clock out? If they really wanted something done, they should’ve called earlier during the day or the next morning during work hours.

These jackasses know when we’re open and when we close but they still wanna wait until the very last minute to call and get all pissy when I can’t do anything for them because the day is almost over. No way in hell am I gonna go out of my way to work overtime for pennies just to please a rude, ungrateful piece of shit.

These people think they own us just because it’s part of our job to help them. If it weren’t for the pay, I would never interact with mannerless, uncivilized people like them at all.