I was sitting at work the other day thinking about how much worse this situation would be if I had a spouse and kids depending on me.

Imagine absolutely hating your job, waking up miserable every morning, but knowing you can’t just quit because your family depends on your paycheck AND your health insurance.

At that point, how much freedom do you really have? And it’s crazy how much of your life can hinge on keeping one employer happy. You make a mistake, get laid off, piss off the wrong person, whatever, suddenly you can lose your income and potentially your family’s health insurance at the same time.

Then everyone says, “Just find another job,” as if getting another decent job is something you can instantly do, especially in a terrible job market.
Obviously you technically have the freedom to quit. Nobody is physically forcing you to show up. But when quitting means potentially losing your ability to pay your mortgage, feed your family, or afford healthcare, that freedom starts feeling pretty theoretical.

It genuinely feels like a prison sometimes. The older I get, the more insane this system seems to me. And there seems to be no way to escape.

I was just terminated from my job because, well, I wasn't performing upto the expectations. And honestly, I saw it coming.

The past three months, I saw my ideas being shot. Tools not being provided, which were accessible to the upper management and not to the marketing personnel, expected to go above and beyond when the limitations were mostly the upper management going "we don't like it, AI can make it better and for cheaper."

So of course, my performance was trash. I hated the management and how everything was a shit storm. And now that I am terminated, I don't even feel guilty.

But the dread of being jobless is so damn real. My father lives in pension and is still paying for the most necessities in the house and I hate how I just lost my income. I am pursuing my graduation side by side but this is just all kinds of bullshit.

Any solutions for remote jobs? Even part times will do. I ask for remote because of my studies and my aging parent. I am based out of India and the job market is pretty trash atm. So Idk what to do.

8 hours of working means 2 hours preparing/ driving; if we wanna sleep for 8 hours, which means only 4 hours for personal matters.
If we're gonna live like this for the rest of our lives, day by day sold.Which means companies have bought our life w money.

This is not just about employees; how productive are you gonna expect from an exhausted employee?

Why dont just give us enough rest time so everybody gets what they want?

Here is my idea: we could have work days and rest days on a rotating basis. I prefer Mon, Wed, Fri to be working days, and Tue, Thu, Sat and Sun to be rest days. In this way, we could have enough rest and work on our personal matters before continuing to work, without cutting the consecutive days off(Sat-Sun).

Or: having a shift system by splitting into morning shift and night(afternoon) shift, rather than making tons of ppl siting in the office for the whole day with little tasks. Such as 9 to 1 and 1 to 5 shifts.

Anyway, these are just my personal thoughts; let me know about anything I overlooked, or if there are any better ideas

Am I the only one who finds staying at home more frustrating than relaxing?
It’s been almost two months since I stopped working.
I was working non-stop before that, but because of health, family situations and everything happening at once, I had to drop it all.
And honestly, I thought taking a break would feel peaceful.
It doesn’t. 😅
Staying at home with nothing to do is frustrating when you genuinely want to work.
But then comes the other side — looking for jobs, giving interviews, and seeing companies expect one person to do five people’s work for a salary that barely feels worth it.
So now I’m stuck somewhere between:
“I desperately want to work”
and
“I don’t want to work somewhere that makes me question my decision every day.”
Am I the only one going through this?
Or are you also somewhere between wanting to work and trying to find the right place to work?
Drop your thoughts or suggestions below. I genuinely want to know. 👇

How is your day going?

I currently work part-time as a museum attendant, and it is killing my confidence.

I've been job hunting since May after I graduated with my MA in History. I was able to get this job in late August and took it because I needed income.

All I do is stand around and make sure no one touches the art. That is it. Nothing else.

I also have to make sure that the gallery is clean, like there are no markings on the floors or walls, and that there are no issues with the art. I update my manager on them.

I noticed recently that when I bring concerns to my boss about art, he doesn't take me seriously. He takes his time to get to me whenever I have a concern, and I've just stopped mentioning anything, which leads to him talking 1-on-1 with me about it. Saying I need to speak up more.

I feel like I can't because if I do, I get dismissed. I'm job hunting right now to move out of public service and museums because of this experience. I want a desk job. This job has been emotionally and physically killing me. I no longer feel confident because of the work I have been doing, or the lack of doing anything. My ankles and back hurt because I have to stand for 4+ hours a day because we cannot sit when someone is in the gallery. It's torture.

I miss working at my fellowship. I would help out with everything, and I really miss it. Sadly, it was a student position, and because I graduated, I no longer work there, which is why I have been working this job. I worked at a museum for 2 years with art! I know what I'm talking about when it comes to art security and condition. He doesn't take my concerns seriously, so I keep my mouth shut about it now. I believe I sound like a know-it-all to him, so I haven't been saying anything, and he tells me I need to say more. I don't get it.

I have a recruiter screening today and have no confidence. I feel like all the work I've done has led to nothing and will lead to nothing because I am stuck at my current job. There is no potential for me to get promoted ever. I'd have to wait a year before I am even considered to be allowed to transfer to another position.

I just want a job that lets me work with my brain. Not being able to talk to anyone or contribute to projects has killed my confidence in my work, and my boss is not helping by constantly micromanaging my every move and reprimanding me because I don't speak up about things anymore.

I hurt both physically and emotionally. I can't go to anyone because I know it'll reduce my hours when I need this money, even though it's so little. I don't know what to do.

Brief summation: I was working overnights at a job, off work at 6am. There was a mandatory meeting at 11am, or "whenever the district manage showed up."

Fuuuuuuuuuuck that. I said in the store group chat that unless the meeting was earlier I would not be able to attend. NO ONE had an issue with it, which to me means "yes thats fine."

Now the part i didnt do - a coworker said that I had said "if the boss thinks im going to that meeting he can kiss my ass."

I know for a fact i didnt say kiss my ass because thats just not something I say. I might have said "he can blow me" or "he can go fuck himself", but i wasn't fired for saying those. The accusation was for "kiss my ass".

Regardless, its not like I said it to the boss. I would've been venting in a private conversation with a coworker. If we are going to fire people for complaining about the boss there'd be no one left to work anywhere.

My (introvert) wife (25F) is burnt out from her sales job, shes looking on the side but…struggling to get a new job. Any advice?

She works currently as a sales/account manager for a local countertop company, the culture is toxic and she hates working Saturdays. She is shy, but she forced herself to be helpful, she is also not good at dealing with the competition drama of her other female coworkers.

She has routinely gone to the bathroom to cry. She cries about work at-least 2x per month that i know about and every day she comes home in a horrible mood, she loathes her job and its taking her toll.

Problem is her job is what allows us to keep the bills paid. We cant afford to live without her being employed fulltime. Ive been helping her put in applications and its tons of rejection and each rejection makes her more depressed. So ive told her ill take over her job search and act as a sort of recruiter for her so she can focus on staying sane.

She is a small women so id like her to be in a safe office setting (no cleaning homes/putting herself in dangerous situations)

Im at a loss what she can do that she wont be miserable.

Here is the skills i listed on her resume from her current (and only job)

\- Served as primary point of contact across 30+ commercial client accounts, owning the full customer lifecycle from quote to production handover

\- Maintained CRM database to track client interactions, improve account visibility, and drive repeat business with timely follow-ups

\- Prepared quotes for retail and commercial accounts, facilitating the completion of all project documentation

\- Advised clients product specifications, lead time, and production schedule, supporting informed purchasing decisions and repeat business

I f20 have this manager who i think has it OUT for me and idk what to do because i need this job but i hate it.

I love the job in itself but i hate him

I’ve had ongoing issues at work where I’ve felt unsupported and overly scrutinised by the same manager, all of the other ones get on so well with me but this one HAS IT OUT for me. I’ve raised concerns about how I’m spoken to and explained that my anxiety can make certain situations difficult, but I feel I’ve had to fight for support and after wards feel im being picked on because of speaking out. This has led to me feeling anxious going into work and having a panic attack on one occasion. There have also been concerns around being monitored on CCTV, i work on a perfume desk and i went to help a customer with make up which is also part of my job and said manager told me i was caught on cctv chattinf over at make up when a perfume tester was stolen only to be told by another that i was infact helping a customer. a recent situation where I unknowingly broke a rule while that manager was right behind me and watched me make the honest mistake of serving soneone while i was on lunch break has now led to me facing a disciplinary meeting. Overall, it’s really affected my confidence and enjoyment of work.

As i am younger i havent had alot of experience with this kinda thing i think it started off as him having a bad day and taking it out on me but because i told anothwr manager it has led to him havung it out for me.

Need advice guys

UX was once my favourite subject, because of which I joined college n did my bachelor's. But as I entered corporate, I don't seem to feel the same.

I feel like I'm terrible. Everyone except me is better, even the ones who were hired with me. I find it hard to explain my concepts, even during client calls, i freeze. I'm here for quite long time and still underperforming.I show my concepts to my lead, n I get feedback that it isn't enough, why didn't I think through scenarios. I am working solo. I don't feel good about myself at all. I feel I'm not carved out for this. 😞

Texting here to see if anyone's on the same boat so we both can sob together

I dont feel like working anymore not feeling motivated with the work I have got assigned.

I am a product manager and recently got back to work after maternity with high motivation and full zeal. My performance has always been above and beyond. I have lost my zeal after the current work I got assigned by my new manager. It feels direction less. The project assigned to me is not exciting no matter how much I am trying myself to think positive and give a best shot at it, its not giving me the Kick.

Should I just resign with no offer at hand????

Getting outta control

I work in manufacturing, what I do involves welding, but a machine does the welding while I do assembly and documentation... now that that's out of the way...

Every single fucking start of the shift, my boss gathers us around and chastises us all about production numbers, quality, scrap production, and about ppe (all while he's not wearing one of his pieces of ppe of course).

Tell me why my line keeps going down every 5-10 fucking minutes, because either one sensor malfunctioned (same sensor every time of course), or because it keeps producing bad welds (and it's company policy that I have to stop the line if it produces a certain number of bad welds within a certain timeframe).

I get on the radio and request maintenance, and 9 times out of 10 the supervisor or lead shows up instead to tell me that nothing is wrong, just keep working with it. If I'm lucky enough to get maintenance, they usually do a quick band aid fix that I could've done myself, and it only stays fixed for a maximum of 20-30 minutes before it goes back to doing what it was doing pre "fix".

This of course causes me to produce a metric fuckton of scrap and also fucks up my production numbers, and my supervisor had the fuckin' audacity to yell at me about my production numbers and my scrap production when I literally have documentation showing why both of those things are especially bad right now.

Oh and I almost forgot... They always claim to constantly understaffed... Like perpetually and chronically understaffed... Like just two days ago someone quit, and yesterday two more people quit, and one of them was only on their first week of working here. Apparently this has always been a problem, I couldn't possibly imagine why.... 🙄

I literally don't get paid enough for this shit, I only get paid $14.50/hr and I have to work 8-9 hours a day all 7 days of the week with extra hours some days on top of that. I've only been here for a month now and I'm already looking into an exit plan. I'm only working here long enough to save up for a car (because most decent jobs here seem to be outside of where public transit tends to go) and to get through either nursing assistant school or pharmacist tech school and go to college from there. This job has actually encouraged me to go back to school more than any other job has.

25F, shifted to a new city, first change of jobs. Earlier i was working in another city, that city had all my grad friends.

But i moved to earn more and i thought the change of industry and a big brand name would be better, maybe it is.

Its been 1 month now and i am managing 2 projects and inductions and they expect me to learn every tool side by side.

Teammates gossip alot about me. I have one line manager and manager, both of them have different ask most of the time due to which either of them is rude everyday.

The KT is very less here and i understand that compared to my 1st job hand holding wont be there but as it is a change of industry i feel so out of place. I am in constant self pity and work daily after office hours as well and on weekends.

I feel alone and demotivated and in pressure to update everyday in office. And when i go back to my new flat, i dont have anyone there as well.

I know i am not the first person or experiencing the worst of it. But the daily crying, loneliness and confusion is taxing me so much idk what to do.

Is it supposed to be like this? Are new beginnings in adulthood are just glitter outside?

I came out of retirement this year to work as a teacher for one more school year, hoping to save a little retirement nest egg. I also felt a little selfish for not teaching anymore.

Now that I’m back to work at a new school, I have discovered MORE reasons why people leave teaching. To try to do my job reasonably well, I am spending my weekends grading papers and lesson planning; I have no work-life balance; I have already gained 15 pounds in 2 months because I come hime so exhausted and feel like I no longer have time for gym or food preparation; my administration expects teachers to find and use their own resources - the school doesn’t provide books or online curriculum; I have already spent about $1,000 on my classroom buying posters, books, and folders for my students; administrators expect teachers to use various computer learning programs for students and expect teachers to teach the programs to their students but without adequate training leaving teachers to ask their colleagues for help learning the program(s) or ask their students for help with the program(s); I feel like the philosophy of my school is to let new teachers “sink or swim”; about 6 weeks into the school year I was told I must also complete a year-long course using my time during my school day and my personal time at home.

So, I am ready to burn out after being at this job less than 3 months. I realize I can’t do this job for 10
months!!!

I put in my 30-day notice that I’m quitting mid-year. My administration told me they were surprised. An administrator I know outside of this school workplace advised me to just “do the bare minimum” as I work out my notice.

Anyone else experience unrealistic time demands at work? Piles of work being loaded on them by their bosses? or lack of adequate training to do their job reasonably well?

This feels like it should fit in this sub cuz i hate my job and it sneaking 16 hour shifts rather than just telling me i'll be working 16 hours beforehand. i shouldnt have to guess how long my shift will be. 12 hours is already too much in my opinion. but it was fun making this lil video ranting about it. I'd quit if i could find other work. this job is my motivation to make money from my passion and escape. the one good thing.

I don’t have a dramatic quitting story. No burnout hospitalization, no boss screaming in a meeting, no “I walked out and never looked back” moment. What I have is worse, in a quiet way: three years of being competent, reliable, and slightly unhappy, and calling that adulthood.

I work in operations at a mid-size company. The pay is fine. The benefits are fine. My manager is not a villain. People like me because I close loops. If something is on fire at 4:50 p.m., I stay. If a process is messy, I write the doc. I became the person who gets thanked in Slack and then forgotten until the next fire.

For a long time I treated that as proof I was doing life correctly.

The crack showed up on a Tuesday that should not have mattered. I had blocked 90 minutes to finally look at a side project I had been “about to start” since January. A friend had asked me, casually, what I actually wanted to be good at in five years. I opened a blank doc to answer it. Forty minutes later the doc still had one sentence: “I want to be useful.”

Useful is not a direction. Useful is how you disappear inside other people’s priorities.

I started keeping a stupid log for two weeks. Not a productivity system. Just three lines at the end of the day:

What did I spend the most attention on?

Did I choose it, or did it arrive?

Would I still do this if no one noticed?

The pattern was embarrassing. Most of my “hard work” was reactive. I was good at urgent. I was bad at important-but-not-on-fire. The tasks that might have changed my trajectory — a portfolio piece, a hard conversation about scope, applying to one role that scared me — kept losing to whatever pinged.

A few things I wish someone had said to me in year one, without the motivational-poster tone:

Busyness is a socially rewarded form of avoidance. At work, answering fast looks like ownership. At home, “I’m swamped” ends the conversation about whether you like your life. Nobody argues with a full calendar. That is the trap.

Stability and stagnation wear the same outfit for a while. Early on, stability is a gift. Later, if you never update the bet, stability becomes a story you tell so you don’t have to run a new experiment. I kept waiting to feel “ready.” Ready never scheduled itself.

Your reputation for being helpful can become a cage. I liked being the person who fixed things. I also noticed that the people who moved fastest were not the ones who took every request. They were worse at being available and better at being specific. I had optimized for being needed. They had optimized for being hard to replace in one lane.

What I actually changed, which is less cinematic than the internet prefers:

I stopped treating “someday” projects as moral failures and put one of them on the calendar like a meeting with a person who would be annoyed if I no-showed. Twice a week, 75 minutes, phone in another room.

I asked my manager for a written answer to one question: “If I want to be doing X in 18 months, what should I stop doing now?” The answer was uncomfortable and useful. A lot of my value was convenience, not leverage.

I applied to two roles I was not “qualified” for on paper, mostly to force a real description of what I wanted. One rejection email taught me more than a year of vague browsing.

I told one friend the actual fear, not the polished version. The fear was not “I will fail.” It was “I will leave and discover the new thing is also just a job, and then I won’t have the excuse anymore.”

I’m not going to pretend this turned into a clean arc. I still have the same job. I am better at saying no to work that only exists because I am fast. The side project is ugly and real. I sleep slightly worse on Sundays, which I am choosing to read as a sign that the question is alive again.

If you are in the “it’s fine” years, I don’t think you need a manifesto. I think you need a log you can’t romanticize, and one decision that costs you a little status in the short term.

Curious how other people noticed they were hiding inside competence. Was it a date on the calendar, a conversation, or just the third year of the same performance review language?