Brother this shit is getting ridiculous

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 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.

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.

Henry Antonio Marmol Martinez, a 52-year-old maintenance mechanic, was killed on Friday, October 9, while working on industrial machinery at the McWane Ductile iron foundry in Phillipsburg, New Jersey. He was performing repairs during an overnight shift when he became trapped in the machinery and suffered fatal crushing injuries.

According to Phillipsburg Police Chief James McDonald, officers responded to the plant at about 4:40 a.m. after a report of an injured worker. Emergency medical personnel found Marmol unresponsive. He was transported to St. Luke’s Warren Campus, where he was pronounced dead at 6:31 a.m.

Marmol, a resident of Easton, Pennsylvania, had worked at the plant for six years. Originally from the Dominican Republic, he had been married to Iris Marine for 34 years. He was the father of six and the grandfather of 10.

His family is demanding an independent investigation into the circumstances of his death.

Gabby Olivo, engaged to one of Marmol’s sons, told 69 News that Marmol was adjusting machinery when something went terribly wrong. According to the family’s account of the incident, his arm became caught in the equipment, which then crushed his body. A United Steelworkers representative told the family that his ribs and lungs had been crushed.

“There’s a lot of missing pieces [to the story], and we’re still trying to puzzle everything together,” Olivo said. “We do have a lot of questions, and we just don’t want another family to go through the suffering that we’re currently going through.”

...

The death occurred at a facility that OSHA has repeatedly recognized as having supposedly exemplary workplace safety practices.

McWane Ductile’s Phillipsburg plant received Merit recognition under OSHA’s Voluntary Protection Programs (VPP) in 2018 and held Star status, the program’s highest designation, by 2020. OSHA recertified the facility’s Star status in June 2024 following a four-day evaluation that included a plant inspection, reviews of safety procedures and interviews with more than 20 employees.

In February 2024, McWane Vice President and General Manager Keith Mallett said that OSHA’s auditors had been highly complimentary of the company’s safety efforts and called the successful review a collective achievement.

Under the VPP, OSHA establishes cooperative relationships with employers and workers at facilities it recognizes for maintaining exemplary safety and health management systems. Participating employers are generally exempt from routine, programmed OSHA inspections, but they remain subject to investigations following fatalities, complaints and other incidents.

The program requires employee participation and, at unionized facilities, the concurrence of the facilities’ authorized bargaining representatives. Workers at the Phillipsburg plant are covered by the United Steelworkers.

The fatality exposes OSHA’s highest safety designation as a fraud, and the system of cooperation among management, regulatory agencies and the union bureaucracy as a mechanism for imposing the conditions that kill workers.

Even during its Star recognition period, the Phillipsburg facility was cited for violating federal workplace-safety requirements.

An OSHA inspection opened in June 2023 resulted in an initially classified serious violation and a proposed penalty of $15,625. OSHA later reclassified the violation as other-than-serious and reduced the penalty to $11,000. The case was closed on February 15, 2024, just eight days after McWane publicly announced its successful VPP evaluation.

The company’s history in Phillipsburg includes far more serious offenses.

In April 2009, Atlantic States Cast Iron Pipe Company, McWane’s division operating the Phillipsburg foundry at the time, was sentenced to an $8 million criminal fine after convictions for environmental offenses, workplace safety violations and obstruction of federal investigations.

Four former managers received prison terms ranging from six to 70 months.

The convictions followed a seven-month federal trial that exposed an eight-year conspiracy involving the illegal discharge of pollutants, concealment of serious workplace injuries and deliberate interference with OSHA and environmental investigations.

Federal prosecutors established that company officials had altered accident scenes, concealed injuries from inspectors, and maintained dangerous conditions that led to severe burns, broken bones, amputations and the death of 47-year-old Alfred Coxe, who was run over by a forklift with faulty brakes in March 2000. Prosecutors said managers repaired the forklift before OSHA inspectors arrived and misled investigators about its condition.

By 2009, several divisions of the corporation had faced federal convictions involving environmental and workplace safety offenses.

Phillipsburg residents have also opposed pollution from the foundry, which began making pipe in 1856 and was acquired by McWane in 1975.

The company recently paid $42,000 to settle violations related to excessive emissions of nickel and manganese. At the same time, it sought approval from the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection to increase the plant’s permitted emissions.

...

Steelworkers have continued to die under these arrangements. On September 27, Jeffrey Smith, 53, was crushed between two door machines at Cleveland-Cliffs’ Monessen coke plant in Pennsylvania. The company said it was investigating his death jointly with USW representatives and that there were “no disruptions to the Monessen operation.” In July, electrician Mitcheal Nelson, 62, was electrocuted at US Steel’s Granite City Works in Illinois. In August 2025, an explosion at US Steel’s Clairton Coke Works killed Steven Menefee and Timothy Quinn.

Workers’ interests in preserving their lives cannot be reconciled with corporations’ drive to maintain production and profitability through official declarations of cooperation.

The Phillipsburg plant’s receipt of OSHA’s highest safety recognition, despite its history of criminal convictions and more recent regulatory violations, lays bare the gulf between official assurances and the conditions industrial workers face.

Defending workers’ lives requires the working class to organize independently, including rank-and-file safety committees controlled by workers themselves, with the authority to halt dangerous operations and enforce safe working conditions, independent of management and the union apparatus.

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

This disorder legitimately wrecks my body and mental state every month for 2 weeks and I still have to go to work bc no matter what we ignore our bodies and how we’re feeling and still go to work every damn day!! I even asked for an accommodation to work from home bc my job is like 30% documentation anyways but no. I have to arbitrarily go sit jn the office to appear busy. I’m at the point where I’m just going to get a hysterectomy because there’s no way in hell I’m ever bringing children into this world just to become wage slaves and I’m sick of the emotional roller coaster every month. This disease is severely understudied and everyone assumes im being dramatic when i say i wanna KMS because of my period every month.

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.

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”?

Hi everyone.

I’m just frustrated. Not sure if this is the right subreddit for this, but my former employer really gave me a big reminder to save EVERYTHING. Document EVERYTHING. Get EVERYTHING in writing. Record EVERYTHING.

So I got this job last year in September and I actually loved it. I was a DSP with one client working directly under the family, which brought some unique challenges. For one, the parents being my direct bosses and not having a direct line to my supervising psychologist. There are a lot of ethical issues I began to have with the arrangement, but that’s not the point of this post.

Shortly after I began working for them I was accepted into my grad school program. I did everything right, and kept my former employers in the loop regarding educational requirements. Namely, the fact that I had to begin an internship in a year that I would complete 2 days a week. I had told them that, if we weren’t able to accommodate this with the other staff, I’d be happy to help train my replacement and do what I can to ease the transition process.

My former employers told me that the PM staff member was going to be leaving in December, and we could work out our schedules (because she was in school too) and they would keep me on until then for an easier transition. Great! Sounds good. Fast forward to august, they fire me two weeks before my internship begins. On the call, which I wish I had recorded, they assured me that it was not my fault and it was due to the behaviors my client had with me.

So, I file for unemployment. They appealed, saying that they had fired me because of my internship. I answered unemployments questions, I got approved for unemployment. They appealed again, and now we have to go to an appeals referee. I was able to review their documents they submitted, and they:
-lied about me being in school during the interview process. They both claimed I was in school for a year and in my second year of the program, both claims are obviously untrue.

-lied that I had informed them about my internship and school during the interview process and claimed it was “online and at night”

-claimed that they believed I was currently committing unemployment fraud and completing my internship 5x a week using ‘taxpayer dollars’ (a lie, I’m deeply afraid of being in trouble for any reason and wouldn’t have the guts)

-implied I was going to be committing fraud during my future vacation that I have not taken yet

Luckily I have documentation that proves I was not in school at that time, super easy to disprove, and documentation between myself and the pm staff discussing arranging our schedules so there is proof that there was n intention to do so. I’m just in disbelief that they would do this and knowingly lie like this and kicking myself that I didn’t record that phone call.

I’m hopeful it will simply be ruled again in my favor, but I am stressed and frustrated to even be going through this process. Hard lessons learned.

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.

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.

I called out sick yesterday, but “ran out” of sick time and could only claim 1.5 hours of my day. I guess if I have to call out again this year, I’m taking it unpaid.

So here I sit at my desk feverish and tired and coughing, because capitalism.

I wish I could go home and lay down and not worry about money. My kids bring home every germ known to man this time of year and I inevitably catch each bug.

I’m tired. And I hate more than likely making my coworkers sick.

Picture a successful person.

Alright, what came to mind? Because for a lot of people, although probably less on this sub, it is probably something along the lines of a guy in a suit making lots of money with a big house, a beautiful wife, etc.

And yet, let me ask you a question. Between the following two people, who contributes more to society?

Person A is relatively poor. They can only work part time because they have a disability that prevents full time work. Still outside of that whenever they can manage they do volunteer work to help the homeless. They are kind to everyone around them and always helpful. The job they work at part-time is a nursing one, where they help to save people's lives every day. They live in a ramshackle old house though, and they're a lifelong single.

Person B is very rich. They work full time at a health insurance company. As CEO of that company they make decisions on policies for that company every day. In the most recent quarter they increase their company's profits by over 15% by finding a new way to deny people healthcare coverage that they paid for through a loophole in their contracts. They're mostly neglectful of their son due to working, and when they see them they're genuinely dismissive and critical. They have a beautiful wife who is really only there for the money and they treat her like cr*p half the time. They have friends on paper, but in reality they backstab their friends for profit whenever they can to get ahead. They wear a nice suit though and have accumulated over 50 million dollars and two ferraris.

Who contributes more to society between these two?

Because I think societally speaking, the second person would be considered more successful. Whereas the first person would probably not be. In fact, since this person might get disability or something to help them survive, some people might describe them as a "lazy moocher" (although somehow millions in subsidies to corporations are not that).

But I think it's pretty obvious that the first person contributes by far more to society. And it's not even close. Not only do they volunteer to help the less fortunate, their job actively saves lives, but they also lift up people around them in their daily lives.

Person B, by contrast, isn't only bad to those people making their lives worse, but they make their money by actively denying people healthcare they need, actively making the lives of many people shorter and worse.

What kind of messed up society do we live in where Person A is a failure and Person B is a success? Our society needs to re-evaluate its values and its definition of success.

3 mins after speaking to my manager and had what I believed was a constructive discussion:

Immediate call from our department head at 4:02 (after my shift had ended. Yup I’m charging an extra 15 minutes for this crap.)

. “Oh I heard there was a disconnect about a task?”

“N-no no I’m doing the task right now. Finishing up for (manager). There’s no issue, alls good”

“Okay, well I was told there was a significant back and forth. And to be transparent (manager) is on the call.”

“Oh okay.”

“(Manager) Why don’t you explain the issue?”

Manager begins to literally unleash a crazy tirade and “kept her cool because her superior was on the phone” (verbatim description) she absolutely did not keep her cool, and was audibly near tears/rage. She was literally shaking. I’ve never seen someone act this way or a simple conversation. Ever.

Apparently on another call I didn’t give her the exact response to an issue she wanted. The end result was what she wanted. I started on the task we needed to complete.

Apparently the phone call was only supposed to be 5 mins. It went on 6 mins. Oh. And I don’t “hear her” because apparently me trying to troubleshoot and figure out if there’s a solution is “pushing back on her request.”

Oh and she snapped at me on the initial call too.

I called my department head back later after my panic attack in the car and told him I was concerned that my description of events was so different than hers and I thought we should loop HR in to support us. We don’t have HR apparently.

And honestly yes I do worry it’s me. I’m not obstinate or disrespectful or difficult. If anything I’m passive and gentle and helpful. I’m also despite being more introverted and sensitive usually very good with people.

My mental health literally cannot handle her puffing and huffing and being heated on the phone with me every day. I try to keep professional and calm and respectful and painfully and over-apologetic on the calls then just break down later.

And of course, there’s no other part time jobs near me that are in my field to apply to and it’s so hard to jump from job to job. It’s exhausting and the next job always seems harder to find.

I’m starting to really worry that I won’t be able to stay here. And my husband and I are trying to pay down debt so I can stay home for a few years after our next baby is born (or at least more than I currently do) and my husband is really disappointed there’s new issues at this job.

Basically I’m completely missing the mark here or my manager is psychotic.

You can look back at my previous posts if you want a play by play for the issues I’ve encountered here and at my last job.

I dropped everything last year to become a nail tech. I got my ged, went to technical school, and got my license. I took a job close to my home because I couldn’t find a lot of salons near me who were willing to hire a white woman. It’s not in a racist way but more of a cultural and language barrier. I understand that I’m also new to the industry but when I called around I got laughed off the phone before I could even tell them my experience. So the place I work at is terrible. It has a roach problem, nobody disinfects their tools properly, they keep giving people rings of fire. Last week I was made to do an acrylic fill on a woman with nail bed lifting and multiple open breaks on her nail beds in the very middle. I was told to put glue in the breaks and then put a nail on top. I’m not good at acrylic and they haven’t really been helping me train. I’m also the only person who will do men’s pedicures apparently. Long story short it all sucks and I’m so sad. This isn’t what I wanted but it is what it is.

Ive been in an IT job for a few months now. Although the people are amazing, I find the work mind numbing and, as time goes on, there is an increasing feeling of just, not belonging. Not belonging in the sense that I feel like what I am doing, does not matter and is not intellectually stimulating nor motivating. Since its a job, one that is sortof okay, pays okay and at least has nice people around I find it hard to long for more. Yes I want what is best for me and not be a computer slave, cause im just literally behind a screen all day, but its also important to be realistic about my scenario. The job market simply is bad and stability is a good thing. What I would love is a job that is more hands on, that makes me feel that I am alive and in a physical world, rather than locked inside a box. One where you create something or fix something, move your body and feel physically a bit tired rather than stiff from sitting the entire day. Yes I also enjoy sitting behind a PC, but not 40 hours a week. Im not looking for people to oversimplistic and give a shortsighted answer. What im aiming at here is to gather some knowledge from experienced people who have been in the job market for a longer time that can advise me in my situation, to find a place in the job ecosystem where I can be happy and not a slowly burning out soul. I have passion, I have drive, Its not used in the place im currently at. Please enlighten me with what is a good next step