Everyone's had enough
2021 11 01
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We're Starting to Feel Like There's Nothing Left to Lose Striketober is just the beginning
This is an article a friend of mine shared earlier today, and below is the comment I made on her share.
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I made a conscious decision a while ago that I was never going to work a permanent, full-time job ever again. I can do enough gig work and temp jobs to satisfy what I need out of life right now.
I don't want my entire life sucked out of me by my job, any job. I owe no loyalty to something that isn't a calling. A job pays me for my labour. I owe them nothing in return but the job I was asked to do. Team player gaslighting is just a contrivance to get you to do more for the corporation than you should be, and guilting you about it like a narcissistic boyfriend if you don't play the game. Not entirely like some aspects of staying on the Lib-Con political see-saw in this country.
It is not my job to fill in the labour gaps for a manager that can't be arsed to hire enough of the right people to do the jobs that need to be done. I don't owe the company that.
I never want to do customer service ever again in that revolting retail way, because no one doing that work gets paid nearly enough money to be criminally verbally abused by a stranger over a piece of petty minutia. Whenever this comes up in a conversation I tell my "favourite" customer service story (*). That work is not unskilled, but those people get treated like serfs. They do the most and get paid the least. And if you see servers standing around doing not much of anything, I wouldn't blame them for it. Why should they put in any extra effort for minimum wage and abusive customers?
Am I grateful to have work? Sure I am. But that's where that buck stops. Nothing beyond the here's-my-time-for-your-money gratitude. Anything beyond that reminds me of this one time I got hit on by a sloppy drunk in a stained t-shirt and someone said that I should be grateful for that because at least someone was paying attention to me.
I will give my loyalty and extra effort to the friend I part-time work for because he's a decent person and treats me well. I will not give that sort of loyalty to a soul-sucking corporation.
I want a work-life balance that's actually a work-life balance. I want free time and peace of mind. I want to be able to relax at the end of the day, have hobbies, go do things, do nothing, and sit around the house without a bra on because the past (nearly) two years has shown me how over wearing a bra I am.
(*) I used to work for Blue Line taxi. One Friday night a girl called up saying she'd left her brand new leather coat in one of our cars. I do what we always did in regards to lost items: I took her name, number, information, said I'd reach out to the driver, and that I'd get back to her if/when we had anything to tell her. I sent the driver a message and went on with other calls. Unsatisfied with this situation, she kept calling back. Sometimes she'd get me, others she'd get someone else, but the process was the same each time. Each time she got successively more rude. Finally, her last call, she got me. Went through the same process again and all I got for my trouble was "I hope you get murdered you fucking Paki bitch".