When I was on the ACA a decade ago, it was $400/month. The prices have only gone up.

Friendly reminder that you can create a meeting without adding anyone else to it. When you enter that meeting, your status on Teams will switch to "In a call", but you can switch it back to "Available". If you get pulled into an actual meeting with other people, don't worry about closing the fake one; Teams will give you a "Resume" button on the fake one after your real meeting ends.

Your status will never switch to "Away" as long as you have that fake meeting up and running. You can also toggle to "Busy", "Do not disturb", or even "Away" if you actually want to appear away.

I've been doing this every day for the last year; even when I have a lot of work to do, I use the timer in my fake meeting to gauge how long I've been at my computer. It beats jiggling my mouse every few minutes.

EDIT: I didn't realize I'd have to say this, but apparently I do. This is not a post telling people not to do their jobs, nor is it a post telling people to set themselves up in a meeting and then leave their desk for hours on end. It's a workaround to having to jiggle your mouse repeatedly. That's all it is. Jesus fucking Christ.

My job recently moved to a new (open) office and we all sit ridiculously close to each other. When we moved, one of the new office guidelines included leadership encouraging us not to eat at our desks so as not to disturb those around us.

I agree with that and I don’t actually like eating at my desk, but if I’m also trying to spend only 8 hours at the office, lunch is a half hour (or an hour) I can’t bill for. So then I’d have to stay another half hour to bill 8 hours for the day. See what I’m saying? They make things so inconvenient and eat up all your time and we act like it’s normal to be at the office for 10 hours. It’s not.

... a factory owner wanted to cut his workers' daily wages but if he directly announced it, the workers would immediately go on strike and his entire factory would shut down. si the owner played a very frightening psychological game. he put a notice on the factory gate. due to heavy losses, the factory is being closed permanently. no one needs to come to work from tomorrow. the moment the workers heard the news chaos broke out among them. the fear of starvation was right in front of them. people started crying, they started talking about their children and they started falling at the owner's feet, begging him for two days. the workers begged just to save their jobs . then, on the third day, the owner came outside and he put on a huge act. with tears in his eyes, he said I can't watch your children go hungry? I'll bear my own heavy losses but I'll keep this factory running, I'll just have to cut a small part from all of your daily wages because I have no other choice. instead of going on strike, the workers happily started clapping and while crying, they thanked the owner. this is one of the most frightening truths about power and human psychology. if you directly take something away from people they'll fight back. but if you first show them the fear of losing everything and then take away only half of it they won't see you as their enemy they'll see you as their savior. a person becomes easiest to control when you take something away from them and at the same time make them feel like you actually showed them mercy.

A Boomer in the 70s with just HS or even no HS could get a Job - training on the Job - and promotions through experience.

Nowadays for the same positions they want a 5 year Masters degree. And additional qualifcations. And years of work experience.

You get no training on the Job, no promotions and the work load is 3x greater and more hectic than in the 70s.

Now with AI they hope to get rid of us pesky workers. But until a few years ago when it didnt exist, they needed workers, yet they still raised the requirements to preposterous levels and worsened the working conditions every year.

Capital owners have spent the last 80 years capturing an increasingly massive chunk of productivity gains while suppressing worker pay. Now, corporate leadership wants to leverage generative AI to automate away labor entirely, ensuring that 100% of the newly generated economic value goes directly to executive boards and shareholders rather than the people actually doing the work. We are heading toward a tipping point where productivity sky-rockets, yet workers get absolutely nothing to show for it. Are we witnessing the final death of the American worker?

Source: IB Times

I work in Finance. Some back office bullshit. Today I just woke up feeling wrong.. I was staring at my screen like a zombie just clicking away when it hit me that I do not give a single fuck, and that I am quite literally wasting my life away. I walked into my boss’s office and quit and fuck it felt so good to walk out of that office knowing I won’t be here tomorrow. I would rather be poor, homeless, than do something that doesn’t matter, that makes me miserable, day in, day out. I might decide to just drive my car around the country until I run out of money, then cross that bridge.

Wish me luck and fuck corporate slavery.

FYI min wage is $17.73/hr here starting in Jan. They want you to have extensive knowledge, experience, & specifically say this is "not a beginner position".... sure does look like beginner pay to me.

I put in a PTO request for ONE DAY that’s still freaking 3 months away from now. And it’s not even a weekend or holiday day. I put it in to go see my parents who live across the country (the reason I only had to ask for one day to do this is because I’m usually off the days surrounding this day and it’s an island shift - although the schedule hasn’t even been created yet for this pay period). This would be my first time seeing my parents in 5 months. Well the freaking request got denied today. On top of that, I happened to look at my holiday schedule, and the week of Christmas through New Years they have me working 4 12 hour shifts. I have always worked 3 12 hour shifts a week at this job for 36 hours per week. This will put me at 48 hours and into overtime. I thought it might be a mistake so I reached out. Nope, it’s legal and mandatory and there’s nothing I can do about it. I am just honestly so sick of the bullshit right now.

I was demoted 6 months ago. It was not for performance. Two levels above me simply didn’t like me.

Also, the assumption was that I would go back to my old job and work extra hard/produce like I used to produce, working extra hours for free like I used to, etc. None of that has happened.

For me to be made while, I calculated that I would work 170 hours less this year.

It has been great. I play dumb like I don’t know how to do things I used to do, but I do just enough above the average amount of work (and a step above my coworkers) so that they can’t say anything.

If anyone is wondering why I would do more than my coworkers, it’s because it’s a game: I used to be a workhorse and outperformed everyone by a mile. Now I do just enough to not be obvious. The best part? I’m good and efficient at my job. So I can get it done in 25 hours/week (max). I used to work 50 hours.

I hate it here.

I work on a management team for a group of service providers with my expertise being on bookings. On Friday, a client failed to show for their appointment which resulted in a no-call no-show charge at full price.

Client calls and leaves a voicemail, I call back: straight to voicemail. I play phone tag a bit, and at one point the client mentions in a voicemail that they called to cancel the appointment but no one picked up. I reviewed my call log and nope: they did not call once prior to the appointment, nor did they leave a cancellation voicemail.

I finally get on the line with the client and they request the charge be waived. I inform that that sadly I cannot do that as the policy is clear and the provider needs to be paid for the time the reserved for the client. The client then admits that they forgot to cancel, directly contradicting their voicemail and proving they’re a liar, but still has the gall to demand the charge be waived: I again say no. I do, however, work out a number of different options with the client to reduce the charge. The best I could do was HALF OFF, which is not insignificant! Client ultimately accepts that but starts getting pretty nasty to me before hanging up on me.

I just checked our Google reviews and what do you know, the client left a completely false review with my name in it! They called me rude, disrespectful, arrogant, condescending, the list goes on. They even claim that I hung up on them which is HILARIOUS because they hang up on me! So to be clear: you run afoul of the extremely lenient cancel policy, you demand the policy be waived, and you defame the person who tried to help you.

I. Hate. It. Here.

Share this around if you can. Anything helps!

I moved to another country hoping to build a new life and improve my career, on a work visa.

I left family, friends behind, which was very hard.

I started the job and quickly realised how toxic the environment was. My mental health quickly started deteriorating, and lots of things happened that didn't make it better. My manager was not supportive and wouldn't hesitate to dump more work on you when your were already overloaded. We were understaffed at some point and me and another person were doing the work of at least 8 people. Manager also made a joke about rape in the office. No consequences followed. He has made a racist comment to me by telling me he's going to ''send me back to the 'jungle''.

HR isn't any better. They have breached my privacy but I guess I should blame myself for that, as were friends outside of work, and I sent a message to the HR person as a friend, when I felt my lowest and was suicidal due to the pressure I was feeling and ongoing toxicity. They then showed that message to our boss without my consent.

The boss is used to making little jokes, that can sometimes be considered inappropriate. But this was just accepted as his personality. But the worst is when he has, to supposedly congratulate me for my good work, generated with AI very degrading images of me, portraying me laying on top of a car, unconscious after having too many drinks (I don't even drink, and he's pushed me many times to drink during company outings), with puke coming out of my mouth. This was shown during a meeting and everyone was laughing.

And when I mentioned this was insulting to me, he was dismissive and has since been stonewalling me and excluding me from opportunities to participate in certain projects.

I quit as I couldn't go on and was on the verge of panic attacks everytime I had to work. I was feeling physically sick, dizzy, and weak.

I feel humiliated, angry, lost and worried about what will come next. The only reason I stayed for so long was so I can stay with my partner I met along the way. Now I'm at risk of being separated from him because I left my job.

I'm sorry if this doesn't belong here. I just know that I'm so over this and over the toxicity in the corporate world, and how unfair the system can be.

I recently started at this new job, while of course I understand the importance of being on time and some bs corporate stuff, I respect it and do it because well I have bills to pay.

I was sick as a dog yesterday, my manager went on a rant this morning about how when being sick if you are still able to log in from your computer from home that you should do it and that it will count as a sick day but to put on comments that you were sick and working. Apparently this a widely known expectation at this workplace and that wfh is a privilege.

Just the fact she said that made me zone out the rest of her ranting because f*** that nonsense

Used to work at a Kroger that had a gas station and one day there was a girl working out there who had a mental disability and something went wrong with the pump and she thought she accidentally charged a woman double for her gas and this messed her up so bad it sent her into a full scale panic attack and her boyfriend had to come get her and take her home because she ended up on the ground in the fetal position.

I watched all this happen and when I went back in the store management was standing by one of the registers making fun of her for what happened and making cruel jokes.

I was fired a week later after screaming at management in the middle of the store begging for help because they complained that we didn’t have enough carts even though we had 30 people waiting for carts and I was the only one out there bringing in carts and I could bring in 8 maximum at a time so I’d bring in those 8 they’d get taken immediately and then even more people would come in and complain there were no carts. They finally sent some more people out there to help me manage the load.

I got written up for an error I did twice that nearly costed them a lot of money. I did the quality checks, but I did them incorrectly. The issue is that in the write up, my manager claimed that I told him I was in a hurry to get it done, so I did not do the quality checks or data comparisons. I never said that was my reasoning.

It said I can put comments, so I am wondering if it is fine to correct his reasoning for my mistake. I am wondering if it is worth to comment this without making things worse as I really need this job and the market is bad right so I can't just quickly find another job. I just don't want to risk commenting and it causes it to shorten my employment timeline there.

You cannot complain that you lack a movement if you do not even show up for community events.

Title. There are a lot of us bitching online, but if you cannot take the 2 hours necessary to go to your local organizing event, teach-in, union education drive, fundraiser, or rally, then your complaints mean less than nothing.

Sometimes going to an organizing event won't be fun. You won't see your friends; you may even see people you dislike, like an ex-boyfriend or the guy who can't pick up on social cues. But they are your comrades regardless, and you must show up for one another. Because the state and the corporations sure as hell are showing up for each other. Your boss and his lackies are showing up for one another.

This is what I mean by shoulder to shoulder: if one shoulder breaks, we all break. Showing up is ESSENTIAL.

Sometimes organizing will feel like washing your dishes. News flash: dishes still need to get washed. Same goes with going to the 5-person organizing committee.

It's easy to show up when there is energy; the mark of a true organizer is showing up even when there isn't any. Show up. Don't leave your fellow organizers hanging.

This post is made for the Americans. God bless the serbs, albanians, french, and Brazillians whooping ass right now.

You finished HS with good grades? No one cares.

Masters Degree in the humanities? Lol you deserve to starve to death.

Did another Masters Degree in IT? Well "learn to code" thats so 2022. No job for you because of AI.

Working 2 jobs to stay afloat? MOAR!

Now matter how much you educate yourself, its always your fault. No matter how much you do, its never enough. No matter what you do, its always wrong.

Meanwhile Boomers got jobs with just HS or even without HS. Despite having a fraction of our education, they became Managers and Bosses.

The system is broken. But its always the average Joe that gets blamed for staying poor.

Especially toxic are the people who deny that they had any luck or favorable circumstances and claim its all down exclusively to how smart and hard working they were.

Finest survivorship bias and victim blaming you can come across.

"You were born to a poor abusive family in the middle of nowhere? Only bad influences and trying to survive all the time and no help at all? Yep. Your fault and not the systems. You are just making up excuses. Because like 1 out of 1000 who had the same situation managed to escape poverty."

"Laid of with 200 or 2000 other people because the company crashed or budget cuts? Yep. Your fault".

"Cant get a job because 50-100 people compete with you for the position every time? Yep. Your fault."

This is mostly said by people who had it easy in life and think they had it hard and who would be homeles or dead if they had a really hard childhood/really unfavorable circumstances.

But Its always the individual, never the system thats to blame.