Antiwork

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/26422918

Don't embrace and repeat the business media buzzwords built to give the CNBC ticker fill text. These terms are created to forgive executives and BODs of the guilt they feel - "It isn't that we are treating people like shit, it's that they are ungrateful little piggies and there's just no winning so why not double down on our cruelty?"

I know it's an easy draw, but don't reinforces their lazy bullshit, redefine it. When they say quiet quitting, you say no, you're getting what you fucking deserve. Act better, and we will consider doing the same. For now, feel empowered to work in active defiance of your shitty job. Stop complying. Show up, do the minimum. Give them the quality and frequency of labor that they deserve. Give them that without apology, excuse or buzzword. They are terrified that you are done adhering to the social contract that they have openly broken while giving you the finger, so be done.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go shake my mouse and type and delete a few characters in a slack message to demonstrate a minimum level of engagement for the algorithm tracking my productivity to determine if my employee number is included in the next batch of names recommended for mass layoffs to juice the stock price.

This is the only voice I hear that gets at the actual issue facing our politics and economy.

I was an environmental consultant until my company got bought by a private equity fund. I want to start a new business of environmental consultants that is employee-owned. Are there any frameworks I can use to start this?

Learned my lesson. Will never do that again even though my boss’s boss told me to.

I’m officially quiet quitting and changed my LinkedIn to Open To Work, because fuck this job. The market sucks though so I’ll have to just fly under the radar for a few months until something better pops up.

I hate the fact that I have to work, and I’m just saving up enough money till I can get to the point where I can get some land and be self-sufficient on it.

So I sent my boss and his boss an email stating that I felt overwhelmed and in over my head. I requested a talk to go over my options and assured them that I was still committed to the company and my mission.

HUGE MISTAKE.

If you've ever been in a situation where you think you'll be able to count on the basic decency and humanity of people you've worked your ass off for for years... don't.

I found out the following:

-despite the company's EBITDA rising exponentially year over year, the "company isn't doing too well" (but they do have budget to outright buy out our competitors in order to create a quasi-monopoly) and all teams' budgets are under strain this year (read: no raises no matter your performance)

-my direct superior, whom I've begged for extra guidance/trainings for the past three years, is apparently completely fed up with me and these requests and has wanted to fire me for over a year now.

-only reason I haven't been fired yet is simply because no one else wants to do this job. But they are still looking for a (cheaper) replacement

-his superior is slightly more amenable and, although a few years ago he called me "the absolute best of his CSR's", feels like "I've grown apart from the company". Yeah, no shit sherlock. That's what I'm trying to address here

-They feel it would be best if I went looking for employment elsewhere as they "don't really see a future for me in the current company structure".

All in all, the tall grass stands out (for mowing).

Regardless, it's crystal clear that I've now painted a(n extra) target on my back, and would've been much better off stewing on my own rather than call attention to myself in any way. Lesson learned. Don't make my mistake, just STFU, act like all's well and look for other employment in silence.

Basically, I'm 25M and never had a real job. 2 days ago, my father just had a CVA and it's at death's door, having been the only income for our family his whole life. While he was a god awful parent to me, he did give us everything we needed, and he was a great dad to my sisters.

Now that he's about to die, we not only lost our only provider, but he's leaving us with a huge debt to pay (over 3M in local coin, around 3k USD) due to all the loans he took the last 2 years to buy fancy stuff for himself and my sisters, and being the older brother, it falls on me to bring the food to the table.

I honestly don't know what to do at this point, I feel overwhelmed by all the sudden responsibilities, and running away isn't an option, I can't bring myself to leave my sisters and mother behind.

Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, --That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these States; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present President of the United States, Donald J Trump, is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States.

Basically I've been running my employer's IT helpdesk for 10 years. In those 10 years I've gotten some (minor) raises and perks, but never a promotion or job title change. I just "failed" my second year performance evaluation which comes down to "we know you're already overworked and understaffed but we need you to give 150% daily, every day".

As a result the opposite has happened and I basically don't GAF anymore. I close maybe half of the tickets I used to because I just can't bring myself to care anymore. Also, if after 10 years nothing has fundamentally changed, it would be madness to assume it somehow magically will.

Thing is, I used to be very enthousiastic about my field (IT) but lately I've fallen completely out of love with it. Every single month there are changes and evolutions to the many tech stacks we use and I just can't be arsed to keep up anymore. The enthousiasm has been completely replaced with mostly apathy and a side dish of simmering resentment.

I'm not immediately afraid of getting shitcanned because:

• there's a lot more work to do than there are hands available to do it
• company has been looking for people for my role for over 5 years but never hires anyone
• I've been there a decade which would mean making me redundant would cost the company a pretty penny in severance
• no one currently employed there would want to take over my job duties. In IT, the helpdesk is the lowest of the low. Always has been, always will be.

Regardless, I'm in my 40's now with one degree that doesn't have anything to do with IT and without joking, I would rather die tomorrow than keep doing this until pension age. Any of you have decent tips or examples of where someone in my position could aim to end up for the second half of my life's career?

If money were no object (it is) I would go back to college and pick up archaeology/history. That was what I wanted to do as a child but I had to give it up because "it wasn't a realistic life path", dixit my parents and every counselor I spoke to in that era.

I don't even work fulltime right now and still I feel like I would want to spend those 2,5 days a week doing something marginally less painful, like stick my dick in the oven.

EDIT: thanks for the responses all. I've reevaluated my situation and sent my boss and his boss a mail explaining my situation and requesting either some guidance/help/training or a demotion to a lesser position depending on where they think I should be heading. Chances are it'll be ignored, but at this point I don't really give a flying fuck anymore. If they want to get rid of me, they will. Add another corpse to the pile, see if anyone bats an eyelid.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26319923

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/26319922

Ive had people on lemmy and other communities tell me the r/fuckluigimangione sub is satire but after checking its posts out since it was made and circling back to it now i am 100% convinced it is not.

The auto mod responses alone as well as the concerted effort to manipulate the narrative tell you all you need to know. For instance anytime you say his name there is a ridiculous anti L-M response, or if you say brian thompson (yuck) the automated response is just pure corpo ball gargling. If you ask if the sub is satire there is a specific automod response that explains in definitive English that the sub is 100% not satirical.

Also they are trying to spread the narrative that mangione is an alt right trump supporting racist anti trans (because supposedly brian Thompson left a legacy of promoting trans health care (you cant make this shit up)) incel? Satire should at least be so absurd its funny however this sub is just so obviously a smear campaign and pro corporate boot licking effort unlike anything I've ever seen before. Go check it out for yourself. It would be a shame if a bunch of people who have brains and understand whats going on in the world just bombed the shit out of their gross billionaire ball gargling bukkake fest.

https://www.reddit.com/r/FuckLuigiMangione/s/CEEjtVA5Up

We currently have the following lead images for this community:

Icon:

Banner:

With enough heavy things going on in the world today, let's have a focus on something light. I'm opening up discussion for a week or so on if you think these images are representative and should stay or if you think we should change one or both. If you support change, please submit alternative images for either image type and maybe we can throw up a poll at the end to vote.

As a community that supports labor, with an aspiration for it to cease to be required to live our lives, we should not be afraid to organize and act in heightened moments like this. And that's what this is, a small collective action that could (likely not, but maybe) add up to something. Ultimately, doesn't change much here in the day-to-day, outside of formalizing what has happened casually/organically over time as musk bought and performatively tanked twitter to remove it's power as an organizing tool against fascists/oligarchs and Twitter investors, like the Saudis (e.g. see the Arab Spring protests and how Twitter was key to the people in that moment).

So, after considering the active discussion from our community through the comments in this thread, Antiwork will no longer allow links to Twitter/X, at the very least. This rule will formally go into effect in about a week, announced through a stickied post. In addition to that main action, the following related steps will also be taken,

• We will also ban links to Meta owned properties - Facebook, Instagram, Threads (open to suggestion of others if we want to officially make a list of these known, low quality sources and spreaders of misinformation, hate speech, etc through an evolving domain list)
• You may post screenshots IF THE INFORMATION IS NOT AVAILABLE ON ANOTHER VALID PLATFORM, but screenshots must include enough information to fully support a relevant conversation within this community and a VISIBLE time/date stamp for posterity. PLEASE NOTE: If you are caught manipulating content of a screenshot, your post will be removed and you will receive an indefinite ban from this community.
• We will not allow links to any pass through/archive service that potentially feeds traffic back to these services, directly or indirectly. Services like Xcancel/Nitter can give traffic to Twitter/X because they still fetch that content.

For those who contributed that the voices on Twitter and other platforms discussed are too important to lose, I'd say that there may have been a time when that was true, but at this point in time, if you have information that is ONLY sourced on twitter or one of these dying social media platforms, then you very likely have bad information from a person with low character and limited, if any, credibility.

If you support or have any objections, please discuss changes here for the next week. If no major points of discussion that slow us down, we will then implement final changes to apply going forward. I'm looking into potential automod scripts to automatically handle these things for us, open to suggestions if any members of community are mods in other communities that did this well or have experience otherwise.

This is always a contentious topic. I am Always met with resistance to my main arguments. So without further adieu let us delve into why this is aweful and will only get worse. I see gold hitting $3500-4000 by the end of this cunt’s second term. His first term saw the largest growth of gold price / decrease in usd value of any sitting POTUS from $1200 to just over $2000 which is a 66% fluctuation whereas with biden it went from $2000 to $2700 which is 35% increase.

Anyway lets get into this. For the first 172 years of the history of the USD as a standardized currency the price of gold held strong only increasing ≈85% from $19 to $35. But since 1971 when nixon ended the gold standard the price has ballooned ≈8000% from $35 to $2800 today.

Gold has always been considered an inflation proof asset. It retains its value better than any other commodity subject to the rules of supply and demand markets. Gold was the first currency used outside of traditional barter and trade economics and its value is still intrinsically tied to the value of every circulating currency in existence. If you calculate the exchange rate between any two currencies you’ll quickly see that they all add up to good perfectly. But that’s basic and should go without saying.

Ever wonder why at the time of American history portrayed as the era of American working class prosperity (the mid forties till the mid seventies) one working adult making minimum wage could afford to raise a family of four with enough surplus to send their two children to college, save for retirement (if they weren’t part of the 50% of workers that had a pension around this time) and go on a modest yearly family vacation? Meanwhile today even a family with only one kid is struggling to make it by on two salaries totaling $100,000 after taxes?

Now this may just be conjecture on my part but I believe the reason for this massive flip in working class power dynamics over the lasy 54 years was intentional. Sometime after Kennedy was assassinated wall street corporate interest had for all intents and purposes captured our political process and instructed their employees (our alleged representatives) to enact legislation that would effectively eradicate all the progress made by the labor and civil rights movements of the 40’s 50’s and 60’s as well as FDR’s new deal policies which stood as a foundation for the progress that came after. They were successful meanwhile the corporate executive class adequately adjusted their compensation to counteract the intended results of these policies.

In 1938 after conservative policies had been doubled down on which led to the gilded age and left us with the great depression. FDR finally began to repair the damage with common sense fixes that the robber barrons had fought at every opportunity available. 1938 is when the fair labor standards act was passed. This legislated many common sense socialist protections for workers protecting them from ruthless exploitation by profits at all cost models of capitalism. Such as; child labor laws, federal holidays, weekends, the 40 hour 5 day work week and most importantly, minimum wage.

Minimum wage on a federal level in the 87 years since its introduction has been adjusted 22 times with most adjustments occurring within a year of the previous one. Today the last adjustment of federal minimum wage was 16 years ago. And for the 30 year period of 1938 to 1968 7 adjustments were passed after first being set at 25¢ per hour or 14.9 ounces of gold per year at a full time schedule($41,000 today or about $19.50/hour) The 3 most impactful adjustments were in 1950, 1956 and 1968 where minimum wage was respectively raised to 75¢, $1 and finally $1.60 per hour. St the time that ranged from 45 ,60 and 95 ounces of gold annually.

Today the highest minimum wage in the country of $20/hour for some California fast food workers barely produces more than 15 ounces of gold for a full time year of work. And federal minimum wage is approximately 5.5 ounces. So thats a loss in value of 94-85%

And here many people will try to convince you that “the price of gold isn’t an accurate measurement for inflation statistics” but this is incorrect. But go ahead and believe the world bank, international monetary fund and Wall Street’s cooked books. These institutions have no issue committing fraud and them footing the bill to the rest of the world but sure lets pretend they are telling us the truth about something so important as how badly the socio political and socioeconomic policies they’ve supported the last 5-6 decades have brought the rest of the world as well as america into a state of austerity for the working class while they put around in their new yachts supercars and private jets that burn anywhere from $7,000 to $40,000 worth of fuel per trip. They definitely seem credible 🥴

But anyway lets look at the basis of their inflation models. The inflation models peddled by these fine and proper institutions snd definitely not rotting fraud filled pus buckets of society. They are based almost entirely upon a metric known as “consumer price index” or CPI. And cpi is flawed for several reasons but the biggest of those is that CPI does not account for the devaluation of a currency due to the increase in circulating currency supply. Such as what happens when a governing body prints money out of thin air and increases the national debt over 50 times in the last 6 decades. Now if we contrast cpi to the price of gold we will see where cpi fails is where gold excells. The main driving point in gold’s price increase is economic worry caused by poor policy the most common of which being irresponsible and unrestrained Fiat currency printing. Now lets look at currency printing in the last 54 years. There are plotted graphs that solidify my point and you’re free to look them up. Now by the end of 1979 the price of gold had alrrady increased by 2000% to just over $700 and in less than 2 years by 1981 the US had finished printing the first one trillion dollars into circulation adding to the national debt substantially. Fast forward today and the last i checked the us debt was somewhere around 36 trillion dollars and we currently print one trillion dollars every 3 to 4 months which is driving the price of gold through the roof due to decreasing USD value and market worry about the stability of the US dollar in modern times.

So why could someone working a minimum wage job from 1945 up until the mid 70’s support a family of four? Because money was worth far more and leftist organizing held the feet of the wealthy legacy families in wall street to the flames (these fsmilies all had supported Hitler so blatantly in the 1930’s they held a rally for him at madison square garden and made him person of the year on Times magazine’s cover in 1938) lets do some math here. To earn equal value to 1950’s minimum wage you would need to make the equivalent of 45 ounces of gold which today is worth $126,000 or $60.57 per hour. In 1956 it was 60 ounces or $168,000/ $80.76 then for 3 years before nixon shock was put in motion by withdrawing from the bretton woods agreement, arguably the worst financial policy the us has ever made, us minimum wage peaked at $1.60 which produced 95 ounces of gold or $266,000 or $127.88/hour.

To come anywhere near this both adults need to work 80 hours a week with overtime at a base pay of $20 just to reach $208,000 before taxes. And yes you can live better than a majority of people on thst wage and even $120,000/yr is decent but with 4 kids good luck saving anything meaningful and living anywhere but highly undesirable urban areas in super red states.

So these are facts that i know at least several will comment to debunk on this post. But the facts I’ve mentioned remain. None more so telling than the reality that the rich who are well versed in the markets of investment banking, have always considered gold to be an inflation proof asset that is not just a status symbol or a usefull material for technological applications but also a store of wealth in chaotic economic times.

anyone saying or asking why would they lie to us about this? I mean, are you not paying attention? If they told us the truth, that someone making quadruple federal minimum wage today is making 20% of minimum wage just 54 years ago then people would see the root of their economic frustrations in life and be much closer to starting the class warfare our society so desperately needs.i and others before me who have done the math have also figured out that the minimum wage workers of today are payed less than it cost to purchase and maintain enslaved people under chattel slavery. But since we have this illusory sense of choice, that we could just quit at anytime we are delusional to believe in our freedom under democracy (which is in reality class dictatorship) so from 1950 till today the share of wealth has gone from the top 20% having 10% of the wealth to the top ten percent having 66% and the top 20 having 74% while the bottom 60% have less than the 3 wealthiest men who collectively control $1,000,000,000,000 in assets.

The American working class have been robbed before their very eyes to the point where we are just glorified slaves. Many millennials snd gen z will have to work till we are to sick to do so or have to clock in on the day we expire. Many will never own a home snd have to hope that social security isn’t completely gutted in the next 25-50 years but i am not hopeful.

Have a good weekend regardless. Plan a boycott and some strikes and lets at least try and make things better than they are as dauntingly impossible as it may seem

The new phenomenon involves Gen Z employees accepting job offers but not showing up on their first day without informing their employers.

Seems aligned with the core values of this community that we should join the currently discussed movement to ban links to Twitter/X, including screenshots, on c/Antiwork

That platform's owner (through purchase) essentially started the more recent wave of unprecedented layoffs in tech giving cover to others that quickly followed along blaming interest rates, but likely just seeing that investors were excited about it and using the cover. He failed to pay promised severance packages to former employees, publicly attacked them, provides notoriously poor and measurably dangerous work environments and is just generally hostile to labor. More than most communities, feels we have a strong mandate to have some clarity in our rejection of these actions, and this small movement has built around sending this message.

While there has been much discussion in recent days about the platform and actions of the person that bought and is in the process of fundamentally changing it (not to say it was perfect prior, but objectively declining since purchase), the platform has been a general point of contention online for a long time and for many reasons. Misinformation and hate speech are more prevalent than ever on that platform.

If no objections to discuss, we would establish the policy with a new community rule in the sidebar and of course, we can always evaluate positions like this in the future, should any meaningful change(s) occur.

Some are also banning the use of links/screens of Meta owned properties as well, something we can consider and discuss here. I'll leave this thread pinned for about a week. Please share your thoughts if you have them and then a decision, and potential changes, will be made.

Hey,

Existing community rules had the following stated, leaves some room for interpretation:

"Post must have Antiwork/Work Reform explicitly involved in some capacity. This can be talking about antiwork, work reform, laws, and ext."

In a way endless growth capitalism and just about everything that makes up a lot of US politics, the police state and the growing rise of fascism around the globe can make work seem pointless or can meaningfully contribute to a person feel trapped participating in that broken system so that they can feed their families. So in a lot of ways "talking about antiwork" can be a pretty broad topic - if that's what the community wants it to be.

That said, there is also some literature cited in the sidebar as a basis of this specific movement. If the community wants a more narrow definition of antiwork, in alignment with one or a few of those philosophies, that can be very valuable as well.

So, what's working in this community for you, what could be helped along with a bit more consistent attention in moderation? What do you appreciate in other "antiwork" communities around the web that you'd like to see on this instance?