Why Work Is Getting Worse

Most of us grow up with the ingrained notion that life for every successive generation is better than the last. That truism no longer seems to be the case. Why is everything seeming to go downhill? And why is work specifically getting so much worse?

Why Work Is Getting Worse – Second Thought

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[Sirfatandblack]

My favorite is when jobs set unrealistic expectations and when you don’t meet them you get barked at BUT when you do meet them you get rewarded with higher expectations

[cattibingo]

One of my biggest problems is companies wanting to track and micromanage your every move. Also the attitude of "workers must be doing something productive literally every second" which has always existed but is getting much more intense

[gertrudewest]

The work place is so effing toxic these days- it’s unbearable and everyone is at each other’s throats. It physically makes me ill.

[finchfry]

My mom has been putting her head down and working for the past six years in a government job. She took all the overtime she could get, didn't use vacation time, moved up to middle management and so on. She paid off her student loans, but she has been completely priced out of the housing market despite all of her work. She's finally starting to get what I've been saying for years - your job doesn't care about you. Yes, your direct coworkers probably care about you, but your job doesn't. Not even a government job. Now she's using all of her saved up vacation time to only work like three days a week, which I guess is the one benefit she's gotten from not using it all this time.

[purplehaze]

Last I checked, child labor actually qualifies as a literal crime against humanity. So.. the direction this country is heading seems pretty bleak.

[laurennelson]

I worked at a Walmart that had teenagers working overnights without breaks. 8 hour shifts without stopping till dawn. It was insane. The kids were too young to understand that what was happening was against the law. They were all just desperately saving for college. Plus being overnights, there wasn't anyone there to notice and cause a stir. When I brought it up to the dayshift employees word got back to my boss. He cut my hours down to part-time causing me to lose my health insurance and seek out another job. The environment of the store was that all this was normal and it was my fault for speaking out. That I put those kids jobs in danger. All this in a deeply blue state with some of the strictest labor laws. It's a wild time to be alive.

[carlinelafaille]

I’m an 18 year old recent high school graduate and looking at the world today makes my stomach turn. All I can ask is how? How am I supposed to make it in this economy? Unless you have connections, job security and livable wages aren’t nearly as obtainable as they once were. How can I beat this?

[susanrolls]

I agree with your analysis. My career became harder, more demanding, and with minimal increase in pay, while loosing benefits over the decades. Greed at the top is crushing us.

[seanwilliams]

Work is getting worse because capitalism is at the point where it can't expand anymore. So it's starting to eat its own tail to maintain profits. It's actually been doing that for decades now. It's just being noticed more because it's starting to have a negative affect on college educated professionals now, whereas before it was guys in factories. The rise of "gig work" has also made things way worse.

[Purpletrident]

I love making fun of France, but man I really admire their passion for burning things down in the face of injustice. If only Americans had a fraction of that motivation. Politicians should be afraid of the people.

[MakoTheMano]

I also dislike the portrayal of service jobs like being a cashier or cook as being 'easy' because like, in the united states we have to stand up for that entire time, and do the same repetitive task again and again, its like a factory but your station keeps moving, and you're expected to do it with a smile and with grace

[tfh]

work 10 years ago was like boring most of the time. now i feel like i literally do 10 people’s jobs. there’s no downtime, and i often leave late and work a full day on saturday. it’s insane.

[Gingersnaps_the_pumpkin_kitty]

Remember:

These "economic conservatives" can go into debt for war and police budgets, but refuse to go into debt to give you a retirement or your children a future.

[TTF]

One thing I absolutely love with the general rise of the level of education among the working class is how more and more people are realizing how much they are getting scammed by the system.

[PresidentEvil]

I'm an on-site network technician. In my personal experience I can say over the last 5 years people have become so incredibly rude it's almost unbearable and I'm looking for a new work.

[OriginalContent]

This is the source of my depression. Things are only getting worse and all I can do is get my doctor to prescribe me meds so that I don't become "an hero" because I no longer have any hope

[saphironkindris]

People aren't doing jobs they want to do, they're doing jobs that they have to do. It really kills all passion for your craft when you show up, get intensely micromanaged for 8 hours to meet strict deadlines by an incompetent manager, only to have produced something completely intangible like reports that are emailed off to another department to somehow make them function better. You go home feeling like you've accomplished nothing, and were just stressed out all day.

I'd actually probably kill to find a job with lax deadlines where people were all just working towards something that they wanted to happen because they're genuinely passionate about it. Less of an 'employee/employer' relationship and more of a team where everyone is on the same level and working towards the same thing.

[nestout]

Imagine being okay with an abusive partner like we are okay with abusive jobs. Most people will sacrifice all relationships for a job that will leave you the second profit starts to look like it's going down. Every job I've had goes out of business. I'm broken because the shitty system is an abusive relationship that must be put down.

[christina_cl]

It's crazy to think that a few decades ago, families could live comfortably off of only 1 average job salary and even own a house. Now, both men and women are working and we're having trouble affording anything. On top of that, we're supposed to also take care of a household, cook, clean, etc - which used to be a "full time" job on its own for the stay-at-home parent. No wonder everyone is burning out. I don't know what the solution is, but this is definitely not sustainable.

[mermaidf]

Remote work during the pandemic actually started helping this for at least some of us because even working long hours you could be in the comfort of your own home around your family and then they promptly took that away from most people with no reason and even had the gall to say it wasn’t a punishment.