Originally published at: Text conversations of pissed-off workers quitting crappy jobs | Boing Boing
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“We just don’t understand why we have a labor shortage, even after we cut all the unemployment benefits!” - Republicans
Yeah, it’s weird how people have decided they don’t want crappy jobs during a time when there are labor shortages that make the jobs even crappier, but with worse working conditions (covid) and no better pay. How mysterious!
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“Won’t somebody think of the exploiters!?”
Also: Good job threatening somebody with lack of health insurance. Pretty sure that’s a violation against denial of unemployment benefits for quitting, so I hope that person got compensated.
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Yeah, the folks on that thread might be going crazy with this:
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There was a text message conversation that got posted recently where the manager said the quiet part out loud and referenced the worker losing their insurance if they got fired or quit. That’s been an unspoken threat held over the heads of so many workers for so long.
My hope is that with all these stories of understaffed workplaces and workers quitting when managers are acting like dicks that the managers will have the fear of losing workers that will cause them to be nicer and less exploitative.
One can hope.
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If anyone hasn’t ever had the privilege of quitting a shitty job, I hope it’s because you’ve never had a shitty job. To anyone else, don’t lose hope…
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What we might be seeing in this “oh-so mysterious” labour situation is an informal and de-centralised and rolling general strike. There’s apparently talk of a Black Friday walkout by retail workers flowing around.
Capitalist governments can tolerate a lot of unrest, but one thing they lose their minds over is a general strike. I have no idea how they’re going to react to this but if they do what they usually do and side with employers it’s going to be ugly.
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I would so LOVE that.
And a rent strike? Can we have a rent strike too?
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The problem is, bosses are actually this psychotic, venal, and demanding of their employees. Especially in low-wage positions like retail, food service, and bartending. It’s hard to say for sure whether any of this is fabricated because absolutely none of it is even remotely hyperbolic.
And if you don’t think bosses direct-text their employees, I’ve got bad news for you.
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I worked for a company once that treated their employees like this. Worst software development job I’ve ever had.
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So what percentage of these are faked?
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Yeah, I’d bet some of them are faked. But I’m willing to believe at least some of them are real.
When I worked at Wal-Mart I requested a week off to study for and write my final exams for my first year of university. My manager responded by scheduling me for MORE hours that week then I normally worked. When I asked about it, it was because other employees had also requested that week off and my manager thought I was the better employee and better able to handle a short-staffed shift - so he had given them the time off and given me their hours.
This was before the era of text-messaging, but if our conversation was reduced down to text message form, it would have looked a lot like the conversations on that subreddit.
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I’ve been hearing from fellow programmers who have specialties in really weird old stuff, like Pick and MUMPS, and the employers are saying things like, “yeah, $40 an hour, six-month contract, no benefits, and you’ll need to be onsite here and cover your own meals and housing”. And they are so surprised when people tell them no.
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Shit food industry jobs, I quit dozens of times, fired a bout as many. No surprise, but as an old worker friend said to me, “they lose more people due to crap managers, than they do for any other reason”, that’s a fact I saw over & over…
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Ah. I was wondering about the lack of typos in that supposedly drunk-at-3AM conversation. I can’t text that well sober at 3PM.
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Yeah, my phone auto-mistakes at least once during a thread.
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I quit Target in 1992. It was a mix of “not bad” (the actual work) and “really shitty” (midnight to 9:00 AM shifts, the managers). The only regret I have is there was a girl I liked, and I quit in a huff before I talked to her about it or got her number. (That said, I don’t think she was into me, but a lad can regret anyway…)
Apparently, I can never work at Target again, because I quit without giving two weeks notice.
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If I had a job that was in high demand, then maybe I’d also be a bit more cavalier about quitting.
But most of us don’t have that luxury, and we have families, and we can’t risk months out of work and being without insurance during a pandemic.
I quit exactly one job in my career, while I was in high demand, as I was passed over for promotion in favor of terrible teammates.
So remember that most of the workforce is at the mercy of capricious employers, and don’t have the freedom to tell off the boss and escape.
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