Got a new job :') Okay now let me rant about the old ones.
Time for a bit of a personal post; I got a new job and I actually like it a lot so far!
To be fair, I'm on like day two of training, but I'm somewhere so different than I ever have been and I'm so happy just to finally be out of foodservice and retail jobs, even for a little bit. I have done these both for sooo long, and while I get that I'm not going to be able to get much of a career without a college degree, I really need something that doesn't treat me like shit, kill my feet every shift, and fully exhaust me before the day is over. If I can be honest, there's a higher chance of meeting very toxic sorts of people, too. I really do feel like after almost 15 years of all of this, I've done my fill. I've got every skill possible from these jobs and I'm just so tired of being told a job with the luxury of sitting down is out of reach unless I'm taking calls from insanely angry people. I don't think it's too much to ask, but I'm sure some people find me entitled and annoying for even implying I could have earned something better in all these years. I feel like now, at this point of gassing this job up, I've jinxed myself and I'm going to look back on these words with tears in my eyes. But I have to let myself celebrate a little, because I simply do not celebrate the things in my life enough due to this irrational fear.
I really do like the people so far, but I have to say I liked the job even when I applied. I'm paid more, have more hours (but not too many), the place is like a 5 minute drive from where I live, and the hours are set in stone times that I can always know when I work, and I'm off on weekends. Even better, the lunch is for everyone at once as well as decently flexible so I'm not obsessing over if I'm going to come back at the exact time needed or not. I can drive home for lunch if I want, or go in town to grab food. I like how small the building is and the group of people are small, and many of them work from home so often that I'm not stuck surrounded by people with pin-drop silence and stuffiness. It's all just a lot to appreciate in these first days at least, it's shocking how once you go from a large company to a smaller one, you really stop getting micromanaged and having every dumb thing you do tracked like it's a crime to say, get up and go to the bathroom too much, or be late a few minutes, or leave early. It's all your time again because what you actually get done matters. I can pace myself but I also can go at my own quicker pace enough for certain things, I feel confident so far that I can already handle many things. I like this so, so, much. My birthday is less than a week away, and I consider this a birthday gift so far. I hope this feeling remains for a long, long time. I'm so shocked when people say they prefer a job where they work customer service or physical labor instead. Don't you know how to exercise or take a walk after work? How the hell is boring such an awful thing? Do you not have the intelligence to make boring things interesting? This is so strange to me lol because I'm beyond bored when I'm being an NPC to people most of the time even if I've gotten really good at it, plus I'm uncomfortable at best and always pushing through discomfort and pain. To be fair, I'm still doing customer service at this job but much of it has the luxury of being removed a bit through email, and even with the amount of projects I'll be working with it doesn't compare to hundreds of new people a day, most of them needing to be told the same thing or have something new about them causing issues so they're interesting, I guess, but in a bad way.
I realize I'm really jinxing myself now lol, but it's all been on my mind for a while anyways. Those of you with office jobs, I'm not saying you don't have your own issues and problems, but imagine being told you can't sit down. Not in a standing desk or weird desk treadmill kind of way, but in a concrete floor lifting heavy boxes while upset people ask you questions you're not totally sure of kind of way. Also having to clean bathrooms, and deal with people who might be trying to get you fired for a small mistake, and working for a company or management that will do little to defend you. I think there's an idea us in these sorts of jobs are making up our issues or simply overstating the stress because we're young and don't know how to handle the unfairness of the real world, but we're taking a lot of shit from all sides just to make money that barely pays the bills. What makes this always feel like such a struggle is when you're in the situation I was and have been in before, where I'm the only person who can defend myself. I'm sure there's a lot of this in office jobs, too, where you can't do much to fight the people who cut your paycheck or try to make your job way harder than it has to be. I think that much of what makes working for a large corporation different, however, is that a lot of this struggle is baked into the system on purpose. Make no mistake, full time jobs are in short supply because they're allowed to be. There are no promotions, only companies stuck with no choice but to let you bump up another dollar an hour after working somewhere for years because no one else would take the job that you were already doing the day your coworker got fired for attendance after being sick too often in the past year. Even then, you're only getting that job because it's the cheaper option for the company.
And can I be a bit tinfoil right now? Much of the tiredness, the exhaustion that comes from little sleep and coming into work sick and covering every single callout for zero thanks, the 4 days of 4 hour shifts when you're paid 14 an hour to lift heavy boxes in a building you could barely call climate-controlled: it all seems like it's on purpose to tire people out. Why have a small team of full time workers with a good overlap in time that can always be able to cover in case of a call-out? Money, yeah, but often the money is so negligible it's weird to see these pennies being pinched like this. I think much of it is just to keep people away from each other. I can tell you, teamwork is the last thing in a retail space because it almost always leads to a group of people saying "no" to the district managers when they're asked to stretch beyond their means and boundaries without any sort of set compensation. I think a lot of retail workers forget just how transaction-minded they need to be in order to handle being in the space without breaking. There's always going to be new spins on the tropes, but the idea is usually the same; you push a district manager to work about 12 hours per day, they push their store managers to also work as much as this or say "at least I only work 10 hour days every day a week instead of 12", and those managers, tired and overworked, are frustrated every time a worker says they will not be available for any point during the week. The lack of total malleability becomes a flaw about the worker, and even when they give their complete self to the job and essentially live their life on call for a job that could fire them for no reason (and get away with it) the worker will never be rewarded, because the expectation was always to be like this. The people getting paid 100K a year and get long paid vacation time inbetween their months of constant working are looking at this like it's not a problem because to the people on the lower tier (of this very triangular system) those people are simply working less hard, and for less time so it's fine to feel superior and to ask for more from them. And of course the bottom rung is just people who should have worked harder and done better in school so we just deserve to work whenever we're told, however we're told, and never say no. I'm sorry, it's probably not always this dramatic in practice, but the places that you buy from are always going to do everything possible to cut corners to save a dime. People are always first in line to that because it's going to always increase profit. But past this, there's an implied understanding that even if a store figures out how to make every worker happy and satisfied with their job, this type of thing just means that you're stuck giving raises, giving rewards, and god forbid even promoting people. So, a tactic I often see is that there are many, many specific rules that while are almost never followed by management or employees when things are shitty (no store manager, general short-staffing, etc), the moment they are convenient to throw at workers is the moment they are suddenly set in stone. Sometimes the rules are just full of shit, like how certain employees can't work over a certain amount of hours even when there's always been short staffing that's overridden the rule for so long. Sometimes you're told of certain protocol you never learned about or read and told you'll need to suddenly do it. You may wonder why a company would rather not fire you and instead have you quit or stop showing up, or maybe they stop scheduling you. Easy! unemployment laws. To be fair, I don't know the stop scheduling you protocol for this, but I know that getting fired for things outside of particular violations (usually legal ones, but each state and city may be different) will mean you qualify for unemployment money, though small and will be slow af getting to you. So that's fun.
I'll be honest with you; I think if someone wanted to really run a store the right way, they totally could without much issue, but they would have to be smart enough to not let on how things really are going in the store. IMO it's shocking we haven't had at least one or two instances where people take the store GM position of a struggling store, hire in as many people they know that either want a job or are union reps, make sure to understand how the company operates before getting the entire team to vote for unionizing. Yeah, the possibility of the store itself being shut down is huge, but that's kind of a win/win, if you're looking to take down another shitty business or if you're looking for a good severance pay or unemployment. It's certainly gonna put your name on a shit list, but probably not for long and it's probably not even that bad considering I've seen so many desperate places that just plain take anyone. I think it would be a fun project for anyone who might have the means or the rage in their heart. I hope a million people get the idea to do it at once. I know a huge road block for this is a lot of anti-union older generations who have fell for so much propaganda in the past, and I realize much of them are desperate for a job that supports a family to such a degree they're willing to cut off anyone trying this. But man, think of the world if we all weren't so fucking desperate.
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAany way. I'm happy. I am. I may be a bit tired from all the training, but I am so much happier right now and I'm relieved I might be making a good bit more money as well as doing something I grasp well and doesn't break me down. I was always raised not to get my hopes too high, but I'm being rational, I'm rational enough to know to celebrate the small wins when they come and that I can't fight the struggles when they happen, and no one can avoid pain in the future. I just think I'd be stupid to stifle pleasure just because I'm unsure about the future. I'm on guard as much as I'll ever be, but I can still hold that stance while smiling.
Anyway, hope everyone reading this is doing well, I'm going to do my best to keep up with regular posting despite the new job, so we'll just see right?