this post was submitted on 22 Oct 2023
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Antiwork

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A community for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life, want more information on anti-work ideas and want personal help with their own jobs/work-related struggles.

The new place for c/antiwork@lemmy.fmhy.ml

This server is no longer working, and we had to move.

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Subscribers: 2.1k

Date Created: June 21, 2023

Library copied from reddit:
The Anti-Work Library 📚
Essential Reads

Start here! These are probably the most talked-about essays on the topic.

c/Antiwork Rules

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1. Server Main Rules

The main rules of the server will be enforced stringently. https://lemmy.world/

2. No spam or reposts + limit off topic comments

Spamming posts will be removed. Reposts will be removed with the exception of a repost becoming the main hub for discussion on that topic.

Off topic comments that do not pertain to the post at hand may be removed if it is deemed they contribute nothing and/or foster hostility at users. This mostly applies to political and religious debate, but can be applied to other things at the mod’s discretion.

3. Post must have Antiwork/ Work Reform explicitly involved

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

4. Educate don’t attack

No mocking, demeaning, flamebaiting, purposeful antagonizing, trolling, hateful language, false accusation or allegation, or backseat moderating is allowed. Don’t resort to ad hominem attacks against another user or insult other people, examples of violations would be going after the person rather than the stance they take.

If we feel the comment is uncalled for we will remove it. Stay civil and there won’t be problems.

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Under no circumstance are you allowed to promote or advertise any product or service

6. No factually misleading informationContent that makes claims or implications that can be proven false or misleading will be removed.

7. Headlines

If the title of the post isn’t an original title of the article then the first thing in the body of the post should be an original title written in this format “Original title: {title here}”.

8. Staff Discretion

Staff can take disciplinary action on offenses not listed in the rules when a community member's actions or general conduct creates a negative experience for another player and/or the community.

It is impossible to list every example or variation of the rules. It is also impossible to word everything perfectly. Players are expected to understand the intent of the rules and not attempt to "toe the line" or use loopholes to get around the intent of the rule.


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[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 219 points 1 year ago (9 children)

A dude comes in my store every day to get gas and beer. On the weekends he pulls up in his giant RV. If I don’t see him for a week (pretty regular thing), when he does come back he’s been on vacation in that RV. His happy, healthy kids come in and get their drinks.

Recently he asked me if I knew anyone who could drive a medical taxi. He has a company which takes people to doctors visits. Insurance pays for it.

“I can’t find anyone to work. No one wants to work anymore. I have 10 vehicles parked right now.”

“What’s the pay? Do you do drug tests?”

MINIMUM FUCKING WAGE. DRUG TESTS.

I just told him, “dude, McDonald’s is paying $14.50 right now, starting wage. Paying people the bare damn minimum, you’ll either get them fresh out of prison or jacked up on meth. Like, holy shit man. Minimum wage? For a job that requires drug testing? You aren’t suffering. I see you taking your RV on vacation constantly. Fucking pay your employees bro. Those parked cars could be bringing in free money but rather than look at the problem, you think people don’t want to work. Pay 50 cents more than McDonalds and I’ll come work tomorrow.”

Nope. Stubborn, greedy bastard would rather have 10 cars parked.

Fuck that whole class of people.

[–] unfreeradical@lemmy.world 41 points 1 year ago (1 children)

If he owns vehicles, then he is entitled to exploit people to drive them.

The system has conditioned him to find a way to rationalize that he is victim.

[–] AnxiousOtter@lemmy.world 37 points 1 year ago (27 children)

He's entitled to do whatever he wants with his vehicles. That doesn't mean it's a good business decision, he's not entitled to succeed.

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[–] Saltblue@lemmy.world 31 points 1 year ago

He probably started his business when there was cheap labour thanks to the recession, inability to change is the defining trait of these morons.

[–] Schadrach@lemmy.sdf.org 30 points 1 year ago (5 children)

“What’s the pay? Do you do drug tests?”

MINIMUM FUCKING WAGE. DRUG TESTS.

In a lot of cases if you're driving a vehicle for commercial purposes, DOT requires a pre-employment drug test. Taxi drivers are one of those, and I imagine that's the regulation he's under.

I mean, yeah he's not paying nearly enough to attract people, but the drug tests aren't entirely up to him.

[–] roofuskit@kbin.social 23 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Yeah, it's the combination that OP was taking issue with. You can't pay like shit for jobs that require drug testing.

[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This right here.

Shit fucking pay can’t possibly be combined with a drug test. Who the hell (who isn’t a felon or a junkie) would be willing to work for so little?

We’re in the middle of nowhere too. The driver would regularly have to leave the state or drive across the state.

I don’t understand the mindset of these people. He’s losing money for every patient that doesn’t get a ride through his company and he’d seriously rather let the vehicles sit. It makes no sense to me. If he paid good he’d be doing even better. Not as well as he imagines he could be doing robbing people, but still he’d be doing better.

Some joker out there will do it for shit wages and that convinces him there must be more people out there that are ok with being paid so little. He imagines how much money he could have if he’d juuuuust find 10 more suckers to rip off.

Every time I see him coming since that conversation something locks up in me.

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[–] Smoogs@lemmy.world 30 points 1 year ago

They are the exact ones sucking musk dick and think he’s the god of capitalism crying that “no one understands the owner of a company is supposed to be rich and everyone is supposed to be homeless but grateful to work for them bloblooobloo .”. Wondering why no one has any empathy for them.

[–] oce@jlai.lu 23 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (7 children)

I can understand the pay point, but not the drug one. Why would anyone hire a testable drugs user to drive? Which employers are fine with hiring drug users in general?

[–] michaelmrose@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago

Ironically meth heads can pass drug tests if they haven't partaken recently but marijuana lingers in your fat cells for a month or more. Don't you wish you could weed (pun intended) out people who smoked a joint last weekend while hiring more drunks and crack monkeys?

[–] robocall@lemmy.world 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

maybe OP is alluding to marijuana when they mention drug testing.

[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Bingo. It’s legal here.

[–] BlueMagma@sh.itjust.works 17 points 1 year ago

Drug users are everyone, alcohol, tobacco, coffee, some are legal, some are still detectable months after use, would you care that your cab driver got drunk last months ? I wouldn't care.

[–] gr0nr@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Most any restaurant.

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 11 points 1 year ago

Depends on the drug tests but a lot of them are very bad at catching actual drug users or popping false positives, to being so lax on the actual sample collection that people are smuggling in clean samples rather than providing their own.

So the people following the rules are being penalized and often put under scrutiny they didn't deserve, and those that are breaking the rules in an obvious way aren't being penalized for it.

And there are some scheduled drugs that in no way inhibit your ability to drive or work, especially when they aren't being abused and taken infrequently. And those are the ones most likely to get you caught despite being the least likely to cause an actual problem.

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[–] Juice@lemmy.blahaj.zone 16 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Did you actually go on a rant like that or was that just in your head?

[–] theangryseal@lemmy.world 12 points 1 year ago

Oh no I definitely went on that rant.

[–] Stumblinbear@pawb.social 8 points 1 year ago

Probably the latter

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[–] xpinchx@lemmy.world 120 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I run warehouse/fulfillment ops for an ecomm business and frequently hire temps (task rabbit, instawork, etc)

People literally won't show up for less than $20/hr even for basic shit like kitting, we have to start at $25 just to get people in the door. My boss sees the bill and asks why we don't find some younger workers for $15 but they just don't exist in our area. People want to work, just not for shit wages.

[–] Selmafudd@lemmy.world 51 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The younger worker thing fucking shits me. I worked as OPs manager for 11+ years and my GM was always on me about getting younger staff for the cheaper rate. Little did he know I entered everybody under 18 as 18 in our payroll... He expected the same workload from these guys so I was ensuring they got paid the same.

[–] rockstarmode@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] Stumblinbear@pawb.social 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Teenagers are allowed to work part time jobs

[–] Honytawk@lemmy.zip 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

So... legal child labour?

[–] GreenMario@lemm.ee 25 points 1 year ago

Pay all my bills and give me fun money and savings money or no work.

It's that fucking simple.

[–] LongPigFlavor@lemmy.world 22 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Preach. I work for a small manufacturing and production company. The pay rate is $16/hr, they don't offer health insurance, they have paid holidays, they offer 1 week paid vacation after 1 year and 2 weeks after 3 years. They're having trouble hiring people. They've resorted to reaching out to former employees and asking current workers if they could reach out to friends or family.

Edit: The location is South Florida, so $16/hr isn't much here. I live with my parents so it's good enough for me.

[–] TonyTonyChopper@mander.xyz 29 points 1 year ago (4 children)

zero vacation days for the first year??? wtf is going on in America

[–] Uncle_Bagel@midwest.social 22 points 1 year ago (2 children)

There is no law requiring vacation or sick days, so employers offer a few as a little treat. Wait until you hear about how much maternity leave you are guaranteed

[–] unfreeradical@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

No one wants to have children anymore.

[–] Theharpyeagle@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

What?! You can have up to 12 whole weeks of maternity leave! Your kid should be good by then, right?

Oh? You wanted money to live on while you recover from creating a whole other human? See you next week, then.

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[–] unfreeradical@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Five neoliberal presidents, two red scares, four centuries of structural racism, and the cult of individualism as a de facto state religion.

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[–] uis@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

WTF? This is worse than fucking Russia. And Russia itself has very low labour standards. 5-day 8-hour per day work week with 4 weeks of paid vacation(paid as in wage is still coming, not paid as in paying for travel and stuff) per year with minimum 14 days continiously. How can you get worse than that?

[–] Soulg@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

Many places in America give absolutely zero paid vacation at all. Ever. It is extremely common. No paid sick days either.

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[–] unfreeradical@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

An ingrained assumption persists of a particular class of people who willfully identify with providing certain labor for paltry compensation. It is simply because workers want to live well that they are not accepting low wages "even for basic shit like kitting".

They never held any original plan to accept poverty wages in exchange for being relegated to particular kinds of work.

[–] spacesatan@lemm.ee 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I'm curious, what category are you hiring people in on taskrabbit? Off the top of my head can't think of any that match warehousing.

I was tasking for a while at 30/hr and I'd have to raise my rates to make it worth it. Every customer estimates their task at 30 minutes to an hour but it could be anywhere from 1-4 realistically making it really difficult to schedule consistent work, and that's before you factor in all the overhead/missing benefits compensation.

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[–] ThatWeirdGuy1001@lemmy.world 112 points 1 year ago (1 children)

I work in food service and the amount of people that mindlessly repeat "no one wants to work anymore" makes me literally tremble with rage.

Though a lot of the times all I have to say is "no one ever wanted to work. That's why you fucking pay us to be here." and it'll shut them up

[–] Rakonat@lemmy.world 25 points 1 year ago (4 children)

Used to live not far away from a Mom & Pops pizza joint. Best pizza ever had in my life. 10 years ago, they sold the place. New owner cheapened a lot of the recipes and expanded their menu to compete with a lot of other local businesses, which up till this point had been respecting each others specialities and promoting their own customers to try other places when they asked for something not on their menu.

So they pissed a lot of people off, but the food was still pretty good, for a while at least. Definitely dips in quality, and apparently didn't do much to keep their prices competitive so most of their good cooks and servers would work about 6 months for them then get hired up somewhere else to make more money for less bullshit.

During the pandemic, every other place boosted their wages by a couple of bucks just to keep people on staff since a LOT of people were doing curbside pick ups, so their overall business went up even if their dining areas were vacant. So every other business in town is thriving despite the difficulties of the lockdown and social distances. Except for the pizza place, who despite having a loyal customer base, didn't have enough staff to stay open through the week and by the end of 2020 was down to three days a week.

And then these assholes put up their 'NO ONE WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE' sign next to their pick up window asking people to be patient with their staff because they don't have enough bodies. Curious, and knowing the owner wasn't there at the time, I asked the server what the deal was, and she (un)happily informed me what her wage was, and how she was slated to start working across the street next week for more money. And the kicker being she said she wish the pizza place would just pay more since they'd get more workers and people actually like the joint because it had a lot of history in town.

But nope, these bastards wouldn't increase pay. They refused to budge from their $9 dollar mark, insisting it was good pay because it wasn't minimum wage for no prior experience. My sister worked there in the early 2000s for $9 an hour. Everywhere else in town started at 12. The gas station was hiring 16 year olds for 12 dollars an hour to empty trash and sweep floors. The grocery store was paying 13 dollars for people to bag groceries 20 hours a week. But this otherwise successful pizza place with several generations of customers couldn't keep their doors open because they wouldn't go above 10 dollars for people to cook food, wait tables and sometimes do deliveries. Someone who had helped them with their finances even quitel informed me they probably could have afforded to pay 8 staff $16 per hour and still make a profit thanks to the regular business they had and they were practically losing money as it stood because they couldn't keep their doors open consistently and people were getting fed up with going to eat out and finding a closed sign on the front door.

But hey, nobody wants to work anymore. That clearly is the problem.

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[–] bastian_5@sh.itjust.works 83 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Workers aren't supposed to use the law of supply and demand. Only the employers can do that.

[–] unfreeradical@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Many workers have seemed to feel just fine identifying with the beliefs and values of their oppressors.

[–] franklin@lemmy.world 20 points 1 year ago (2 children)

This fucking kills me. The race to the bottom mentality to work more for less with less days off is way way too common and I will never understand it.

They seem to equate enduring exploitation with strong character I often see it as the opposite.

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[–] SARGEx117@lemmy.world 73 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Minor fix: "kids are lazy, nobody wants to work anymore."

[–] niktemadur@lemmy.world 39 points 1 year ago (2 children)

"Millennials are killing the job market."

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[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 58 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

As someone job hunting right now, it's so true. I'll see the same posting up for weeks and weeks.

I don't really care what work I do, as long as I can find some interest in it, so I've had a variety of jobs. There are definitely postings I look at that sound good, but the pay is lower than I had at easier jobs sometimes a decade or 2 ago. They immediately go off my list of things to apply to.

Even if 2 jobs are equal, who would want the one for less money? Sorry to say boss, sometimes it's not the people that aren't viable, it's the business.

[–] deweydecibel@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Perpetual job postings is a strong indicator that you should avoid that company. Unfortunately most young people have to learn that for themselves first hand. It's terrible but, hey, an object lesson in how to identify terrible employers is at least one useful take away.

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[–] Alph4d0g@discuss.tchncs.de 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

Late stage capitalism. Relentless pursuit of higher quarterly profits and earnings that fuel CEO bonuses and shareholder dividends. All at the expense of the people people who actually create the value. Also. That first line ain't paying for college loans.

[–] unfreeradical@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Of course it is necessary to exploit workers while some of us are still alive. If a systemic collapse leads to massive destabilization, then elites will regret any missed opportunities for having extracted greater profits.

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[–] sharkfucker420@lemmy.ml 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Or you could work at a restaurant and get a guaranteed $2.13/hr :D

[–] anon6789@lemmy.world 13 points 1 year ago (11 children)

I don't know if I've ever met wait staff that agreed they'd get paid more if they got a normal hourly wage. Say what you will about the math out financial skills of an adult in this occupation, but I know I'd prefer steady and predictable income over occasional highs and lows.

I liken it to people that enjoy casino gambling. I'm sure if you spend enough time doing it that you feel the times you get a big payout make up for the losses, but research seems to show otherwise. I've never had to work for tips though, so I couldn't say for sure.

[–] shalafi@lemmy.world 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Worked for a payroll firm that had a couple dozen restaurant clients.

  • Tips vary wildly between employees, not payrolls. Some rock out every check, I have no idea why some of the others keep trying to wait tables.
  • You can't be paid less than state minimum wage if your tips don't get you there. The payroll software almost never made use of that option because no one ever falls below. We were a couple of months into the new software when we figured out that hadn't been set, some edge case where the employee worked but didn't get enough tips.
  • Service jobs are highly seasonal here in NW FL. You better be in the top 10% to make it year-round.
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[–] Etterra@lemmy.world 14 points 1 year ago

What's exactly like this except that everybody is in their own little box which they can't see out of, and never choose to go around the side to look out of. And then low-washer boss says "nobody wants to work anymore" and "we need to make the poors suffer so our profits go up."

[–] UnaSolaEstrellaLibre@lemmy.world 10 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Here I am being a wage slave at $12.20/h

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