Does your job feel more stressful, hectic, and impossible lately? Friends, you are not alone. In fact, this may be an epidemic.
I just had my quarterly call with my psychiatrist. Yes, I have one. I have #ADHD and have been medicated for years. I was filling him in on my sabbatical and what prompted it. (TL;DR: Two years of relentless work stress, job instability, and unreasonable productivity expectations.)
His reply: "I hear this all the time right now. Things calmed down for a bit during Covid but now it seems like companies are all going, 'Where is my money?' People are getting squeezed from every direction."
He mentioned that one person spent their last session crying because their workload just doubled and they were totally overwhelmed. “Can’t you all take some kind of collective action?” he asked.
So why is this happening? I have two not-so-random observations that might add some color.
1. The latest Forbes World's Billionaire List notes that the world's richest people are wealthier than ever, up over $2 trillion from just a year ago. The top 20 billionaires alone added $700 billion to their fortunes.
2. Brutal cost-cutting continues. Two separate tech companies I used to work for had layoffs yesterday. And one of those companies is the very company that laid me off a year ago. (And that company happens to be owned by the 4th and 5th-richest people in Australia. Their net worth took a teeny downturn last year, poor fellas, but it looks like they're back on the upswing now. Happy I could be of service, dudes! You’re fucking welcome! )
We're working harder than ever and the folks on this list are getting richer. A lot richer. Correlation or causation? Do we even need to ask?
I wonder if we are all, perhaps, too damn polite about our working conditions? I so often see people announcing their layoffs on LinkedIn with a positive tone. Like, "Oh, well! That's the way it goes sometimes! Guess I'll just ... reconfigure my entire life and hopefully not go broke in the process. But what an opportunity! Isn't this f*cking great? And hey, thanks to the company that just shitcanned me! It was great while it lasted!"
We want to show that we're positive and professional and, ergo, employable. But maybe we've become too accepting of our peasant status. If we cheerfully go from one shit sandwich of a job to another, we're teaching all the billionaires that it's totally fine to treat people like commodities who exist solely to make their stock prices go up or down.
This is all easy for me to say right now because I'm not attached to any specific company. Also, frankly, I'm probably the perfect trifecta of unemployability:
I'm 52.
I'm a woman.
And I'm a writer, which we all know is the lowliest of peasants.
So I’m in a position to say some things that need to be said.
But what about you? What can you do, apart from planning a peasant uprising? Well, first, don't discount a peasant uprising. Those things can be f*cking effective. Consider it.
Otherwise ... listen, I know you don't want to lose your job. I get it. I don't want you to lose your job, either. But I do want you to start getting mad when you should be mad. I do want you to stand up for yourselves. I do want you to question why so many people exist for weeks, months, and years on end in a state of anxiety and fear that they're going to be eliminated any minute.
Even if you can't say when you're mad at work (and I do understand that), at least think it. Don’t you dare gaslight yourself into thinking you’re lazy or unmotivated or not that smart. These greedy d-bags want your time, your superhuman productivity, your good ideas, and they want you to fucking deliver for their benefit. And if they’re not getting steadily richer by the day, they want you to feel bad about it.
Fuck that noise.
Do work that you're proud of and do it with integrity, but don't kill yourself trying to meet impossible demands. Impossible demands are impossible. So don't even try. As someone who was just sick for the first two months of my sabbatical, I can tell you it's not worth it. Change what you can when you can. Try to get out of bad situations when you're able. Collect your paycheck and confidently ask for raises even when you don’t feel confident. Make friends with your coworkers where you can, because people are all we've got in this crazy life.
But don't give your soul to a job or a company. Because the billionaire at the top of the food chain is flying so far above your head that they don't even recognize you as a person. The view from up there is just one unending map of commodities.
If you want to do a good job, do it for yourself and not for them. They don't see you anyway.
If you’re in the mood for something a little more hopeful, you might want to check out my last post. But if you want to ride the cranky train straight on through until morning, this one is a better bet. Rock the fuck on, peasants.
You are so right, Trish! Billionaires do not see the people that make them rich.
The sad part is all executives take a big chuck of raise every year and give like peanuts to the people doing the heavy lifting.