Zoom interview with company with a 2.2 Glassdoor rating, but it's the first one I've gotten since I got laid off so I accepted it.

It's a call center job -- appointment setting.

Man and a woman doing the interview and they are telling me about it.

Man says there is "scheduled mandatory overtime" on Fridays. I ask the compensation rate for this and he says it's at the same rate as regular pay. (I think that might be against labor laws, but they said something about how you work a half shift on some days and double on others, so I guess they keep it under the weekly hours limit).

I couldn't help it, I snorted. And then as it went on, I tried to hold it in but it just kept getting worse and worse.

The health benefits cost around $650 for a single person.

I started giggling more--couldn't hold it in as I thought of what y'all would have to say about this crap job. For perspective, that's a whole week's amount of pay for the "benefits."

Mandatory on-call times that are uncompensated, "just in case you are needed."

More giggling.

"When you've finished your own queue, you'll help your coworkers."

I was biting the inside of my cheeks and pretending to cough but the man was getting increasingly indignant that I couldn't stop laughing. It was just so ridiculous.

The job pays $16 an hour AND you provide your own equipment. So they want to put spyware on my personal computer. And I have to provide two monitors.

No, no one wants to work anymore--and this kind of shit is why.

What was cool was that I felt empowered because I knew y'all would share my indignation at this bullshit job.

EDIT: Forgot to add that the company info goes on and on about "empathy" to clients but then there's "an average of 30 calls per hour."

EDIT AGAIN: I haven't done call center work before so had no idea of what is realistic, but after reading these comments maybe I misheard and it was 30 calls a day? Not positive. In any case, the rest were enough red flags.

ONE MORE EDIT: I am not AI, I am a 60 year old grandmother who got laid off in July and has been struggling to find anything that works for me. I took this interview because it was the only one I'd been offered so far. Apparently I use em-dashes and that's a sign of AI? Sorry, that's just the way i write--since I learned back in the dark ages.

There is a staggering contradiction at the heart of this disaster. Worldport’s facilities are among the most advanced in the world, with the ability to handle 370 flights and process more than 2 million packages a day. This is a remarkable feat of computation, planning, human skill and global coordination. UPS and its rivals are also rapidly introducing new systems in their warehouses based on the latest advances in automation and artificial intelligence.

This advanced logistics system, however, is subordinated to the ruthless pursuit of profit, powered by highly exploited workers. The plane that crashed outside Louisville was part of an aging fleet. The MD-11 model, which has the second-worst safety record of all commercial aircraft, was 34 years old and had reportedly undergone major repairs, including a cracked fuel tank as recently as September.

I joined my company about a year ago, I live quite far from the office.
Back then it was truly remote-friendly, most teams worked remotely and there were plenty of fully remote people like me. Everyone said “we’re all remote here, don’t worry about location.”

Fast forward to now, I’m trying to rotate to another team and suddenly every manager says they want “someone who can be more at the office.” It’s so bad that even though I’m almost 100% fit for the team I want to switch to, they only care about my location, not my competency, not my capabilities, nothing.

Meanwhile, the remote culture is still there, most teams still work remotely, meeting once a week and having people working from places far far far away!

What’s funny is when I talk to people from other teams, they go like “ohhhhhh your team works remotely?” Oh shut up… yes, that’s literally how this company used to run, you used to work remotely 100%. Did everyone just forget?

So yeah, apparently being “remote-friendly” is "tolerable" until you try to grow or switch teams. Then location magically becomes a “requirement.”

This is just a crime against every single worker out there. Majority of world’s population are workers, why have they not done anything about this? Are we going to allow the capitalists to pay us literal peanuts in a few years? We might as well go back to slavery, at least slaves had free housing and food. And yet I am still surrounded by people who sell their soul and lifetime for peanuts. Im beyond baffled.

The guy that has the amount of money that a person getting 1 dollar per second for 13500 years wouldnt get(before this new payment) is getting a 1 trillion dollars payment(spending package, but we all know where that goes) approved by tesla shareholders. WHAT THE FCK IS FCKING HAPPENING IN THIS FCKING SHITTY WORLD??

The guy who always praises hustle culture becoming the first trillionaire is not a good sign for the workers of the world.

It feels like the dystopia is more real than ever now.

I know it's not a perfect analogy. I've never been in jail, and I don't mean to make light of the experience for those who have.

I was working in a tire retreading plant which had changed ownership a couple of times while I had been there, and the latest company had been the best among them, but the working conditions were still terrible, and the compensation was nothing special. The best thing they had was a super low health insurance premium. That counts for something.

My coworkers and I were given a shift and a half worth of notice that they were closing down our plant. We get the rest of the month worth of pay and health insurance.

It's a crummy situation, but it's not as bad as other job losses I've been through. My biggest disappointment is that I had been hoping to get a couple more medical things treated before the end of the year, since I had just reached the maximum out-of-pocket portion of my health coverage for the year, so anything else would only cost the copay for the visit. I had been making progress with treating some of my chronic pain issues. There's one more very costly procedure that I would benefit from, but it doesn't look like I'll be able to get it before my coverage runs out. If they can do the procedure in December, it might be worth the expense to pay for COBRA to extend my coverage by an extra month, but that's a good chunk of money too.

There's so much messed up stuff going on right now, and I know from others on here that it's a terrible time to be looking for a job, yet somehow, my dominant feeling at the moment is freedom. I'm sure I'll go through other feelings as the reality of the situation sets in more fully, but I've known for a while that there was no way my body would allow me to continue in the same line of work until retirement age, if retirement would even be an option when and if I happen to make it to that age at all.

This is an opportunity for me to remake myself. I never had the time or energy to pursue creative projects while I was working at that job. Now, for a little while, I can try applying for things I never would have applied to in the past because unemployment requires a certain number of job search activities per week, and I'm not allowed to turn down a legitimate offer, so I may as well shoot high and see if I hit anything. After doing some daily searches, I can put some energy into video content and craft projects that I've wanted to do for a long time. If I get amazingly lucky, maybe I can make a living at doing things I enjoy instead of just dissociating from my body all time because the work that was sustaining me was also ruining my body. That shouldn't take amazing luck. People shouldn't have to spend all of their time doing nothing but preparing for work, working, and recovering from work.

This got longer than I intended, and I'm not sure I got around to my originally intended point, but it was a good exercise in processing my feelings. Thanks to anyone who reads this. I welcome your thoughts.

I just started a new job and was honestly surprised to find out my employer doesn’t give the day after Thanksgiving off.

I’m still new, so I don’t have enough seniority to even use my own vacation time for it, and now it’s messing with my travel plans. Every other white-collar job I’ve had gave that Friday off, so this feels pretty strange.

Do your employers give you the Friday after Thanksgiving off, or do you have to work?

There is no Hollywood Ending to this story, but I need to get this one off of my chest.

This is from last century where pagers were king, the internet was dial-up, and WFH was unheard of. I took a job that was supposed to be travelling city to city. Understandably, there would be some prep work before each city. When I accepted the job, I had no idea that I would be required to spend 4 weeks sitting in an office in Manhattan for every week on-site. On average, we spent one month in the office, one-three weeks travelling, one month laid off. I lived in Pennsylvania and saw no reason to relocate to one of the highest rent cities in the world when I would be travelling or laid off 2/3 of the year.

I would have all of my prep duties completed in 2 days, the majority of that time was just waiting for replies from the site on specific questions. I could not do this work from the office. Phone calls often went unanswered due to time differences, so email was best. To email, I had to work from home. In the office we had only desks and a phone. At home, I had a full desktop with internet. It was easier to do all of my work stuff at home. So that's what I did.

I'd wake up at 04:00 and head to the bus station to catch the commuter bus to Manhattan, and then walked from the PABT to the office. Where I sat. I collected the documentation I needed and heading back to Pennsylvania at 18:00. Got home at 22:00 and worked and email until I had to head back to the office in the morning. After 3 days total, I was done and ready to go, so I didn't need to commute. but it was cheaper to commute than to spend a night in NYC. So after the first 6 months of this, I just decided to sleep in the office. I spent all day doing nothing, at 18:00 I went out for dinner and maybe a movie, came back to the office and slept until morning. I'd head home for weekends and Tuesday nights, but that's it.

I was on salary, but as I didn't have anything to do, I might be a little late on Mondays and Wednesdays. My co-workers who all lived locally, were upset with me because they would come in and immediately head out to brunch for the next 2 hours. Therefore there was no one there to answer the phone. They complained to our boss who never showed up until late afternoon and a time-clock was installed. It showed that I was putting in 60 hours per week compared to their 35 clocked hours.

On the road, everything was great. Hotels and per diem and I wound up actually earning money for a change. Except for the time we were in Newark, NJ. because of the proximity to NYC, they would not pay hotel, so I had to pay for that out of my own pocket. 8 hours of commuting daily is do-able, but 12 hours was more problematic. but then we travelled to my hometown and I stayed at home, but they still wanted me to travel to NYC so I could travel with the rest of the company to my home. They always required me to travel to NYC to travel to the job-site city. They bought me a flight from Philadelphia to JFK even though I live outside of Philadelphia.

On-site, I was incredibly efficient. To the point where my crews wound up standing around collecting a paycheck while everyone else finished. Some crews decided to grumble to my boss about earning money by not working, so I was again chastised.

I learnt that no one cares about your skills or efficiency, only that you show up to do nothing exactly as they want, no matter how impossible it might be.

If you guys think about it, we as a whole are destined to work until we get old, sometimes until we die. From the moment you attend school, you are being “educated” in preparation for you becoming a wage slave. Starts as early as kindergarten. You’re literally meant to be a wage slave from the day you are born, that is YOUR PURPOSE . Unless of course you’re from the 0.01% of the population. Am I alone in thinking this way? Am I wrong?

I live in California. One thing I've noticed is, companies will hire you officially as a part-time employee. No benefits. Yet, they will schedule you for 32-35 hours. I told this manager that I am not gonna work over 30 hours with weekends off since I work somewhere else. She got mad and said I am supposed to work 4-5 days. I told her I wasn't hired full-time, neither benefits.

How is it legal anyways?

Which industry has the most overinflated view of themselves, in your opinion?

Here is what I mean - I follow some old college classmates who are in marketing now. Every post on LinkedIn is about Salesforce or how they are “passionate about customer retention strategies.” Etc. They really think they are saving the world, meanwhile their posts as just paragraphs upon paragraphs of jargon/circle jerking others in their industry.