a thread for underemployment

I accidentally started this thread on IRE and it could not be moved so I am c/p'ing my posts and starting over. As I have done so many times! Sad lol.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underemployment

With the exception of the years I spent giving my heart and soul to the school that employed me for >10 years, I have been underemployed for the remainder of my adult working life. For the last 2 years, I have worked 2 jobs and I thought I had secured a third. but it fell through yesterday. The disappointment was crushing; it was a chance to work in my field and for reasons utterly beyond my control, it is not happening.

I could go on and on about the deleterious effects this has had on me, but it doesn't bring me any relief. There is a long-running thread for complaining about your coworkers, there's another one for complaining about working from home and I thought it only fair there be a dedicated thread for me and people like me who are trying to survive the wide and wtf world of underemployment. You're not alone <3

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Saturday, September 2, 2023 9:27 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

whoops I didn't mean to put this in I Rate Everything -- will ask mod to move it to ILE

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Saturday, September 2, 2023 9:27 AM (sixteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Found in the wiki posted above, what the actual fuck is this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Underearners_Anonymous

It's an org designed to blame yourself for your underemployment?! That's monstrous. As if people aren't already doing that to themselves every exhausted waking minute.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera), Saturday, September 2, 2023 9:42 AM (one minute ago)

i definitely have struggled a lot with underemployment and underachievement in general for most of my life... it's a complicated thing. i don't know if i'm underemployed now, what the intersection of underemployment and "bullshit jobs" is. i _feel_ underemployed. i feel the same way i did when i worked as a "data entry clerk" for seven years, alternating between doing the work of a data analyst and listlessly scrolling through tables for hours on end trying to "look busy". when i started this job five years ago it felt meaningful and fulfilling... it doesn't now...

It's an org designed to blame yourself for your underemployment?! That's monstrous. As if people aren't already doing that to themselves every exhausted waking minute.

― Piggy Lepton (La Lechera)

ouch, the framing on that is fucked... i definitely look at it more from the standpoint of disability politics. it's complicated for me because the particular struggles i face with underemployment stem in large part from being methodically taught that i was a worthless human being... even though i'm in a society that measures our worth as human beings by how much money we make, i don't believe that, personally, i think that's outrageous and false. having said that, you know, "if i am not for myself, who will be for me", and i have trouble being for myself.

underemployment, i think there are lots of reasons for it, inside and outside people's control. in my case, for instance, i do think unacknowledged and unaddressed gender dysphoria was a major factor in my being underemployed for such a long time, and honestly there wasn't anything i could do about that, the material conditions were pretty much outside of my control. in theory i should be a lot more able to advocate for myself professionally now...

I've been underemployed for almost 22 years and I'm not sure I could reacclimate myself to fulltime work. I definitely don't have any desire to. When I left NoCal and the printing company I worked for, I took their best client (a livestock industry magazine) with me and did part time work for full time money until it shuttered at the end of 2021. That overlapped for about 1.5 years with my bartending career, which started in June 2020, right in the full bloom of covid, lol. Right now I work three bar shifts a week, and that plus my wife's Soc. Security miraculously covers our bills. (We don't have a mortgage/rent or car payment.) I made under $16K last year tending bar. (We won't discuss c@$h t!ps, mainly because they're shitty.) We have some savings because we live in just about the lowest COL area of the country (thanks, I hate it) and I was able to sock away a fair bit of income from the magazine client over two decades.

A friend of mine (who did the grind as a CPA then CFO of a largeish medical practice until he retired at 68) told me repeatedly that I needed to find other design clients, don't put my eggs in one basket, hustle and save etc, and I was just "ehhhh, but I don't wanna."

I spend a lot of time reading the internet and wondering what I'd do if I was rich, not so much time wondering how I could get rich.

I have never identified as a slacker or underachiever or whatever self-assigned epithet to connote a lack of ambition — I went to graduate school and worked my way through (full time at a website, coincidentally when I discovered Ilx) and wound up with a situation that was the best I’d ever known. I’m a hard worker and dedicated.
What I will admit to, however, is a lifelong fallacious belief that I should be able to achieve my dreams of my own accord, on my own juice, independently of any one’s assistance. And that’s because this is what I was taught and told.

I refuse to accept that I am somehow less worthy of healthcare, sick days, and professional satisfaction than the people who have secured those things. I’m not especially interested in publicly interrogating my failure to secure basic full time employment. Mostly I wonder if the underemployment will ever end or if this is my fate for life. The question of why is beyond me — there are personal and structural reasons — I just idly wonder if this is it.

Like is this as good as it’ll get for me??

I guess where I'm at is ... seeing a distinction between underemployment in terms of "wasting your brain/talents" and underemployment in terms of financial compensation. I feel like I'm kinda at a point where I'm actually not wasting my brain professionally ... or less of it, idk ... but the amount of money I make compared to people who do similar work for institutions / businesses ... is very sad, if I cared more about how much money I made. I think part of it is that I'm almost 50 and my brain hasn't adjusted to inflation lol.

though for me, some of it is a trade-off for autonomy. Still ... I had a client that I quit working for in the summer of 2022 ... they made multiple efforts to replace me, and paid people $65 and $75 an hour to do work I was charging $30/hr for ... and those people were incompetent or refused to do the actual job. Which ... really wasn't/isn't that hard and shouldn't require someone getting paid $75/hr to do because it's basically data entry + a bit of background knowledge and logic.

underemployment of skills/abilities and underemployment in terms of time seem like very different things to me but the wikipedia definition seems to somewhat group them, is the thread intended more towards one or the other (or other meanings covered under the term im missing maybe)

I feel like if you’re satisfied w the work situation you’ve reached, you’re not actually underemployed. It’s a choice. And everyone is free to choose the life that works for them. And that’s great.

For me at least it’s literally under-employment: desiring more/finding it impossible to reach. And feeling judged (rightfully or not) as a person who doesn’t want more as well as materially deprived of basic social safety net things like employer subsidized healthcare or the ability to be sick and not lose or imperiled my jobs. I realize this is bc of the country where I live but that’s not likely to change probably ever. So with that in mind, my main question for the cosmos is “is this it?”

And l mean GENUINELY satisfied not just saying so to avoid negative feelings or judgement.

Last I checked 70% of the college classes taught in the USA are taught by part time instructors/adjunct instructors/contingent faculty.

That’s me. It’s a massively overeducated underclass.

yeah it's super shitty. I guess I shouldn't complain ...

Acc to Google search for “underemployed government definition”

Underemployment is a measure of the total number of people in an economy who are unwillingly working in low-skill and low-paying jobs or only part-time because they cannot get full-time jobs that use their skills.

This is the definition I’ve been operating under in my estimation with focus on “use their skills” by which I mean professional skills (for example; not simply my natural tendency to enjoy working with people)

it all just seems so arbitrary. in terms of financial compensation i'm doing better than most of my friends. i'm working, i have benefits, i have access to medical care. i'm not in a structural deficit.

i got in a codependent relationship with someone who had a poverty mindset like me and we never spent any money on anything and even though we were underemployed, we were able to keep working full-time jobs and the money piled up. when we moved out to the west coast, there was a lot of sticker shock, it was a lot more expensive, but my dad had just died and left us a lot of money, and i was able to get a professional job and we bought a house. we could've had one where we came from, but my impression is that it was important to both of us to be able to get the hell out of there at any time, which eventually we wound up doing.

and then what? you know? where do you _go_ from there? when you're financially secure and emotionally insecure and every day feels like it could be the end of time? neither of us ever had much in the way of goals. the more we had, the more there was to lose. easier to do as little as possible and have as little as possible.

i don't know what it would _not_ look like to be underemployed. i could go through the grueling and demoralizing process of the job search, and maybe get somewhere with it, despite being possibly one of the least resilient people on the planet. i could get a job that supported me as a queer person, a job that didn't, i don't know, kill my soul, maybe. this job didn't kill my soul when i started it, and it does now, and i gave up everything else, walked away from everything else.

the truth is that right now i need a job i can do when i'm too depressed to get out of bed for two months, and that's the job i have now. i don't know if that's "underemployed" or not. maybe if i didn't have a soul-killing job i'd have been able to get out of bed regularly. if you already have money, they just fucking throw money at you, not enough to, like, help other people, not enough to make a positive change in the world. enough that it's a _burden_. enough to buy all those little distractions that maybe work for other people? but never really worked for me.

so when i had a job i didn't hate, it was easier for me to look for other jobs i didn't hate, easier for me to get those jobs. a situation like this, though? i don't know what it would look like to _not_ be underemployed. i can't imagine having a job that feels meaningful, a job that gave me a sense of _accomplishment_. i dread the weekend. it's a three-day weekend and i dread it, because it's one thing or the other. i'm worn down by the pretense of work, the hypervigilance in the event somebody sometime might actually want me to _do_ something, and when that's over and i don't even have that, i just have the exhaustion, the emptiness, and the sadness. work is a poor distraction, but it's still a better distraction than i can provide for myself. at work, i'm not _supposed_ to enjoy myself, and that makes it ok. i don't have to be happy. i'm getting paid. that's the important thing. i could have it worse. most of my friends have it worse.

i spent a long time trying to, i don't know, hope for change. thinking it can't go on like this forever, and it can't, it won't, but when it changes, it won't be on my timetable. there's nothing meaningful i can do to prepare for it.

when covid hit, i tried to find meaning outside of work, i tried to build community. the classic trans thing. dual-role. being underemployed in a skill sense was fine. it gave me the resources i needed to do the things i really cared about. all i had to do was not care about or value myself.

in retrospect it's pretty easy to see why that didn't work out.

i just have a lot of complex needs in terms of employment. a job that leaves me enough to live on, a job i can work and still respect myself at the end of the day, hell, a job i can _work_, where i have tasks to do and some combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation gets me to do them. i don't have that now, to be perfectly honest. i spend half my life in mental health treatment because i hate my fucking job. you'd think it would be easier for me to just find a new job, wouldn't you? i've seen the jobs out there. jobs that have meaning on purpose have a tendency to eat up every second of your spare time, to become your life.

i don't know anybody who has a job that meets all of these qualifications:

1. enough pay to live on
2. enough free time to pursue personal interests
3. doesn't leave you feeling like your soul has been sucked dry at the end of the day

maybe there are people who have jobs like that. i just don't know them.

I work for myself, tutoring music to school kids at a local Catholic school and from a home studio. I work around 20hrs, but charge enough that it gets me the equivalent of getting minimum wage for a full time job. My wife and I live within our means and don’t feel much financial pressure as a result. I did the first round of what would be considered graduate school in australia in philosophy/theology, got some top marks, but made a conscious choice that pursuing that was going to be a lot of crazy hard work for not much more security or financial payout than I am getting right now. So for my the equation was

+ enough to live on
+ enough free time to do what I enjoy
+ full autonomy, no boss
- not fully using my brain and so being bored for much of that 20hrs

Vs.

+ enough to live on
+ brain activated
- no free time
- demands of a boss
- move cities
- years more grinding before reaching the same financial place I’m currently at.

So I picked a version of underemployment (based on the wiki you linked) rather than slave towards a traditional employment that felt elusive and not quite worth it.

I acknowledge I’m a lucky one to have this choice. I think (for the moment) I’ve picked the “happier” path

Except for the year doing medical editing, when I felt like I was being fairly compensated and was doing somewhat specialized work that utilized my skills, I have been underemployed for my entire life. I have quite literally dug graves by hand and have also spent hours on tall orchard ladders contorting my body to prune massive weed plants. And that’s just the interesting stuff.

I currently teach the equivalent of 5/4 teaching load during the school year and work bar once or twice a week in the summer, when I also teach a summer course.

Do I think I will ever get a permanent teaching job? No, and I am always depressed about it. Am I also glad that at least I can spend my time reading weird stuff and talking with young people and getting paid for it? Absolutely.

I am trying to figure out ways to make it work, but it gets harder every year. I’m applying to teacher certificate programs so I can teach high school. I think that will change a lot about my life, but also make the money and solvency thing better for me.

i also will frankly say that being underemployed has made it much easier to achieve what I want artistically— fourth book coming out next year, major overview of first three books in a major publication this fall, readings at fancy galleries and etc.

the issue is that none of that achievement translates to fair compensation.

i also will frankly say that being underemployed has made it much easier to achieve what I want artistically— fourth book coming out next year, major overview of first three books in a major publication this fall, readings at fancy galleries and etc.

This is the thing with me, too. I am not "underemployed" in the hours-in-the-day sense; I work a full-time job (meaning I bill an employer for 8 hours a day M-F) and a part-time job (I bill an employer for 3 hours a day M-F); I work as a freelance ghostwriter and editor for a literary agency; I write for magazines and websites; I run my own website/newsletter which has a few paid subscribers; and I'm writing a book. Those latter three things give me creative/life satisfaction, and if I traded them in for a single full-time job that paid decent money I would be "financially stable" (which I already am, but, you know, more so) but miserable.

Part of me wants to do mentorship work, because I feel like 30 years of doing it has given me a lot of insight and advice I could pass on to people who want to become freelance hustlers, but again, hours in the day.

I spent 13 years in one job (2005-2018). Unfortunately since then I've been hopping, with periods of freelancing, consulting, underemployment, and a few short-tenure jobs.

Something went very wrong for me career-wise, and it wasn't just covid weirdness. There's, like, a fog that comes over my brain sometimes, and I can't focus. It seems to stem from anxiety and depression, which I am addressing.

I still have a killer resume, with 25 years of experience, and I interview well. There is a lot of demand in my field, so I'm able to get jobs quickly, but keeping them is another story.

Apparently I can be charming for an hour, but I have had some trouble sustaining it and delivering. For whatever reason.

Great thread and very appreciated. Hard to talk about this stuff sometimes.

My wife is currently babysitting part-time, the other part-time medical office admin job having ended when they went back to the office and hired someone else for 50 hours/week. It's been hard for her since losing the music industry job she had for 20+ years -- she has no degree but a lot of work experience, but record labels don't need sales people the way they did in the past. She's taken coding classes, art classes, swimming classes, just to fill her time and try to better herself, stay busy, but it's been incredibly hard at various points for her/us since 2018.

Myself, I'm a college drop-out who has worked in the used record business full time since 2005. I don't hate my job or myself but I don't make much money. Quality of life has improved since I switched from working in record retail to online sales - better pay, paid vacation, flexible hours, no punishing customers to deal with. But it's not satisfying, it does not feel like I am making any kind of headway in my life and what I want to do. What do I want to do? Fuck knows.

And still, we're on medicaid for health care and unless my partner finds work soon we will begin eating into what meager savings we have.

We have a spare bedroom in our apartment, and our summertime tenant just left to go back to school, so potentially we can rent it out again to help make ends meet. But obviously we'd rather not have a stranger in the apartment, so that's in a sort of limbo until we find someone we trust/like enough, who is in need of a room for whatever reason.

It's all very depressing but it helps in some ways to remember that other people are struggling here too, and that its not personal failing but the reality of living under capitalism. Hard, still.

Yes — I found myself wondering if I had made a huge mistake in identifying underemployment as the main issue making me feel like a piece of shit. I mean, it seems like lots of ppl are basically ok with it (even thriving within the chaos?) which is great but I can’t seem to manage it? I don’t feel like I’m thriving. Maybe the problem is me? Maybe I’m overreacting to something that other people don’t overreact to? It wouldn’t be the first time.

But then I remember that quite honestly there’s nothing wrong with me or my work ethic — this type of precarity feels unsustainable and as i get older I find myself wondering over and over “is this all there is??” like Peggy Lee. I’m not ok with it.

Yeah, the problem is definitely not you. And you're not overreacting - everyone has different thresholds for this kind of thing and different needs and wants that are not being satisfied. Other people get along fine in plenty of situations I think I would find intolerable, and just because other people might seem to be doing better, that doesn't make YOU the problem.

It is entirely unsustainable. I don't know about anyone else itt, but I can barely put away any money to save and since a significant chunk of my income is cash, am not going to be able to count on social security or anything else in my old age.

I've tried to pursue more creative endeavors the last few years (writing, making collages, playing RPGs) but honestly they just make me resent the struggle we all have against time. Working against time, as they say.

(To be clear there are plenty of things wrong w me but I don’t believe my lack of employability is primary among them)

Yes I don’t feel like my time is mine to use — thank you for the kind words too, it helps!!

I'm basically unemployable on paper, but actually very smart & a hard worker. But I'm almost 40 I'm not going back to undergrad now, getting into debt, just to have a marginally better chance of finding a marginally better job.

xp - the struggle is real bud <3

everyone has different thresholds for this kind of thing and different needs and wants that are not being satisfied.

yeah ... i thought about what you said about teaching and adjuncts and part of why I think that sucks is that the expectations were not met. Like, a generation ago (putting it that way for simplicity's sake) there was tenure and full-time employment and these were good jobs that you didn't really have to worry as much about re basic subsistence, and now ... no. Meanwhile people have spent years of their lives and lots of money to qualify for these jobs that have been taken away.

I, on the other hand, just didn't really have a plan for what exactly I was going to do to make a living or have as a career ... I just kinda "rode the whirlwind" and ended up in this weird place professionally and financially that doesn't entirely suck, but would probably not be feasible for someone who had kids or who wanted more security and less stress.

I, on the other hand, just didn't really have a plan for what exactly I was going to do to make a living or have as a career ... I just kinda "rode the whirlwind" and ended up in this weird place professionally and financially that doesn't entirely suck, but would probably not be feasible for someone who had kids or who wanted more security and less stress.

This is exactly how I feel. And of course the path I took doesn't exist anymore, so what I said upthread about wanting to potentially mentor people might be worse than useless. "Well, answer an ad in the print version of the New York Times from a porn magazine, you can be an editor there for 3-4 years with little or no experience, that'll be enough to get you on staff at a small music magazine, and after a few years doing that you can work for a record label doing editorial content for their website..."

in the past year or so a couple people asked me if I would mentor them and I was like ... no, I would not be good at that. Probably the biggest difference between me (at almost 50) and someone in their late 20s/early 30s professionally is that I finished college/grad school with only $6k in debt, and rents were fairly low at that time. I did a lot of volunteer work and pro bono stuff to "get my foot in the door" and "learn my trade" that younger generations can't really afford to do.

Like it is rare that someone wants me to mentor them or ask me to be on some professional development panel or workshop because what is desirable in "the field" is full-time job security/institutional support and higher income -- largely due to increases in cost of living and student debt ... and I am so not a model for that. Also the weird mix of things I do ... most people I talk to are interested in only doing "the creative stuff" as opposed to the other things that are "not fun" that enable me to do the creative stuff with a greater degree of autonomy than a lot of other people in the field.

a key element of capitalist societies is that the system needs to have a surplus of talent, more skills than it wants to employ in any given moment, because that keeps wages down

but it also wants people to feel guilty about not being used to the extent of their ability, because that guilt helps to drive down wages

that's generally true ... but there are jobs that more people want to do and jobs that are not as desirable. Thus "wages" (or supply/demand which translates to wages) get driven down because there is a surplus of people who want to do said jobs. Like, one thing I struggle with in terms of looking at things from a purely Marxist and/or structural approach is the fact that there are way more people who want to be musicians, writers, artists, actors, designers, etc. than there are "jobs" for them.

Like if structural engineering was as appealing a profession as being a musician, it would greatly reduce the cost of housing but that's not the case.

my point here sarah is if the system is structured to drive down wages for the jobs that are most essential to maintain a functioning society then it's the system that's the problem, not the individuals wracked with guilt trying to fit into that system

but for some reason that's not how it plays out at the moment, for you, for me, for anybody really

this piece from the 1950s is a really important pointer imo

https://archive.org/details/sparrowsnest-8962

I guess there's a question for me underlying underemployment, and it's a challenging one. What do I _deserve_ as an individual, what am I _worth_? What do we _all deserve_ as human beings, what are we worth?

We fall so grotesquely short of any reasonable answer on the second count that it's hard for me to even ask the first question. Sometimes I feel like the way we talk about "privilege" can be a little misleading. There's this distinction in poly between, I think, jealousy and envy, where jealousy is wanting something _instead_ of someone else - I guess "covetousness" is another way of looking at it - and envy is _also_ wanting something someone else have.

In the past, I was sort of taught to think of "privilege" in that sense, things other people have that they _don't deserve_. That's not how I view my own privilege these days. Like, as a trans woman, I'm extraordinarily privileged, by which I mean that I'm not homeless and I have access to healthcare. That's setting the bar real, real low, if you ask me, but that's where it's at, that's where we're at. My girlfriend was envious of my privilege when I was too depressed to get out of bed for two months and didn't lose my job. I guess that's one way of looking at it. I tend to look at it in terms of how hard I (and she) had to work to get any reasonable level of care for my illness, in terms of what I had to actually _do_ to get care. It's pretty monstrous what I had to do. Not monstrous of me. Monstrous of...

But what am I going to do, right? Every single one of us has individual stories of how we've been denied things that we have a fucking _right_ to by institutions of power that are either actively hostile or exhibit depraved indifference. Yet these injustices are beyond our ability to individually remediate, and the same forces that perpetrate these injustices work very, very hard to keep us from working together for our _collective_ benefit, work very hard to encourage us to be covetous of each other.

I'm envious of other people's privilege. Not covetous, but yeah, I'm a really envious person. Envious of the stupidest things. I feel like I don't have the right to be envious because other people are envious of me for things that are, at best, double-edged swords. I have a professional certification, I work a professional job, I have a fair amount of job security, I have access to resources that other people don't because of those things. It's a bullshit job that I've grown to loathe but am afraid of leaving, because I've seen what happens to my friends who lose their jobs.

62 quit, just over a year ago. She was underemployed and the job was going fine for a while but things got so bad so fast that she didn't have time to find another job before she quit. I've been there. I worked for a small company for seven years in Indiana, I was underemployed but it was the most stable long-term employment I had. I did that until the company got bought out by a minor member of a prominent Indiana Republican family who ran the company into the ground while embezzling from employees' paychecks, and then I quit, and then I couldn't find another job in Indiana for a year. Those are the choices a lot of the time, underemployed or... not even unemployed, right? Because when you _quit_ it's not unemployment. You're just not working. That's all.

People thought I could've worked harder trying to find a job. It was 2016. I was depressed and terrified. I went to see a psych, paid cash, told him about my anxieties, told him I didn't want any benzos because of my addiction, he gave me a benzo scrip and said to see him next week and he'd make everything all better. That's the resources I had available to me, in Indiana. Well, it was OK, I could afford to throw away a couple hundred dollars like that. Privilege.

The only question it's safe or healthy for me to _ask_ is the first question, the question of what I'm worth as an individual. Asking the other one just leads into a spiral of despair, doomscrolling, learned helplessness. I feel like the only way I can make the world a better place is to keep becoming a better person. It's not something I want to do. I'm tired of becoming a better person. Becoming a better person, though... that's a genuine fucking privilege. It's something I've chosen to do, over and over again, in a lot of ways. Even if I'm only doing it out of fear, which, most of the time, I am...

That's the insidious thing about underemployment. When I look at the radical changes I've made, mostly they're because the alternative I saw was a horrific one. I spent 20 years not graduating from college until a co-worker of mine had something bad happen to her and I looked at what happened to her and decided if I didn't change, if I didn't quit that job and get a degree, the same thing would happen to me. I spent six months not asking out the woman I wound up marrying until the dating site we were on crashed and I had to face the prospect of never talking to her again. I lived in Indiana, a state I hated, for ten fucking years until Donald Trump got elected and I panicked and said to myself, if I don't leave I'm going to _become like_ these people.

Not all of these fears were reasonable or well-grounded but it's the only way I ever changed in the past. Transition was the first thing in my life I ever did mostly because I _wanted_ to. Even then, even then it felt like fear. It felt like I transitioned because I was more afraid of _not_ transitioning. I still haven't managed to figure out the difference between fear and desire.

All this is definite First Question stuff. This isn't stuff other people have to deal with. It's a big part of my underemployment, though. I'm underemployed in large part because my sense of my own self-worth is extraordinarily low. I wanted to be a professional writer, for instance, but I wasn't ever able to do it because my self-esteem was too low. (My self-esteem is also too low for me to make it as a stand-up comedian, a profession that's fueled by low self-esteem and dick jokes.)

Anyway. It's a question that's at the uppermost of my mind right now, so I hope y'all don't mind my writing so much about it. I'm trying to value myself as a human being, but it's not something I've ever really done before and it's pretty difficult. I can't really think of anything else to do with my life at this point, though.

xp - idk what you are trying to convince me of? I am not arguing that the capitalist system is free from "blame"

i felt like you were arguing that some jobs are naturally, inevitably more desirable than others and i think that's only true if you ignore the structures that make that case?

like the joy of "creative" jobs is at least in part a construct of the economic system that restrics the number of jobs that seem creative

I am aware of those structures AND I am saying that some jobs are inevitably more desirable than others because human beings aren't blank slates.

that's generally true ... but there are jobs that more people want to do and jobs that are not as desirable. Thus "wages" (or supply/demand which translates to wages) get driven down because there is a surplus of people who want to do said jobs. Like, one thing I struggle with in terms of looking at things from a purely Marxist and/or structural approach is the fact that there are way more people who want to be musicians, writers, artists, actors, designers, etc. than there are "jobs" for them.

― sarahell

to me, it's creative work that most points the way to a post-capitalist future... the whole "supply/demand" model just fundamentally doesn't apply to creative work, imo. and i don't think it applies to bullshit jobs, either! what's the "fair market value" of me lying in bed for two months being paid to do a job that i _can_ do adequately while i'm suicidally depressed? at a certain point maybe it becomes beneficial to look at work from standpoints other than market value!

xp - Does the fact that someone wants to do "underpaid" creative work mean that they should suffer and not be able to afford food or medical care or safe, dignified housing? No. I don't believe that.

xxp

that's where i disagree because i don't think desirability exists outside of the context of the system that designates the job

i don't see a platonic world of jobs where some are always more or less desirable. don't pay and hours and conditions have more of an effect on desirability if we live in a world where earnings and free time are scarce? and wouldn't those things look different if precarity didn't exist?

But structurally, outside of capitalism, even ... there are things that more people are going to want to do than there are "essential" roles and there are going to be "essential" roles that are undesirable or at least are challenging enough to obtain competence/skill at that there is going to be a scarcity.

Off topic - but can underemployment figure in your personal life as well as work? On a particularly boring Sunday, that seems even more of a pressing problem to me: why don't I have more interesting facets of my personal non-work life ? Why haven't I developed those more?

i don't think desirability exists outside of the context of the system that designates the job

unless you are going to construct novel job descriptions like, 50% sewage treatment specialist / 50% DJ ... which, hey, why not? Maybe that's capitalist hegemony at work.

but what makes something desirable isn't just a personal, aesthetic connection? the remuneration, the social status, the degree of how much of yourself feels beaten down by a job - that's all stuff that impacts on what we think makes a job desirable, so if those things changed then our notion of desirability would change i think

that's not to say people wouldn't always value self-fulfilment or self-expression, it's just to say that those feelings aren't automatically tied to specific kinds of work because every kind of work is shaped by the economic conditions around it

apart from being slow to type out my replies here :D i think i'm saying in brief

"structurally, outside of capitalism, even ... there are things that more people are going to want to do than there are "essential" roles and there are going to be "essential" roles that are undesirable or at least are challenging enough to obtain competence/skill at that there is going to be a scarcity"

is doubtful to me because there's no work outside of a socioeconomic structure that makes it work

The other issue with "the system" is that certain jobs require particular systems and structures to be functional. And part of the appeal of creative work is the aspect of play and the relative autonomy of it. Like, if your job is in housing construction, you aren't going to have that because of what is required to build housing in a contemporary society.

did Robinson Crusoe hate mondays?

is a question

Yeah, 60 is a new limit with the new contracts I think. And there may be lots of wiggle room to work people past that. All the rules change near Christmas. Right now I get double time if I work past 10 hours (hasn’t happened) or 56 hours in a week (ditto) and absolutely cannot work more than 12 hours. After Thanksgiving all OT is time and a half and I think the only rule becomes having at least 10 hours between shifts.

My job is easy and quite pleasant. The quality of supervisor varies but they’re all nice and collegial, half of the nights are pure boredom (reading for six hours of eight), the half we get things breaking non-stop and time flies rushing around to fix them.

I haven't had a fulltime job since late 2001. Not sure I could even physically manage a 40-hour week. I need more income to cover insane health insurance premiums when the ACA subsidies go away in January, but I'm about to turn 62 and the idea of job hunting just makes me want to go to sleep.

xp that sounds really great! are you working only night shifts? i work a lot of them and it is very boring with a lot of downtime (i avoid reading because i’ll get fired if i fall asleep). i had a coworker once who used to play flamenco guitar very quietly to himself for 6 of the 8 hours.

carrier job sounds like a lot more hassle for only a little more money than i’m making now.

I was working graveyard but I moved to 3-11 a month ago. I may move back to graveyard - I was struggling with time management (trying to eat two real meals at home in the not working or sleeping window) but I’ve adapted to eating a real meal at work. I’ll just have my shredded chicken and rice at 3am like god did not intend.

Man this thread is full of people who u see stand my struggles. I too find myself eating weird meals at odd hours.

Ugh UNDERSTAND

Most of my friends are 9-5ers who have weekends off and it’s heartening to be among people for whom that’s not the case.

Is some of your frustration and anxiety related to the relative security and comfortable financial positions of your friends?

I mean, it’s normal to compare oneself to others, and if your perceived peers seem better off than you, you are more likely to feel like you are somehow less. Like you aren’t succeeding.

It’s like Alumni Magazine Syndrome

It has always been so, and it doesn’t really bother me anymore aside from peole assuming I have the same schedule as they do.

I think the frustration and anxiety of contingent work is kinda baked in

I mean, it’s normal to compare oneself to others, and if your perceived peers seem better off than you, you are more likely to feel like you are somehow less. Like you aren’t succeeding.

― sarahell

lol i'm in the opposite camp

the people i perceive as my peers (not y'all, i perceive y'all as my betters), uh, often have some pretty serious problems that i don't.

it's not that i feel like i'm _better_ than them. my not having a lot of their problems is inseparable from my privilege. i'm choosing to live my values over working a job that was fucking killing me, and most people don't have that choice. i mean i am going to have to get a job again at some point. just not right now.

it's more like... i don't regret making the decisions i did. i was fucking miserable and i wanted to die, and now i love myself and i'm happy to be alive. it's more... shit was working out for me, and then the world got worse and a bunch of shit stopped working out for me. there are a lot of things i'd like to do, but i don't have a stable enough social support network to do them. if i judge myself for anything, it's for not having access to a more stable social support network. i don't judge myself for it, really - shit's fucked, not anybody's fault. it just sucks, is all.

most carriers start as technically part time for $20 an hour and can be worked up to 60 hours a week.

can't believe i put up with that when i started, there were a few 70+ hour weeks the first winter. but no longer. have had a medical restriction for 40 hours for the last few years :)

I initially accepted a Rural Carrier Associate job while I was waiting on the maintenance process. Lucky to get my offer two or three days before orientation, I’m pretty sure the carrier hours would have killed me.

Seriously, fuck that.

I sleep 2-3 hours a day on average, down from 4-5 hours. With catch up days where i sleep 14+ hours with interruptions. Some days i am surprisingly enrrgetic but live most of my life in a stupor.

Xp - if you aren’t a morning person, yes. My mom was a rural carrier associate then got a regular rural carrier job when I was a kid, but she would normally be up at 5am regardless of that job so it was good for her.

welp, i didn't get the job, though a good friend of mine did (also an internal candidate) and since i will be her assistant— which is my current position— i am happy they chose her rather than one of the other candidates, whom i don't think i could have worked with. one of them might have made me quit!

on the bright side, the company is opening another facility much closer to my house next spring, and the GM and COO both believe i would be an excellent candidate for managing that location. the issue is apparently that i am too much of a hardass— there are legacy employees at the current facility who have really fucked shit up, and their bullshit is tolerated in ways that i would not be okay with— and that they need someone who wouldn't summarily fire half his staff. that is, they think i could build a good team who know how i play, but taking over the current team would be difficult. which, fair!!

that's tough breaks but good to hear you have open and positive communication with management and a possibility on the horizon.

this isn't the climbing gym, is it? understand if you don't want to disclose that here.

today for lunch i enjoyed two pieces of gnocchi + veg leftover from our family meal at the restaurant last night that i padded with noodles i made at home and added extra cheese. i ate it alone at a borrowed desk with a combination spoon-fork (not a proper spork, more a hybrid) that i keep in my bag at all times for moments like these.

bringing my own lunch is where i'm a viking.

lunch and dinner at work in one day: galaxy brain achieved

i will say that it has made me extra grateful for the times i am free to cook and eat meals with my boo. it's one of my simple joys in life.

It’s like Alumni Magazine Syndrome

― sarahell, Sunday, September 7, 2025 5:28 PM (yesterday)

i need to add: if i had this problem i would not have made it this far. i stopped giving a shit what my college classmates were doing right after graduation. it was obvious to me they had connections and access i did not have. my guess is most of them forgot me completely. i have my 5 friends and that is all i need. in sum i do not suffer from alumni magazine syndrome tyvm

(not trying to be hostile, i was at work last night and couldn't post)

this isn't the climbing gym, is it? understand if you don't want to disclose that here.

it is. had a bit of a 180 in the past few hours and now i just want to quit

i just really need to be given a chance

<3

Hear u, know the feeling

Applying for jobs was a soul crushing experiences. Things I would say I’m overqualified for and you just never hear back. I have an application for a city parks department job that’s still “in review,” I check on it every so often for the lulz. All of the jobs (pest control, city and school district jobs, printing press work) I applied for paid ~65% of what I make now so I feel like I lucked out but I’m just going to sell drugs if I ever have to do it again.

Also the way the process works and the expectation you’re at their beck and call. I applied with Ecolab, did a phone interview and then three weeks later they finally contacted me wanting me to do an in person interview the next day at 7am an hour away. (Again, luck in the interim to get my current offer so I could ignore the assholes.)

I recently applied for a job, booked an online appointment for the initial call, went on a trip, and got an email while on the trip asking if I could move the initial call up to the day I was supposed to be flying home. The email said if I wasn't available for the earlier time slot they were going to move on to other candidates. I didn't even reply. Fuck 'em.

milo, my old fallback was porn— i am in great shape. alas, the whole colostomy bag thing kinda put the end to that. i still look good tho, which is of course its own reward

My falllback has been waiting tables since I was a fresh young filly of 16

Also the way the process works and the expectation you’re at their beck and call. I applied with Ecolab, did a phone interview and then three weeks later they finally contacted me wanting me to do an in person interview the next day at 7am an hour away. (Again, luck in the interim to get my current offer so I could ignore the assholes.)

― Lady Sovereign (Citizen) (milo z)

It's the PROCESS. They want me to jump through hoops for them and they haven't done the most basic fucking shit. Broken forms, stuff that only works in certain browsers, just... People always tell me when I'm applying for jobs, "Remember, you're interviewing them, too." If that was true, most of these fucking places flunk within the first five minutes of the process.

milo, my old fallback was porn— i am in great shape. alas, the whole colostomy bag thing kinda put the end to that. i still look good tho, which is of course its own reward

― czech hunter biden's laptop (the table is the table)

I never wanted to do SW when I was younger, but these days... it's just, you know, doing creative work is fucking soul-crushing for me. At this point my dream job is doing sissy hypno for a living, but my high school guidance counselor never told me how to break into that field.

the issue is apparently that i am too much of a hardass—

had a bit of a 180 in the past few hours and now i just want to quit

This is how i lost the only normal-ish job i've ever had (the shift was still unfortunate)

I neither had the temperament to assume responsibilty for other's mistakes, nor to stay on at a job where i've been passed over for a promotion i felt i deserved.

I mean the job also sucked a lot of ass in general

I’m just going to sell drugs if I ever have to do it again.

LOL i couldn't do this anymore, without the coterie of drug enthusiasts to accompany me everywhere i once had. Now i'd have to, like, hustle.

I was the top performing person by a longshot in a small department and had lost the promotion to someone more personable (which was actually good & smart of them) and they later told me the other reason was they thought i would quit sooner or later (which was also smart of them and entirely correct)

All worked out for the best

I’m just going to sell drugs if I ever have to do it again.

I have (jokingly) brought up the idea to my wife of opening a dispensary. She is vehemently opposed. (There are already too many dispensaries in my little town anyway.)

One of my bosses already raised the idea of me being interested in moving to the supervisor/management track. I didn’t say hell no but I was thinking it.

i will say this: my current manager, whose job i wanted, basically told me it ruined her life— she worked at a climbing gym but hardly had time ti climb. but that said, the manager before her found plenty of time to climb, but that was because he was also a mountain guide for the company so he was always off on trips.

i am still going to go for the new facility opening next spring, but in some ways i dodged a bullet: i would have had to quit teaching, which would have foreclosed the possibility forever at this particular institution, and in addition, that means that i wouldn’t have the opportunity to teach the honors sections of Dissent in America next spring, which is honestly a class i was built to teach.

now, i can still go for the position while keeping possibilities for teaching open. i also might finish my library degree in the meantime, which, great!

My fallback was always clerical/office temp work (once for a few months at Ecolab, coincidentally!) but my sense is that fewer of those jobs exist now and that (maybe I'm wrong) agencies likely wouldn't want to send someone in their 50s to fill in.

Lucky to get my offer two or three days before orientation, I’m pretty sure the carrier hours would have killed me.

glad that worked out for you. i've known a few carriers who went to maintenance and are much happier.

Seriously, fuck that.

fortunately this is my attitude now. i accidentally went a couple minutes over 8 hours today and was fairly annoyed.

Finish the library degree! I don’t remember if you were interested in doing archiving work or not, but I think it’s definitely a growth field. Like, I could totally see you being an archivist for radical queer writers and artists who are dead or dying, and being able to design/create the archives in a creative way.

Lol… good thing I never went into career counseling

I'm reading this thread before starting a few applications. It's my first month being unemployed leaving my job which was both comfortable and meaningless. I decided I was too young to enjoy the flexibility from being underused, having limited responsibilities, and growing a tolerance for bullshit. It's probably also because I haven't completely lost hope for a "career", although I realize it will come down to luck and the next months will be hard. I have my partner to loop up to as a contrast: she's now (by accident) in the same field (project management) but she's making a killing. She has the discipline, patience, tactical sense and attention to detail to ensure things align even in competitive, corporate-minded environments where 90% of the mess is internal - while I tend to have sub-optimal reactions and grow frustrations. Even if, in fairness, our environments were never equal and her organization is both more competitive and functional.

I'm also trying to look forward to the period. I was surprised at the amount of support I received from colleagues who also dreamt about leaving or said that unemployment can be a great period. I get what they mean - still doubt it as for my own case but I do need the positivity.

look up to*