I'm currently going through a bit of a phase of reorganizing my life, and I need some advice.

I'm 22 and trying to find more traditional work, not centered around tech. Ideally, it would be work where I can be creative, use my hands, and build real things. I'm not expecting it to make me rich or anything; I just want something that feels stable and won't die out in the near future.

When I was younger, I used to spend a lot of time with my grandfather in his small room/workshop, helping him with things like weaving simple baskets, growing vegetables, fixing small chairs, sanding old tables, and so on. I've always been relatively good at figuring out how to make something or fix it.

I also used to be heavily into music production, around 3-4 hours a day, so I'm used to practicing something for a long time if I'm interested in it.

So yeah, what kind of work or trade do you think I should look into? I have a lot of free time right now, so if it requires a lot of repetition or skill-building, I'm very okay with that.

Thanks in advance!

I've been in my first "real" job for almost two years after graduating from university, and honestly, it's extremely draining because nothing is happening. I finish my work - budget tracking, reports, and random spreadsheet stuff - in about 90 minutes, and after that there's... Nothing. And the strange thing is that no one seems bothered by this?

I talked to a few friends who also work in "white collar" jobs, and they basically told me this is normal, and that about two-thirds of the day is just filler. How does that make sense in the long run? I genuinely feel like my brain is turning to mush from sitting around with no real stimulation and barely doing anything.

As humans, we need to feel like we're doing something useful at work. It makes us feel like we matter. Office work feels like the complete opposite of that. Half the people around me are either scrolling on their phones, doing online shopping, or pretending to be busy. I think maybe only 15% of the people in the office are under pressure all day and contributing the whole time.

The strange thing is that I felt more fulfilled when I was working in food service during university, because at least I was moving around and busy for about 85% of the shift. It wasn't glamorous work, but I didn't go home feeling like I had wasted 8 hours of my life.

Honestly, this whole thing is really weird to me. I think I'll need to look for something else because I can't see myself doing this for years. It doesn't feel sustainable at all. And tbh, this is probably why there are a lot of layoffs in white-collar jobs compared to trade-type work, because a lot of these office jobs feel like BS most of the time.

I need to vent about the most humiliating work experience I've ever gone through in my life.

At the beginning of this year, I was diagnosed with stage 3 lymphoma. After I got past the first wave of panic, I sat down with my manager to talk about accommodations while I was going through treatment.

My oncologist told me to work from home during chemo because of the risk of infection. I brought paperwork, a doctor's note, and everything. My direct manager acted like it made sense and said we'd find a solution. Then HR got involved.

Their response? "Remote work is a perk, not a medical accommodation." They insisted that my job "couldn't be done from home," even though the whole department had been working remotely during COVID less than a year earlier.

The "solution" they came back with was unpaid FMLA on infusion days, but I still had to be physically present in the office on all the other days. When I said that seemed like an ADA problem, the HR director literally told me: "We only have 46 employees, so ADA doesn't apply to us."

I tried anyway. I dragged myself into the office between treatment sessions, exhausted, nauseous, and immunocompromised, all in the middle of a nasty respiratory virus wave. And shockingly, my numbers dropped.

After my third chemo session, they put me on a "performance improvement plan" because I wasn't hitting the required metrics. About 3 weeks after that, they fired me for "not meeting productivity expectations" at a time when my immune system was literally on the floor.

As if that wasn't enough, they also contested my unemployment and said I was fired "for cause."

I got an attorney. Turns out they had 58 employees when the part-time and satellite office staff were counted properly, which means they are covered by the ADA. Earlier this week, we filed an EEOC complaint.

A company that sells HEALTH BENEFITS as its line of work couldn't manage the smallest shred of decency for an employee with cancer.

Never give a company your loyalty. They won't give it back.

I told the employer that I didn't feel safe, and he replied and said he could arrange transportation for me to his house (it would have cost about $240, which honestly undermines the idea that this was because they couldn't afford to rent a meeting room or office space). I said no to the trip, brought up the safety issue again, and asked whether the training could be done on Zoom or whether we could meet in a public place where I could bring someone with me. Honestly, I imagined that this would make them pause and rethink things, because what normal employer would want a potential employee to be scared before they even start?

No, apparently that didn't happen. They sent me a long email basically saying that the only way I could take the job was if I went to the employer's house. They said they couldn't hold meetings anywhere else for reasons related to "information confidentiality" (just to clarify, this is not a government position or anything involving classified/private client records). Then they made it very clear that I was absolutely not allowed to bring anyone with me. So the final answer was: I had to get to their house alone. And then, to make things even stranger, they said they were reconsidering me as a candidate because I had expressed my concerns, and that they only wanted "likeminded" and "collaborative" people to work with them...

So yeah, the summary of the story: trust your gut and be careful while job hunting. I don't know what was really going on here, but I'm glad I didn't go. I'm thinking about contacting the site where I found the listing and reporting it, because I don't want someone else who really needs a job to feel pressured into entering an unsafe situation.

Thanks again to everyone!!

https://preview.redd.it/xkspxmhqxedh1.png?width=655&format=png&auto=webp&s=47273e25f5fdbae60656c32dc1f2084c27060547

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I'm an analyst, and part of my role is to keep a bunch of reports constantly updated. The process was painfully manual, because almost no one here knows Power BI, Tableau, Power Query, or VBA. We have a data warehouse, but my manager still goes in every morning to export the data as a CSV, then does the usual routine of "make charts in Excel" for whatever visuals people request.

When I joined, I started building things in Power BI and Tableau, and honestly, because expectations were so low, everyone treats me like I'm a magician. I've now finished most of the initial query work, so I can put in the new file, hit refresh, and the whole report updates itself. They think it takes me half the day, but in reality it's about 8 minutes if nothing weird breaks.

The annoying part is that our data warehouse still isn't directly connected to anything we use - don't ask - so someone still has to manually grab the raw export instead of it coming through some magical API connection. So now I'm debating whether to tell my manager: "Look, put the file here and hit refresh," so the reports can get done every day without me having to keep monitoring them myself, and I can move on to better work.

Or should I keep pretending this is still a manual process and not say that most of it is now automated? Honestly, I'd rather move up here than leave, so part of me feels like if I show them I can automate the boring stuff, it might get me better projects instead of endlessly refreshing reports.

I ended up in the emergency room for two days, which meant I had to cancel a very important job interview. I notified them only a few hours beforehand. The recruiter turned on me, saying that the company would immediately put me on a "do not contact" list and that he would never send me any other opportunities. He tried to pressure me strongly to attend the interview while I was still very ill, but I knew that would make my condition much worse, so I stood my ground. Honestly, there's not much I can change now, but I just needed to vent. This whole situation, without a doubt, was the worst job interview experience I've ever had.

]I plan to contact the company directly, as there was an external recruitment agent involved. I hope this works out.

I'm trying to figure out my next career move while I finish my studies, so I've been browsing a lot of finance and career-related subreddits for ideas.

In almost every thread, I see people very casually talking about salaries of $120k+. Sometimes it's $250k or even $350k, from people working jobs that sound made up, and often not things that need long years of study like medicine or engineering.

How are all these people making these numbers? I'm from Canada and I've never seen money come this 'easily'. Is this just an American thing where people suddenly find themselves wealthy? I mean, if they were all surgeons, I'd get it, but I see these numbers all the time in fields like tech, consulting, and even marketing. Seriously?

Look, I know I'm a reasonably intelligent person, and I had the opportunity to study something I'm passionate about, so I chose ecology and conservation. I'd be over the moon if my salary hit $50k when I graduate, and I'd feel successful if I reached $80k within 6 years.

I know that money isn't everything, but seeing these numbers all the time makes me start to doubt the path I've chosen for myself and feel like I'm so far behind.