r/antiwork

Anyone else feel this way? If the only way to afford children (if you even can) is to work these sh*tty jobs, I'd rather not have them.

I used to come here pretty frequently over the past 6-7 years or so, but more and more I've been noticing that almost all of the top posts are submitted and/or written by bot accounts, and it's fairly easy to tell.

As of right now, the top posts are:

1. "The questionnaire is 100% anonymous" -> Meme posted by an account made November 5th, 2020 with 114,577 post karma, with hidden post and comment history

2. "Employers are ghosting college grads and rescinding offers, destroying morale" -> Article posted by an account made November 28th, 2016 with 23,971 post karma, with hidden post and comment history. ~~ This one could be a legit person, but the hidden history is always a red flag for me~~

3. "Working from home should be a right, not a reward" -> Article posted by an account with a "WordWordNumber" username made on July 11th, 2026 with 205,451 post karma, with hidden post and comment history

4. The fourth top post looks legit

5. The fifth top post looks legit

6. "Anyone else notice how job descriptions now list stuff that used to be 3 separate positions" -> Self post made by an account made on August 12th, 2026, with hidden post and comment history

7. "Exercise Done At Work May Increase Dementia Risk, Though Leisure-Time Movement Decreases It" -> Article posted by an account with a "WordWordNumber" username, made on July 30th, 2026

8. "House Education and Workforce Committee Passes Messmer Deregulation Legislation" -> Article posted by an account with a "WordWordNumber" username created on March 4th, 2026 with 193,781 post karma, but surprisingly is not hiding their history

9. "Found out the coworker i thought was cool is *chugging* that kool-aid fml" -> Self post made by an account created on June 26th, 2025 with hidden post and comment history

10. "Can't tolerate freezing office" -> Self post made by an account with a "WordWordNumber" username created on April 30th, 2022 with 26,446 post karma and 73,740 comment karma, with hidden post and comment history ~~Surprisingly, this is the first one I've seen with a higher comment karma that post karma, which is why I pointed it out~~

So, of the 10 top posts right now, 2 of them seem like they were submitted by real users, maybe 2 contentious posts that I can't tell if they're bots or real users, leaving AT LEAST 6 posts almost definitely submitted by bots.

It's easy to understand why so many bots post here. Users come here mostly to vent, and most posts that are even vaguely coherent will get upvoted for catharsis. It's all rage-bait. Really, I've noticed myself coming here less and less because I know the content isn't genuine. I really think something needs to be done about this.

Have you ever worked somewhere that was genuinely a great place to work, only for new management to come in and completely change things for the worse?

I’ll start with mine.

So my main job is in a professional role where I split my time between working from home and being in the office or wherever they need me. I work four days a week, and overall I have a pretty good work life balance. Especially when I’m working from home, where there are times when all I really have to do is reply to emails. So I’ll play video games, do housework, etc. while still being available if something comes up.

I also took a part-time job at a grocery store as a grocery clerk, where I worked three days a week for about 8 hours a day. Honestly, I took the job for three pretty simple reasons: I loved most of the people I worked with, the actual work was relatively easy, and the store was close to home. It was basically a nice little side job that I didn’t mind going to.

This story is mainly about the grocery store job.

For the first year, the grocery store job was going great. I loved my coworkers, and to my surprise, the store had only a handful of annoying or difficult customers. Most of them were actually kind and lovely people.

The work wasn’t too hard either. We kept up with inventory, did incredibly well in sales, and the schedule generally made sense.

Then one of the senior employees (who is a complete scumbag) got his way and finally pushed both the Grocery Manager and her Assistant to the brink. They both left.

And guess who ended up getting the Grocery Manager position?

Yep. The scumbag.

The Assistant Manager position went to one of the best full-timers we had on the grocery roster someone everyone got along with. We were all friends with everyone in the department… hell the store! Well except for the new Grocery Manager. Everyone hated him except for the Store Manager.

Six months pass, and this guy has completely destroyed the department.

Inventory was horrible. Sales had gone to shit. And the schedule made ZERO sense.

For example, he would schedule three people to close on a Saturday when there was barely anything to do besides milk, overstock (extra inventory that doesn’t fit on the shelves and has to be stored in the back), and the usual facing, which is basically moving everything toward the front of the shelves so the department looks nice for the next day.

But then Monday would come around, when we’d have to receive multiple grocery and dairy deliveries because the departments had been merged, and he’d schedule one full-timer and one part-timer who didn’t even start until 5 PM!

Meanwhile, on Wednesdays, when HE was closing, there could be five people scheduled: three full-timers, including himself, and two part-timers.

So obviously, this stressed everyone out more and more as the months went on.

Eventually, the terrible scheduling led to our inventory becoming a disaster. Overstock started piling up in the back because we weren’t getting enough people scheduled to actually work through it.

And the Scumbag wasn’t exactly known for doing his share of the work. He’d constantly ask the Assistant to help with grocery, even though the Assistant was responsible for dairy and was already drowning in work.

Eventually, the Assistant snapped.

He got into a fistfight with another employee while apparently looking for the Scumbag because he wanted to fight him.

He got fired.

After that, our dream team basically got whittled down to four overworked and overstressed full-timers and four overworked and overstressed part-timers.

Sales continued to drop. Inventory always looked horrible. We had a revolving door of part-timers quitting, and eventually I left too because the extra cash wasn’t worth the stress anymore.

Hell, before Christmas last year was the first time I had ever walked out on a job.

The new Grocery Assistant was on vacation.

Oh yeah… so this idiot Scumbag had gotten so overwhelmed after losing the previous Assistant that he basically held off on letting the full-timers take their vacations. As a result, the two remaining full-timers (one of whom eventually quit and the other who became the new Assistant) ended up having to take their four week vacations back-to-back starting in November.

So anyway, the Scumbag apparently placed a double order on top of what the Assistant had already ordered the previous week.

Why?

Because for some reason, he didn’t want to call the Assistant and ask whether he had already placed an order before going on vacation.

And who did he want to sort through, organize, and prepare all of this extra inventory for the upcoming sale?

Me. A part-timer!

I told him to kick rocks and walked out.

Funny enough, they were so short staffed that I didn’t actually get in trouble. Instead, I basically got a call begging me to come back and I even got paid for the entire day.

Looking back, writing all of this out was actually pretty therapeutic lol.

TLDR: I had a great part-time grocery job with awesome coworkers and easy work. Then a senior employee became manager and completely ran the department into the ground with terrible scheduling, poor inventory management, and constant understaffing. Eventually, I walked out only for them to call me begging me to come back and still pay me for the day

Anyway, I’d love to hear your stories!

Have you ever worked somewhere that was genuinely great until new management came in and messed everything up? What did they change, and what happened afterward?

House Republicans advanced a bill that would block OSHA from requiring federal workplace heat protections, including access to water, rest, and shade.

I have a coworker that I have made friends with because she is a very nice and seemed open minded compared to a lot of very conservative people where we work (a lot of upper management go to the same church even). Recently we were hanging out and she told me how *wise* our privileged Big Boss was..

Her reasons as to why Big Boss is a genius God King rather than someone just born with money and connections:

• He studied law and looks at things from that perspective! Like how the HR director was hired despite being forced out of previous jobs for allegations of mistreating employees - 'cause that's not *illegal* so it's fine!
• Him just studying law and seeing things from "both sides" - she can't tell if he's a republican or Democrat! (I studied polisci so I can say he's def a republican. He thinks people just don't like Reagan for his personal beliefs...)
• He supports certain programs (that just happen to be related to his rich people hobbies like planes)
• He let's her take PTO (wtf)
• He actually responds to her questions because the bar is in hell apparently

Capitalism is just Fuedalism with extra steps fml

My employer has been steadily increasing the in-office requirements, from 2 flexible days in 2023 that nobody cared if we were going on not, to now 4 mandatory in-office days with badge monitoring and weekly attendance reports to managers and people being let go for not complying.

The office is at full capacity, and people often have to work at the cafeteria, meeting rooms and whatever common areas they can find. Their solution to this was to implement assigned seating last year. Not sure how this would fix the problem of more people than seats but fine. I got my seat and I made my desk nice.

Now they sent us an email that they are going back to hoteling and that we are to empty our desks by next week, and that moving forward we are to seat at whatever desk we can find while making it clear that we are still expected to come Monday-Thursday. I’m so pissed off because they literally do not care. The big executives making this decision have their fancy private offices (which are empty for most of the time because I guess they don’t have to go to the office like we do) while the rest of us have to seat at the cafeteria, stairs or even on the floor or else be fired. And the worst part is: people are not upset enough about this. My colleagues act like it’s only a mild inconvenience that they will need to arrive early to get a seat or work at the cafeteria.

I’m just as furious at the people making this decision as I am with my colleagues blindly accepting this.

Word leaked out that a relatively young, new manager suggested in a meeting with other managers of the same rank that my department should be eliminated because AI will be doing it all eventually anyway. First of all, without going into the specifics this is simply not true. In fact I would argue if anything the new manager’s job is more likely to be eliminated by AI before mine.

Supposedly the other managers shut the conversation down, but people are both nervous and pissed, especially since my company just filled a couple of open positions in my department. And people are suspicious of the leak itself. Why would this information be shared if not to make people anxious in order to squeeze more work out of us and tamp down any requests for more money, better work life balance, etc.

Ok, get it out, but afterwards how would you handle this situation professionally. We do have a union, and as much as I like unions our current leadership has been supine instead of standing up to management.

I’m a 30F social worker/therapist, but I stepped away from work a year ago due to severe burnout. Since then, I’ve been living as a stay at home wife with no plans to return to work. We don't have kids yet, though we plan to in the next 1–2 years. My partner is happy for me to stay home and we’re doing well on one income.

I finally feel like I have my life back however, I am drowning in guilt. My parents are both high achievers, and they won't let up:

My mum constantly pushes me to get a job out of fear that my partner could leave or get sick. She’s hyper focused on financial independence and "not relying on a man” and she brings it up during every phone call like a broken record.

My dad scoffs at the idea of being a housewife, claiming my partner won't respect me if I don't bring in an income. He tells me to find work and not to waste my youth.

I live 5,000 miles away in a different country now, so it’s easy enough to tell them what they want to hear on the phone just to protect my peace…but the distance hasn't stopped their voices from living rent free in my head.

I understand where some of their fears come from, but I still do not want to return to work.

I haven't been able to fully lean in and enjoy this new era of my life because deep down, a part of me keeps thinking that I’m doing something "wrong" by not making my own money.

Has anyone else stepped away from a high pressure lifestyle to live a quieter, domestic life? How did you tune out your family or societies projections? Has anyone decided to keep that aspect of your life private to protect your peace?

My office is freezing. There’s one huge vent in a tiny box of an office that blows directly on me and keeps the temp in the low 60s.

I don’t have a thermostat, but share one with an office next door that has a large window and is always warmer, meaning my office is always over-cooled.

The office bathrooms are even colder. Frigid.

I count the minutes every day until lunch when I can go to my car and thaw my aching joints.

I work in a salary job at a manufacturing plant and I’m well aware there are people working in risky and more uncomfortable situations than me, but I’d argue that their comfort should be considered too.

As I sit here in August, dressed in pants, sweater, and jacket with cold air blowing on the back of my neck and my nail beds turning purple, knowing I can do 100% of my job at home, I just can’t help but ask WHY.

Why is it worth basically refrigerating a huge building so I can freeze while attending teams meetings from my desk. It almost feels like punishment, but I actually think it’s just because it would be too expensive to install or upgrade to a system that worked better.

I don’t require a luxurious amount of comfort. I’m just tired of being freezing cold.

My sister has been hunting for a remote job lately because her pregnant and engaged daughter moved several states away to be with her soon-to-be-husband and my sister wants to be able to visit her daughter and first grandbaby without having to take pto. So she hunted, interviewed, and eventually landed a position, seemed like a dream job. Totally remote, growth opportunities, paid almost six figures. Great, right?

Well she started work there at the beginning of August. She needed her own laptop so she used a credit card to get one thinking it would be easy to pay off. She started working, they didn’t make her do any paperwork but insisted on two weeks in office for training. She worked a week, then asked about onboarding paperwork, pay schedule, things like that. Normal employee shit.

Turns out they did not hire her, they put her in as a 1099 independent contractor. No benefits. Paid once a month, 30 days after turning in her work invoice, which goes in at the end of the month. So she wouldn’t be paid until OCTOBER for August work. Then to top it all off, they told her the remote position she was hired for was no longer available so she would be in office for the foreseeable future. So they straight up lied to get her in the door.

Plus, they have her as an independent contractor but demand her to work from their location, they tell her what hours to work and what to do during that time, she uses her own computer but it’s connected to their VPN during the work day. Does that not make her actually an employee? Shady practices. I told her she needs to quit and find something else asap. These kind of companies make me so angry for the people who have to work there.

There should be a requirement to have employees opt in or out of General group texts.

If there’s a storm and my manager is texting the people scheduled to work to check in that’s one thing.

If a manager decides that an entire area needs to be part of meaningless texts that could easily be addressed by sending a mass email, they should have to obtain permission to add anyone.

Yesterday afternoon, one manager sent the entire team a text asking us to check our email. I was away from the office without email access.

This morning, before business hours, he sent a meaningless text “congratulating” a team member for helping him yesterday. This could have been a FN email.

Each group text results in a chain of “reply alls” that aren’t simply annoying, but will disturb anyone that might be on PTO, on a day off, or on leave.

It should be illegal.

Kind of a rant post, can’t sleep right now due to the overwhelming stress of it all.

I’m working 60 hours a week, making a little north of $100k per year, and I’m barely keeping my family afloat. My wife wants to work, can’t though because either there is no daycare availability, or the cost of daycare just makes her paychecks a wash. We rent a modest 1,500 sq ft duplex, have one car, live in a relatively LCOL area, and yet we’re literally one bad paycheck away from losing it all.

I have to pay $1,000/mo just for health/vision/dental insurance for me and my kids (can’t even afford to cover my wife). If I could go without insurance I probably would, but I have Ulcerative Colitis and need the meds in order to keep working.

I wake up at 4AM, get home from work at 5-6PM, shower, make dinner, watch an hour of a movie with my kids, then it’s bedtime stories and repeat. The weekend is always just full of errands (not like we could afford to do anything anyways) and feels like a blip where the only true reward is an extra 2 hours sleep.

Work doesn’t give a shit, their entire mindset is that if you’re not making enough then you’re doing something wrong at work. Management is just full of people using ChatGPT to send emails back and forth. Every single move or action I do is measured and recorded in real time. We have a ridiculous amount of KPI’s they want us to all hit simultaneously.

Meanwhile I get to watch the CEO build his new custom lake side mansion on social media and all the fun things he gets to do each day.

I broke a tooth last night and instead of wanting to go get it fixed, all I can think about is how I probably can’t afford it and I definitely can’t afford to take a single day off from work. So I’ll likely go buy some temporary filling kit and repeatedly use it for months until it hurts or becomes infected and I have no choice.

It’s all bullshit.