How my corporate job radicalised me
I'm done pretending any of this is normal or okay.
In this fourth issue of World Without Billionaires, I share my personal frustrating experience with work and what I’m doing about it. Plus: tiny rebellions, some tech enshitification and a project that’s bringing me joy.
How my corporate job radicalised me
I'm probably not the first person to say that working in corporate feels like being in an abusive relationship, but the more time I spend here, the more obvious it becomes.
Even if you're encouraged to 'bring your whole self to work', you know actually doing this could risk your job. So you perform professionalism and pretend to care about shareholder value. Not only that, you also have to manage the feelings of people with more power than you.
Meanwhile, your employer keeps you compliant by saying you're family. They broadcast meaningless 'kudos' messages in the company Slack to make you feel valued. They provide free fruit and arrange the occasional social event to show how benevolent they are. Just don’t question why the CEO makes two hundred times your salary.
You're paid just enough to survive but not enough to feel stable enough to take risks that could improve your life. Your job has financial control over you, and this control is used to gaslight you into not having needs.
Need to attend a doctor's appointment during the day? Sure, go ahead! We value work/life balance!
…But you better make up for the lost time later. Anything else is time theft. You can only be a human in a body on your own time.
The event that pushed me over the edge
It took my current employer nine months to put disability accommodations in place.
Nine months.
Rather than simply believing me – or the occupational health assessment report they arranged, or the Access to Work award letter from the UK government – HR kept asking if I really needed these things, or if I could make do with x, y or z instead.
I was already fairly anti-work and sceptical of capitalism, but after that, I could no longer pretend corporations were benign or even neutral.
I raised a formal grievance when I first realised things were dragging on, and in the end, my employer admitted partial blame. But there's been no apology, no acknowledgement that nine months is an outrageous timeline.
Instead it feels like I'm meant to forget they spent most of a year fighting me over basic rights. I'm meant to carry on and not feel hurt or discouraged. (Or maybe they’re just hoping I’ll quit.)
If it weren't for my union and my therapist, I would've believed I was overreacting long ago.
During the process, I heard from two other disabled employees – they also struggled to get the accommodations they needed. In the end they gave up. Apparently they decided it was easier to just manage on their own, and I can't blame them.
After everything, it's infuriating to hear company leaders talk about their devotion to diversity and inclusion.
They couldn't have been less prepared to support a disabled employee. And worse, they seem to have learned nothing from it.
Two of my requested accommodations still haven't been provided.
Is it better to quit, or to stay and fight?
I've been thinking a lot about the kind of life I want to live and the kind of impact I want to have. I’ve reached a point where I can no longer turn a blind eye if I feel something is going against my values, even for self-preservation.
My gut says to quit my job as soon as I can, to try to make freelancing work. Corporate jobs are broken, and they say you can't change things from the inside.
But then I read this in the book Work by CrimethInc:
When people “get serious” about fighting capitalism, they often tend to remove themselves from their previous position within it—quitting jobs, dropping out of school, ceasing to participate in processes rather than interrupting them. This serves capitalists just fine—one of the functions of the [unemployed/underemployed] population is to contain all who would cause trouble if they could. It’s better to go on the offensive.
If I quit, I’m not sure if I’d be freeing myself or letting myself be sidelined.
Maybe you can't change a place from the inside, but you can interfere with exploitation. Maybe I can have more of an impact by staying at my job, modelling healthy boundaries and not letting as many corporate fibs slide.
Is it silly that I worry about becoming complicit?
While reading Careless People, I was struck by how critically (rightfully so) Sarah Wynn-Williams wrote about Facebook’s operations, yet seemed to see herself as separate from it, as if she hadn’t been an active participant for six years.
My employer isn’t on the scale of Meta or Google, but it’s not terribly far off. And while I haven’t seen my employer do anything as heinous as what Wynn-Williams described, I wonder if I would be able to keep a discerning eye long enough to notice if they did.
Where that leaves me
I nearly quit my job last week.
I’m having a difficult time working with my manager, and I was just done trying to make it work.
But eventually I decided to hold my ground. Because if I'm not scared of leaving, why not fight to make things better for myself (and maybe for others too)?
I have time to decide. For now I'll try shape my job to fit my life and not the other way around. I’ll practice living my values at work too and not just in my personal life.
At the same time, I’m building a freelance runway. That way if I decide to leave (or they decide they’ve had enough of my stubbornness), I won’t be starting from zero.
Next week I’ll share the strategies I’m using to protect myself from corporate violence… and a few ways we can cause a little mischief of our own.
Snails against the machine
Small ways we’re taking back control of our world
Josh Donaldson (@earthdr0p) regularly picks up litter and recycles what he can
Elvarea (@elvarea.bennett) shared a silly and simple act of kindness that made their day
Katherine (@katherout) purposefully lived within walking distance of her friends for a year and shared how it impacted her life
Late-stage updates
This week in capitalist whatthefuckery
I don't think I've ever in my adult life lived somewhere with appliances that weren't at least a decade old, so I was surprised to learn that the new trend in appliance design is ~oops all apps!~
Apparently a lot (if not most) appliances now rely on touch-sensor buttons and smartphone apps instead of physical buttons and display screens.
I was introduced to this fact by two separate videos – one from Tamara (@UnsightlyOpinions) and another by Jeff Geerling (@Level2Jeff). From what I’ve gathered, it seems like the cons far outweigh the pros:
Trying to operate an appliance through an app is less intuitive and more cumbersome than using physical buttons.
These ‘smart’ appliances rely on an internet connection, meaning if your internet goes out, so does your appliance.
Touchscreens can be significantly more difficult for disabled people to use and are less adaptable than physical buttons.
There’s the issue of data security – how much of your personal information is the appliance collecting and how is it being used?
The manufacturer could decide to stop maintaining their digital services, ‘bricking’ the appliance like Spotify and its Car Thing.
Having to connect an appliance to your wifi network, like in Jeff’s case, puts your local network at risk – because how much do you trust the manufacturer to keep on top of bugs and other issues?
In Tamara’s case, the app for her stove frequently unpairs and fails to pair, meaning she can’t use the stove on her own.
And, worst of all, imagine if the manufacturer decided to introduce a subscription service, so you’d have to pay a monthly fee to use the appliance you already own.
What's the point of technological ‘advancements’ if they’re actually pushing usability (and security) backwards?
Shiny things from the curio cabinet
Things I’m noticing, loving or want to share
I've been experimenting with designs for paper toys for my cats. They love bird-feather toys, but they go through them so quickly. I can’t help feel guilty over how the feathers are sourced to keep my two little monsters happy.
So I’m attempting to replicate the same experience they get from the bird-feather toys with card stock, which seems thick enough to not give them paper cuts but still light and fluttery enough to mimic a bird.
Maybe I can share the designs here later for others to try out too. :)
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