One of my first jobs was for a small engineering shop. Paid about 55k a year in 2010 dollars. It did pay overtime, that should have been my first warning. Th

One of my first jobs was for a small engineering shop. Paid about 55k a year in 2010 dollars. It did pay overtime, that should have been my first warning. They hired me with the promise of 4x10 work-weeks. What happened in reality is that we came in at 7 am, worked to 6pm (or whenever "the boss" was ready to go home) with a 30 minute lunch, and then on Friday, ..."well we are behind so we need to come in again this week"... almost every week (there were a few exceptions) we worked all day Friday as well. Oh, and how about a half day Saturday many weeks. Once during my short time there, we had a solid week or more (hard to remember due to sleep deprivation and depression fogged recollections of this time) going at 90+ hours per week on a project. It was absolutely insane and I got out as soon as I could, trying to convince as many co-workers as I could (in practice only the young guys) that they were being gaslighted into thinking they had a good job. Luckily I was underemployed for my education level, and single; thus it was easy to get out of this, for there was no way to think sharply, keep proper food in the house, work out enough, etc., at this pace.