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I highly mistrust anything on /r/antiwork. So many of the posts are the “and everyone clapped” variety but get hundreds or thousands of upvotes, I’m pretty sure

I highly mistrust anything on /r/antiwork. So many of the posts are the “and everyone clapped” variety but get hundreds or thousands of upvotes, I’m pretty sure it’s at least half a troll karma farm.

indrora 5y ago
Since you're on HN, I'll give you the benefit of assuming you're working a nice, solid, salaried job. Retail is hell. It's the worst on-call you've ever experienced times a thousand. If you haven't worked retail in the last few years, I'd actually suggest doing the following: Go on the dating app of your choice and put out that you're legit looking for coffee with folks who work hourly retail jobs. You're vaguely tech adjacent, you can automate those swipes. Literally just ask people who match with you to tell their worst experience in retail. Ask those retail folks: Are you trained enough? Are you understaffed? Does your manager give a shit? Do you actually get the tips you're supposed to get? If you could walk away right now, would you? Invite 'em to have a coffee/tea, etc in some public place. Talk about what's going on. Genuinely give a shit. What you'll learn is that most hourly retail folks are living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. A friend of mine in college was making $7.70 an hour as a shift manager at a Taco Bell. The straw that broke the camel's back was when his manager suggested he take a *decrease in pay* and an *increase in hours* in exchange for "maybe getting salaried". He left and now is paid $35/hr to sell marijuana. As someone who works a salaried job at a MANGA/FAANG Forbes Top 100, I feel that some of us lose sight of what our retail-facing hourly folk are actually doing. Retail folks get the most abuse from both sides that I've seen. Last week, in the grocery near me, I looked at a dude who was mad about a few labels being misaligned, screaming until he was red in the face at an employee about how he was being ripped off, about how this was terrible. It wasn't until I walked over and (legitimately wanting the thing he was mad over) asked him to politely shut up and get over himself for not reading that he stopped, stomping out of the store. This store, like many others, basically demand that these people be happy in the face of abject abuse. The security at the door? That's only for shoplifting. Being a complete jerk to the floor workers? Not that poor fuck's job, and they can be reprimanded for stopping a fight from happening. In the face of [Nine dollar paychecks for 70 hours of work](https://www.today.com/food/working-mom-received-9-paycheck-70-hours-service-here-s-t174077 https://www.today.com/food/working-mom-received-9-paycheck-7...), a [rising wage theft issue that accounts for billions in unpaid wages](https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/ https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro...), it's no wonder that [suicide rates of retail workers is going up](https://archive.md/VrvBu https://archive.md/VrvBu).
- solnyshok 5y ago
  I work in retail for 20 years, last ten years in C-level jobs. You are mostly right. Modern retail floor we call internally "battlefield", "bloodshed", etc. It is tough, it is non-human (not anti-human, but very robotic), yearly employee turnover hovering at 50%+
- gaws 5y ago
  > Retail is hell. It's the worst on-call you've ever experienced times a thousand. Thank God I don't work retail.
SpicyLemonZest 5y ago
It seems more than a bit like quoting the front page of /r/relationship_advice to make a point about how bad relationships are these days. Even if you don't have any specific reasons to doubt it, how can you trust a source that adversarially selects stories for virality?
hoten 5y ago
Content from that subreddit has gotten a ton of play on social media in recent months. It does seem the most viral stories from the subreddit are embellished, but I can't pinpoint why they seem that way.
- amyjess 5y ago
  They feel like the fake LinkedIn stories about "someone showed up for an interview and they were late and had zero relevant skills and experience but I hired them anyway and they turned out to be the best employee I ever had", except with the polarity reversed.
  - hstan4 5y ago
    Haha this is spot on actually
  - ge96 5y ago
    I've been seeing some weird things people saying "reset capitalism" like what are you saying?
ProjectArcturis 5y ago
Most of the top posts have very similar construction: Employee: I can't come in today for a very good reason. Boss (rudely): You have to come in or you're fired. Employee: I quit. +1000 karma
- smt88 5y ago
  Why do you think this doesn't happen often enough to fill a subreddit? There are billions of workers around the world, tens of millions using reddit.
  - idontwantthis 5y ago
    Above comment is being charitable. I think real people have the exchange above and should be proud. The 1000+ upvote ones are long, overly personal explanations of why they can’t come in that make the boss look extra evil, but also sound fake as hell. If someone just quits good on them, but that text exchange is not going to draw enough eyeballs.
    - LordDragonfang 5y ago
      >long, overly personal explanations of why they can’t come in I mean, the OP post already alludes to the issue with american labor where you're pressured to do something like fake a death in the family to justify taking a day off of what should be a totally replaceable hourly shift. Hourly wage labour jobs are pressured to give those overly personal explanations to get managers to respect any request for time off and it's just seen as the norm.
  - npteljes 5y ago
    Of course there's a subreddit for this: /r/nothingeverhappens/ But to be serious, I don't personally believe the stories, because I just can't know. Sometimes entirely plausible stories get debunked as fake, other times wild ones turn out to be true. I'm not committed to call them all fake, but we really just can't know.
  - ProjectArcturis 5y ago
93po 5y ago
I think it's likely people embellish frequently. But it doesn't detract, in my opinion, that working under capitalism is awful and absolutely messed up beyond belief.
eco 5y ago
While they usually seem to have started off fairly sincere, /r/antiwork like many of the subreddits dedicated to telling stories about ridiculous behavior in others seems to have quickly changed into more of a place where people practice creative writing. /r/TalesFromTechSupport, /JUSTNOMIL, /r/AmITheAsshole, /r/MaliciousCompliance, and many others. The stories can be fun but under no circumstances should anyone take what is written at face value.
- jtriangle 5y ago
  /talesfromtechsupport just isn't the same without airz
- nunez 5y ago
  note that /r/antiwork is now a default sub, so SNR is much lower
- q1w2 5y ago
  This part was almost comical... > I wake up with the worst existential dread I’ve ever experienced. I cried for an hour straight. Not because amazon specifically, but for the broader state of labor in general. All you need to do is look at the subs the same mods mod... r/Anarchism r/Anarchy101 r/IWW r/LateStageCapitalism r/lostgeneration r/Socialism_101 r/mutualism r/radicalmentalhealth
esyir 5y ago
I believe that the rule goes that for any popular "story" based subreddit with no verification, assume that 99% of the content is False. The more popular the subreddit, the faster this converges. These villain-based story subs typically come with a nice template of "X did Y to me, Y is obviously bad, I responded".
strikelaserclaw 5y ago
just the fact that anti work grew to so many people is telling of the times we live in, that along with superstonk, crypto, wallstreet bets dominating reddit popular tells me that capitalism will implode without major rework in the next 20 years.
- pas 5y ago
  meh. the world always had a brutal underbelly, now it's online and visible. and it seems especially drastic in places with high inequality, eg. "the West", and it hits hard especially in the US. but the whole problem is that these people are powerless. they are not the majority[0] and of course they are the wrong minority (not the rich one, duh). [0] which - compared to agrarian times - is great, [yaay progress!] but at the same time it's completely fucked up because the "median voter" [still] doesn't really care. (due to a myriad of reasons from the evo-psycho Dunbar's numbers reasons to the "Marx: capitalism is alienating the worker from its self", or in a bit more modern phrasing "neoliberalism atomized society [1] (by focus on individualism and individual rights)" - , plus things are changing too fast[2] and the vastly different responses by different ideological groups are leading to extreme political polarization, and so on). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eu45yGPRbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eu45yGPRbA [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29457930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29457930
q1w2 5y ago
Just look at the subs the same mods mod... r/Anarchism r/Anarchy101 r/IWW r/LateStageCapitalism r/lostgeneration r/Socialism_101 r/mutualism r/radicalmentalhealth It's part of an anarcho-socialist grouping of Reddit subs that push a specific agenda. You cannot take anything there seriously.

indrora 5y ago

Since you're on HN, I'll give you the benefit of assuming you're working a nice, solid, salaried job. Retail is hell. It's the worst on-call you've ever experienced times a thousand. If you haven't worked retail in the last few years, I'd actually suggest doing the following: Go on the dating app of your choice and put out that you're legit looking for coffee with folks who work hourly retail jobs. You're vaguely tech adjacent, you can automate those swipes. Literally just ask people who match with you to tell their worst experience in retail. Ask those retail folks: Are you trained enough? Are you understaffed? Does your manager give a shit? Do you actually get the tips you're supposed to get? If you could walk away right now, would you? Invite 'em to have a coffee/tea, etc in some public place. Talk about what's going on. Genuinely give a shit. What you'll learn is that most hourly retail folks are living hand to mouth, paycheck to paycheck. A friend of mine in college was making $7.70 an hour as a shift manager at a Taco Bell. The straw that broke the camel's back was when his manager suggested he take a *decrease in pay* and an *increase in hours* in exchange for "maybe getting salaried". He left and now is paid $35/hr to sell marijuana. As someone who works a salaried job at a MANGA/FAANG Forbes Top 100, I feel that some of us lose sight of what our retail-facing hourly folk are actually doing. Retail folks get the most abuse from both sides that I've seen. Last week, in the grocery near me, I looked at a dude who was mad about a few labels being misaligned, screaming until he was red in the face at an employee about how he was being ripped off, about how this was terrible. It wasn't until I walked over and (legitimately wanting the thing he was mad over) asked him to politely shut up and get over himself for not reading that he stopped, stomping out of the store. This store, like many others, basically demand that these people be happy in the face of abject abuse. The security at the door? That's only for shoplifting. Being a complete jerk to the floor workers? Not that poor fuck's job, and they can be reprimanded for stopping a fight from happening. In the face of [Nine dollar paychecks for 70 hours of work](https://www.today.com/food/working-mom-received-9-paycheck-70-hours-service-here-s-t174077 https://www.today.com/food/working-mom-received-9-paycheck-7...), a [rising wage theft issue that accounts for billions in unpaid wages](https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-from-workers-paychecks-each-year/ https://www.epi.org/publication/employers-steal-billions-fro...), it's no wonder that [suicide rates of retail workers is going up](https://archive.md/VrvBu https://archive.md/VrvBu).

solnyshok 5y ago
I work in retail for 20 years, last ten years in C-level jobs. You are mostly right. Modern retail floor we call internally "battlefield", "bloodshed", etc. It is tough, it is non-human (not anti-human, but very robotic), yearly employee turnover hovering at 50%+
gaws 5y ago
> Retail is hell. It's the worst on-call you've ever experienced times a thousand. Thank God I don't work retail.

SpicyLemonZest 5y ago

It seems more than a bit like quoting the front page of /r/relationship_advice to make a point about how bad relationships are these days. Even if you don't have any specific reasons to doubt it, how can you trust a source that adversarially selects stories for virality?

hoten 5y ago

Content from that subreddit has gotten a ton of play on social media in recent months. It does seem the most viral stories from the subreddit are embellished, but I can't pinpoint why they seem that way.

amyjess 5y ago
They feel like the fake LinkedIn stories about "someone showed up for an interview and they were late and had zero relevant skills and experience but I hired them anyway and they turned out to be the best employee I ever had", except with the polarity reversed.
- hstan4 5y ago
  Haha this is spot on actually
- ge96 5y ago
  I've been seeing some weird things people saying "reset capitalism" like what are you saying?

ProjectArcturis 5y ago

Most of the top posts have very similar construction: Employee: I can't come in today for a very good reason. Boss (rudely): You have to come in or you're fired. Employee: I quit. +1000 karma

smt88 5y ago
Why do you think this doesn't happen often enough to fill a subreddit? There are billions of workers around the world, tens of millions using reddit.
- idontwantthis 5y ago
  Above comment is being charitable. I think real people have the exchange above and should be proud. The 1000+ upvote ones are long, overly personal explanations of why they can’t come in that make the boss look extra evil, but also sound fake as hell. If someone just quits good on them, but that text exchange is not going to draw enough eyeballs.
  - LordDragonfang 5y ago
    >long, overly personal explanations of why they can’t come in I mean, the OP post already alludes to the issue with american labor where you're pressured to do something like fake a death in the family to justify taking a day off of what should be a totally replaceable hourly shift. Hourly wage labour jobs are pressured to give those overly personal explanations to get managers to respect any request for time off and it's just seen as the norm.
- npteljes 5y ago
  Of course there's a subreddit for this: /r/nothingeverhappens/ But to be serious, I don't personally believe the stories, because I just can't know. Sometimes entirely plausible stories get debunked as fake, other times wild ones turn out to be true. I'm not committed to call them all fake, but we really just can't know.
- ProjectArcturis 5y ago

93po 5y ago

I think it's likely people embellish frequently. But it doesn't detract, in my opinion, that working under capitalism is awful and absolutely messed up beyond belief.

eco 5y ago

While they usually seem to have started off fairly sincere, /r/antiwork like many of the subreddits dedicated to telling stories about ridiculous behavior in others seems to have quickly changed into more of a place where people practice creative writing. /r/TalesFromTechSupport, /JUSTNOMIL, /r/AmITheAsshole, /r/MaliciousCompliance, and many others. The stories can be fun but under no circumstances should anyone take what is written at face value.

jtriangle 5y ago
/talesfromtechsupport just isn't the same without airz
nunez 5y ago
note that /r/antiwork is now a default sub, so SNR is much lower
q1w2 5y ago
This part was almost comical... > I wake up with the worst existential dread I’ve ever experienced. I cried for an hour straight. Not because amazon specifically, but for the broader state of labor in general. All you need to do is look at the subs the same mods mod... r/Anarchism r/Anarchy101 r/IWW r/LateStageCapitalism r/lostgeneration r/Socialism_101 r/mutualism r/radicalmentalhealth

esyir 5y ago

I believe that the rule goes that for any popular "story" based subreddit with no verification, assume that 99% of the content is False. The more popular the subreddit, the faster this converges. These villain-based story subs typically come with a nice template of "X did Y to me, Y is obviously bad, I responded".

strikelaserclaw 5y ago

just the fact that anti work grew to so many people is telling of the times we live in, that along with superstonk, crypto, wallstreet bets dominating reddit popular tells me that capitalism will implode without major rework in the next 20 years.

pas 5y ago
meh. the world always had a brutal underbelly, now it's online and visible. and it seems especially drastic in places with high inequality, eg. "the West", and it hits hard especially in the US. but the whole problem is that these people are powerless. they are not the majority[0] and of course they are the wrong minority (not the rich one, duh). [0] which - compared to agrarian times - is great, [yaay progress!] but at the same time it's completely fucked up because the "median voter" [still] doesn't really care. (due to a myriad of reasons from the evo-psycho Dunbar's numbers reasons to the "Marx: capitalism is alienating the worker from its self", or in a bit more modern phrasing "neoliberalism atomized society [1] (by focus on individualism and individual rights)" - , plus things are changing too fast[2] and the vastly different responses by different ideological groups are leading to extreme political polarization, and so on). [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eu45yGPRbA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4eu45yGPRbA [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29457930 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29457930

q1w2 5y ago

Just look at the subs the same mods mod... r/Anarchism r/Anarchy101 r/IWW r/LateStageCapitalism r/lostgeneration r/Socialism_101 r/mutualism r/radicalmentalhealth It's part of an anarcho-socialist grouping of Reddit subs that push a specific agenda. You cannot take anything there seriously.