I didn’t go to a job because I wanted to watch trailer park boys. Don’t know how unique that is though, it’s a pretty good show.
I was unemployed for a while in late 2010, early 2011 and was constantly on the job search. I was a line cook previously and was looking for similar work. I finally got in at a sports bar, but they only had an opening for a host at the time, so I took it. When I went in on my third day, I found that the place had fucking burned down.
I was unemployed for another few months before finding a new job. That was a rough year or so lol.
Were you on EI still when you found the job?
That’d be a fun story to tell them why you need to restart it.
I’m guessing that EI is what you call unemployment benefits where you are? In which case, unfortunately no. Previous employer made up bullshit to fire me over so I wasn’t eligible, and I was told I didn’t work long enough at the place that burned down to qualify. My savings got almost entirely wiped out just paying rent and buying groceries.
It was a dark time full of struggles, but I got through it and I’m doing pretty well now. The silver lining is that, when I’m having a rough week, I can think back to how that chunk of life was going and know that I’ve gotten through worse. I was homeless for about two months a bit later, but by then I found a job and knew that I’d find stability soon. Things didn’t actually start getting good until I quit the kitchen career. And I’m one of the lucky few who never even got sucked into the hard drug aspect of that life. Never even smoked a cigarette lol.
Was among a group of temps at a credit union. Employees were so busy, we got very little training. And spent large parts of our day with nothing to occupy our time.
After a month, supervisor walks by at end of day and asks how things are going. I say something to the effect of “could be better.” He looks surprised and says “OK, let’s discuss that tomorrow morning.” I think great, we can problem solve.
The next day turned out to be the three year anniversary of my boyfriend’s death. When I sat with supervisor and trainer and they said how are you, I let them know that I was a little emotional due to it, and started to cry a little.
Supervisor proceeded to reem me out for saying something so negative yesterday in the hearing of coworker and accused me of making a bunch of mistakes (I didn’t and had already provided evidence that I wasn’t involved) and that I obviously didn’t care about my work and that I needed to pack my things and be escorted out of the building.
In conclusion, I hope that guy spends the rest of his life with wet socks.
Most of my working adult life has involved struggling with untreated ADHD. It’s one of those things that a lot of people failed to understand, and when I’d explain my symptoms to them, they would often just say that it sounded like I was depressed, burnt out, and overburdened at work. While all of those things were true, executive dysfunction is more complicated and nuanced - for me, it manifests in the form of procrastination, seeking stimulation, and difficulty carrying a thread of consciousness from one sentence to the next. It can also mean that your self-esteem is constantly in the toilet.
In spite of this, I had a lot of success in early stage tech startups, which are often chaotic. You have to switch roles at a moment’s notice, going from customer support and technical resolution to product development and logistics. When things are on fire, customers are angry, and things are broken, I tend to be at my very best. It’s the slower, more tedious, repetitive tasks like manual data entry that I tend to struggle with. I have been forced onto Performance Improvement Plans more than a few times in my career - despite glowing performance reviews - and have never gotten off of one.
In spite of dropping out of college, I had managed to make a career for myself. I worked at a few tech startups, and had a really good reputation among my team members. As I continued to climb a corporate ladder and move to bigger and bigger companies, I found myself becoming burdened with larger responsibilities. I can accomplish anything I set my mind to, but I gradually turned myself into a workhorse for the entire team. My manager eventually saddled me with an enormous task where I had to develop a deeply technical presentation from scratch and give it to a live audience of over 300 engineers. To be clear - no such resource had ever been developed within the company. I guess this stemmed from me rewriting so much of the documentation so that ordinary people could understand it?
I did the best I could. I solicited advice from just about every department in the company, rewrote the whole thing several times over, and practiced my presentation in front of my manager over and over again, as they nitpicked every aspect of it. Presentation day finally came, it ended up being a huge success. For me, this was a massive accomplishment. Unfortunately, my work performance had been languishing in other areas, and I once again ended up on a PIP. My manager drove the team into the ground, and I tried to make the case that I was just about done with being treated this way.
I ended up in an HR meeting that I thought was initially being done to hash out our differences and find a path forward, but it was actually just the company kicking me out. I got a severance package, struggled for months to apply for a new job, faced a ton of rejections and self-sabotage. I smoked pot and got drunk until I had to sell all of my belongings just to survive, and then had to move back across the country to live with my dad and apply for the military. Four years later, I’m married, going to school full-time, and living a pretty okay life as a veteran.
I can relate to a lot of this! I’m 41 and just got diagnosed this year. It explains a lot of my life! I started medication this spring with Concerta and it helped but then I built up a tolerance to it and it stopped working. After spending months trying different meds I’m getting help with Focalin XR, but I’m terrified I’ll build up a tolerance to it as well so I’m trying to get as much done on a certification as I can while it’s working. Have meds helped you?
Yeah, I’m on sertraline and Adderall XR. While neither one is perfect, the baseline quality of my life has improved. It’s hard to quantify or explain, but my recall and short-term memory is a million times better. I’m currently going to school full-time, and my grades are the best they’ve ever been, even in my hardest classes.
Worked at a place that laser-engraves funeral urns. Owner was a huge Trump fan, but fuck it, I figured I’d just never talk about politics.
Turns out that every fucking day, he would sit down and spend 45 minutes talking politics, MAGA bs, blah blah blah.
So after one of his long sessions, he sees me kinda ignoring him (actually trying to do the work he hired me for!) and he says, “So you a Democrat?”
I told him no, but since I was only paying half attention him, I blurted out that I was actually a Socialist.
So after that, every fucking day, he reads me some article on his phone about how horrible and terrible Socialist theory is.
After several days, I’m in full ignore mode, just working. And then he says something to the effect of if I didn’t like what he was saying, not to let the door hit my ass on the way out.
So I brushed it off, and just said, “nah, all good. Your politics don’t bother me.”
But the more I thought about his pissy attitude, the more and more pissed I got. So when I took lunch, I just didn’t go back. No calls from him. No texts. Nothing. And I didn’t call or text them either.
I got a new job the next week, and never thought much of it. Then all of a sudden, I realized that even tho I was telling myself I quit, the reality is, it probably counts as being fired.
And I went my whole life never being fired. So I was kinda bummed that I let him talk me into just leaving. I really should have given notice.
But it’s not like I worked there long enough to even up on a resume or anything. So I guess I can just pretend I never worked there. lol
