onoira [they/them]

a workplace problem that has persistently followed me thru my entire life: at school, at home, and at every job i’ve had, across multiple continents.

i have a ‘non-native’ name which isn’t hard to pronounce but which my coworkers refused to learn, so they started calling me something akin to ‘Jane Doe’ in $language.

when they were told by HR they can’t do that: they took to the funny ‘joke’ of calling me “the bot” and sometimes referring to me as ‘it’. ‘hey, where’s the documentation on this system?’ ‘idk, ask the bot’ my manager even got on my case about how i shouldn’t ‘use ChatGPT to respond to work messages’ — because i wasn’t using ‘enough emoji’.

but i’m the immature one for thinking all the NTs i’ve had in my life are insufferable. ok.

support a “right to work” instead of UBI. Work is great and it’s more than making money, you achieve self-determination through work etc etc.

this is common in most of western/northern europe, to the point that most social services for citizens or ‘integration’ support for immigrants ends at employment. the assumption being that any employment is all anyone really needs.

you’ve been fired from your last three jobs because of your worsening depressive spirals? but it didn’t stop you from getting that temp job last week! do some yoga or something smh.

you’re a migrant who doesn’t know the local language? well, it didn’t stop you from getting a job! take a night class or something smh.

you want to switch careers or further your education? but you’re already in a career; clearly your education is fine! attend a conference or something smh.

you have no friends or family and no freetime to develop your hobbies and interests? but you have a job! get drunk with your coworkers on Fridays or something smh.

workwork. okiedokie. zugzug.

at which point your profit becomes linked to the degree to which you provide the functionality

except when the commodity is a basic necessity and there’s no alternatives. ‘the market’ can’t really ‘vote with their wallet’ on the cost and quality of shelter, particularly when price fixing is rampant.

sidenote: ‘voting with your wallet’ implies people with more money than you should have more say in what’s ‘more valuable’, because the rich can always outbid you, and homo economicus is only a thought experiment. (see: foreign real estate investment, conspicuous consumption…)

this assumes that:

1. all workers are ‘producing’ anything.
2. all workers are serving real needs.
3. the difference between supply and demand is really so low that any dip in ‘productivity’ would harm anything more than an executive’s RoI.
4. that the threat of this financial ‘harm’ necessitates more work.

with the increase in ‘productivity’ over the last century, if we reduced our expectations, and stopped letting monopoly money run our entire society, and stopped burning surplus resources because it’s ‘unsold’ or would drive down prices: we wouldn’t need to work even 20% what is expected of us now.