And like, I'm still coming at this from a position of massive privilege! The trauma inflicted on exploited, abused workers, particularly those doing manual labour, service work, retail or who work in other unprotected industries, is both massive and largely unaddressed.
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But even as someone who's spent most of their working life in offices, I don't think I've ever held a job - even a good job! - where I've actually felt secure or valued to the point of not worrying about being randomly fired. And that is COMMON. And THAT is VERY BAD.
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One of the reasons I utterly loathe the stock, largely identical, jargon-packed job descriptions put on sites like Seek by job agencies is that they give you zero sense of the kind of person you'll actually be working for. It makes every application a total roll of the dice.
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The graunching soullessness of much "professional" officework has long been culturally acknowledged; but even when basically every modern story acknowledges basic workplace horrors, we don't really ever address it in terms of "this stuff can cause actual mental health issues".
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In a domestic context, a partner or parent whose moods are unpredictable, who shouts or rages or threatens one minute and then laughs the next, who punishes others for things they do themselves, who bullies and expects total obedience, would be considered abusive. But a boss?
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Even when we get to the point of saying "abusive boss" to describe such people, we don't attach the same emotional needs to their victims - future security, better treatment, healing time, redress - because to do so would be to acknowledge that capitalism makes this impossible.
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Similarly, if a friend, partner or relative treated us dismissively, as if we didn't matter, ignoring boundaries and blithely asserting control over our time and lives regardless of our wishes to better suit their needs and pulling guilt trips if we resisted? We'd call that Bad.
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But when an employer does the same thing? Oh, well, the needs of the business come first, clearly!
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Even in creative fields, this stuff happens. Hell, it's half the reason why you end up with so many abusive douchebags remaining in powerful positions in TV and film: because even when an employee moves on, complaining about old bosses to new ones is Utterly Forbidden.
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That's an extreme example, especially in the recent context, but it also applies at other levels, too. For example: when writers who are POC talk about the constant microaggressions they have to deal with in publishing, with editors & agencies & at cons, it's the same damn thing.
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"You shouldn't complain," says the received wisdom. "Don't make waves. You'll make yourself unpublishable if you talk about this in public. You'll mark yourself out as a Difficult Author, and you don't want that, do you?" AUGH.
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Anyway. There's a lot more I could say about this, but I'm just tired. I'm at a point where I need to be marketing myself to agencies and agents and I just Can't, because I've got zero self-confidence after what happened last time. So instead, have a thread about stuff. THE END.
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