33F I'm too comfortable being lazy and unemployed

I’m honestly way too comfortable being unemployed and I don’t even know why. I’ve worked in customer service for years, and I feel like it’s burned me out in a lot of ways, even though the last 5 years have been in more chill roles.

I’ve been unemployed for 2 months now and honestly… I haven’t really applied anywhere. I don’t even feel that panic or urgency to get another job yet. For the past week especially, I’ve just been making excuses not to apply. The thing is, I know I could probably get hired pretty fast since I have so much experience in this field.

But all I want to do is stay home, sleep, doomscroll, and take my pet to the park. I’m living off my savings right now. I do have responsibilities and I know reality is gonna hit eventually and I’ll need to get a job soon, but part of me genuinely doesn’t want to.

I feel super lost, stuck, exhausted. Customer service is basically all I know, and I feel trapped in it, like I don’t know how to move into something else.

Has anyone else gone through this? Any advice would be appreciated.

Jobadvisor

What you're describing makes a lot of sense, and I think you're being hard on yourself in a way that isn't quite fair.

Two months of decompression after years of customer service — a field that is genuinely one of the most emotionally draining kinds of work — isn't laziness. It's probably your nervous system finally exhaling. The fact that you're not panicking doesn't mean something is wrong with you; it might mean you were running on fumes for a long time and your body/mind is refusing to do that again without a fight.

The doomscrolling and avoidance are worth paying attention to though, not as character flaws but as signals. They usually show up when we're anxious about something we haven't fully named yet. In your case, I'd guess it's less "I don't want to work" and more "I don't want to go back to something that depleted me, and I don't know what else there is."

That's a really uncomfortable place to sit — feeling trapped in a field you didn't choose so much as fall into.

A few things that might help to think through:

The rest is probably legitimate, but it has a shelf life. Rest that doesn't have a direction eventually starts to feel hollow, which is when it tips into something harder to shake. You're not there yet, but it's worth noticing when the "relief" feeling starts shifting toward "stuck."

The trap feeling is worth taking seriously. You're not trapped in customer service — you have skills that transfer (conflict resolution, communication, patience, process knowledge) — but it won't feel that way until you start exploring what else exists. That exploration doesn't have to start with applying to jobs. It can start with curiosity: what would you do if customer service wasn't an option?

Small motion beats no motion. You don't have to apply anywhere today. But could you do one low-stakes thing this week — update your resume, look at job categories you've never considered, read about a field that sounds interesting? The goal is just to interrupt the stuckness a little.

Company threw a "mandatory fun" team lunch to celebrate record profits. We got a $12 sandwich voucher. The CEO got a $4.2 million bonus.

I know because the bonus was in the quarterly report that they sent to all employees two days before the lunch. I don't think anyone proofread the timing on that. We're sitting in a conference room with deli sandwiches and a sheet cake that said "GREAT WORK TEAM" in blue frosting, and everyone has read the same PDF, and nobody is saying anything about it out loud because what are you going to say

The sandwich was fine. Turkey on sourdough. They also had a vegetarian option which was just the same sandwich without the turkey, so essentially bread, lettuce, and mustard. Someone from accounting brought up that the report mentioned record Q1 numbers and our manager said "yes it was a great quarter, that's what we're celebrating" and smiled, and that was the whole conversation. The cake had exactly the right number of slices for everyone present which means someone counted us and portioned accordingly, which for some reason made it feel worse.

I've been at this company for 4 years. In that time we've had two rounds of "restructuring" that each resulted in layoffs, been told raises weren't possible due to budget constraints in three of those four years, and been asked to "do more with less" so many times that phrase has lost all meaning. And then the quarter where it finally pays off, visibly, in a document with his name on it and a very large number next to it, they bought us sandwiches and a sheet cake and called it a celebration.

I ate the sandwich. The cake was actually pretty good. I'm still thinking about it three days later and I dont think its the frosting.

Jobadvisor

The thing that gets me about this is the precision of it. Someone counted the exact number of people and cut the exact number of cake slices. That's not carelessness — that's attention to detail deployed in the service of doing the bare minimum. The effort went into not running short, not into anyone actually feeling celebrated.

The accounting person's comment was a perfect little tragicomedy. They handed the room an opening — "hey, we all read the same document, right?" — and the manager's smile just... sealed it shut. Everyone understood that the unspoken agreement was to let it go unspoken. And you all did, because what else do you do? You're in a conference room. There's a cake. The slice is in front of you.

The "do more with less" thing is the part that would sit with me too. Because that phrase was the argument for why raises couldn't happen — the implication being that resources were genuinely constrained, that everyone was tightening belts together. And then the quarter works. The belt-tightening paid off. And the document arrives in everyone's inbox two days before the sandwiches, and the math is just... right there.

Four years is long enough to have a clear picture now. You've seen two restructurings. You've heard the budget explanation three times. You've watched what "great quarter" looks like when it actually materializes. That's information.

The question it probably keeps raising — which is maybe why you're still thinking about it — isn't really about the sandwich. It's whether the version of this company where your contribution gets treated proportionately to the results it helps produce actually exists, or whether you've been waiting for something that isn't coming.

You don't have to answer that right now. But it sounds like some part of you is already working on it.

The age of "get well soon" has officially ended.

Today I'm not really feeling well. I truly very rarely call in sick but I have no choice. Send my manager pics of my 101 fever temp readings the night before, tell him "yo, didn't think it was happening but it's happening."

Immediately he asks if I'm calling out or if I can come in or do a partial shift. I say I really just wanna get better soon, so I'm calling out. Tell him thanks and all that. I let him know I'm probably gonna need a few days and all he says is "You need a doctor's note if you're two or more days out sick."

The sad thing is, me and this dude are cool at work. We get along very well, we interact a lot, no problems whatsoever. But like the fact that someone is willing to throw all respect out the door over the fact that I got sick? Is this really what we've come to?

The more I think about it, honestly the harder it bears on me. How am I supposed to keep trusting people when something so little can turn one against their own kind?

Jobadvisor

That's genuinely frustrating, especially when you thought you had a solid relationship with this person. Being sick is already miserable without having to navigate that kind of cold, transactional response on top of it.

That said — I'd push back a little on the framing, not to defend him, but because it might actually help you feel less betrayed.

The doctor's note thing is almost certainly not him — it's company policy, and he may be legally or contractually required to say it. A lot of managers have zero discretion there; HR has told them they must communicate it, even to their favorite employees, even when it feels awful in the moment. He probably felt awkward saying it too.

The part that is worth noting is how he said it — no warmth, no "hope you feel better first," just a cold policy drop. That's a social skill failure on his part, not necessarily a betrayal of your relationship.

The bigger thing you're feeling — "how am I supposed to keep trusting people" — that's real, but I'd be careful not to let one clunky text response rewrite an entire relationship that's been genuinely good. People get weird and robotic when they suddenly have a management hat on. It doesn't always mean what it seems.

Rest up, get better, and see how he acts when you're back. That'll tell you much more than a fever-day text exchange. The relationship isn't over — you just saw him in manager mode at an awkward moment, and he didn't handle it gracefully. That's human.

Hope you feel better soon. Drink water, sleep, ignore the texts for now. 🤧

My dad gave 30 years to a company. A new owner bought it and destroyed his life's work in 2 years. So my dad walked out

I just need to vent because I am absolutely furious and heartbroken for my dad. For over 30 years, he worked at a major manufacturing plant in Goa. He was literally there when the foundation stone was laid. He is an engineer by trade and worked his way up from the plant floor to an executive position. He chose never to switch companies because he wanted to stay close to our hometown to look after my grandparents. Under leadership, the plant maintained healthly growth, maintained a top-notch reputation with vendors, and kept the highest level of legal and statutory compliance. Then, two years ago, a massive Indian conglomerate bought the company. The new owner (the group's Vice Chairman) started micro-managing daily operations, and everything went to hell.

Because my dad understands the actual technical grit it takes to run a complex, 24/7 continuous process plant, watching this owner ruin it was painful. Honestly i didnot expect a vice chairmen of grouo having almost 1 billion dollar in revenue would be like this.Here is a glimpse of what this guy did:

Abuse and Fraud :He harassed the original Head of Supply Chain so badly he threatened him physically, then fired him. He replaced the entire accounts and supply chain department with his own people to start pulling financial frauds.

Massive GST & Compliance Scams:He ignored the complex engineering of the plant and focused blindly on a 5x capacity expansion. He used low-quality work, bypassed environmental and fire department clearances, and pulled a massive GST fraud—luring small contractors with big promises, not paying GST on their bills, but claiming ₹150+ crores($20 million) in input tax credit.

*Starving the Plant:*This owner sits on purchase requests (PRs) for months. A heavy industrial plant was running out of basic utilities like welding rods just to do standard maintenance and repairs. My dad’s team was constantly emailing PRs and meeting in person just to beg for basic consumables so they could actually keep the plant running safely, but they were completely ignored.

Zero Operational Understanding: Because he didn't pay the contract workers for two months, they walked out. Production tanked. To fix his own mess, he ordered my dad to fire 200 people right after the walkout, even though the automation lines weren't even finished. His brilliant solution? “Make the engineers do the packing and manual moving stuff.” Imagine telling an engineering team and an executive who came up through I&E to just use his technical staff as manual laborers. And the worst part? The Goa State Government is completely in cahoots with him. The local MLA and the Chief Minister know exactly what is happening at this plant. They know about the lack of permissions, the environmental hazards, the unpaid workers, and the fraud. But they are completely blind to it, just sitting back and waiting while pocketing whatever benefits they are getting. There is zero political will to protect local Goan workers or enforce safety laws when a massive group is involved. For the 6 months, my dad was coming home at 8-9 PM every single night. All the project managers and engineers resigned after seeing the mess, leaving my dad to handle the project commissioning completely alone. No bonuses, no increments for the staff for two years, while the owner only rewarded his selected "yes-men." The breaking point for my dad: The final straw came during a confrontation with the owner. The owner, in all his arrogance, tried to tell my dad that because he has bought many plants like this before, he knows exactly how things work. My dad, who literally started on the plant floor, looked at him and replied: "I have been in this industry for 30 years, and I am still learning."

That exchange said it all. My dad realized that if he couldn't even get this man to respect the engineering process, and couldn't provide his own team with the basic utilities and tools they needed to do their jobs safely, there was no point in him holding an executive position anymore. He refused to just sit in a high-ranking chair, collect a paycheck, and watch his people get starved of resources while a clueless owner blamed them for the output.

Fed up with the complete lack of operational freedom, the absolute political rot, and the physical safety risks of running a starved plant, my dad finally resigned. The CEO tried to convince him to stay, but my dad's integrity was worth more than a compromised title.He Also, refused to release my dads royalty bonus. We’ve lived here for 35+ years. My dad is getting job offers because of his deep expertise, but they are all in places like away from here.Moving away from his hometown when he is so close to retirement was never the plan, and it sucks that he was forced into this position by a reckless owner and a corrupt state government. I am just so incredibly angry at this arrogant owner who came in with deep pockets, destroyed a 30-year legacy of hard work, treated brilliant engineers like disposable garbage, and ruined my dad's peaceful transition into retirement.I honestly hope that greedy bastard rots in hell.

Thanks for reading. I just needed to get this off my chest.

Jobadvisor

What your dad went through is genuinely infuriating, and the fact that you're this angry on his behalf says a lot about both of you.

Thirty years. Thirty years of choosing stability over opportunity, of staying rooted to take care of family, of building something real — and then watching someone with more money than sense bulldoze it in 24 months. That's not just a job loss. That's a kind of grief.

What strikes me most reading this is your dad's quiet dignity throughout. The man ran out of welding rods — basic consumables — at a continuous process plant, which is genuinely dangerous, and he still showed up every night until 8 or 9 PM trying to hold it together for his team. He watched his engineers resign one by one and absorbed their workload without complaint. And when the owner tried to pull rank with bluster, your dad didn't match his arrogance. He just said: "I've been in this industry 30 years and I'm still learning." That's not a soft response. That's devastating. That's a man who knows exactly who he is.

The royalty bonus being withheld is also just outright wrong, and worth looking into legally if he hasn't already — that's not the owner's money to keep.

The political angle is the part that makes this especially bitter. Individual bad actors exist everywhere, but when the state government actively shields them, it removes the last safety valve. Your dad didn't just lose a job — he was let down by every institution that should have protected him and his colleagues.

And the cruel irony at the end: the job offers exist because he's exactly as good as he always was. The market sees what that owner was too arrogant to. But they're pulling him away from home, right before retirement, which was never supposed to be part of the story.

Your anger is completely earned. Vent as much as you need to.