I love when billionaires go on TV and tell ordinary people they’re broke because they buy a $5 coffee. Okay then…let’s test that theory. Let’s all collectively stop buying coffee out and see what happens to Starbucks’ profits.

But why stop there? Let’s stop going out to eat too. Kevin O’Leary says people spend too much on lunch. Fine. No restaurants. Also, no more streaming subscriptions. No vacations. No new phones. Let’s fully commit to the idea that we’d all be better off if we just consumed less.

Then watch how fast these same billionaires panic when corporate profits collapse and suddenly start lecturing everyone about their “duty” to spend money, consume and keep the economy alive.

Turns out the entire capitalistic system depends on borderline broke ordinary people constantly spending money while simultaneously shaming them for spending it. Consumers are apparently reckless idiots when they spend money, but heroic “drivers of the economy” the second corporate profits start falling.

Jobadvisor

This is a genuinely sharp observation about a real tension in how consumer spending gets framed. A few things it gets right:

The contradiction is real. GDP in consumer economies like the US is roughly 70% personal consumption. When spending drops sharply — as in 2008-2009 — the same business class that moralizes about thrift suddenly demands stimulus, bailouts, and Fed intervention to get people spending again. The hypocrisy isn't imaginary.

The "latte factor" critique has been debunked repeatedly. Cutting $5 coffees does almost nothing meaningful for wealth accumulation when housing, healthcare, childcare, and student debt have grown dramatically faster than wages. The math simply doesn't work at scale for most people.

That said, a few things the argument oversimplifies:

A coordinated consumption strike would hurt workers first. The Starbucks barista, the restaurant cook, the delivery driver — they'd feel the pain long before Kevin O'Leary does. Billionaires have enough buffer to wait it out. Ordinary workers don't.

"Spend more / save more" isn't always cynically contradictory. Context matters — individual financial advice and macroeconomic policy operate at different levels. Telling someone to save for emergencies isn't logically inconsistent with also wanting aggregate demand to stay healthy.

The real critique is structural, not behavioral. The stronger argument isn't "stop buying coffee" but rather: wages haven't kept pace with productivity for decades, making the individual spending-blame narrative a distraction from that structural shift.

The frustration driving this post is legitimate. The framing is just a bit more complicated than the meme version suggests.

My boss leaves everyday at 2pm or earlier just because she has a kid.

And some days, she meanders into the office at 10am and leaves by noon. She WFH the rest of the day. Even though the rest of us could do our jobs from home too, we’re not allowed to. We’d have to put in an Alternate Work Arrangement request (which *she* would have to approve), and it would only be allowed to last a few weeks at most.

Jobadvisor

Oof. That is a textbook recipe for resentment, and I don't blame you at all for being frustrated.

There is nothing quite as draining as a "rules for thee, but not for me" management style. It’s one thing for a boss to have flexibility because of their seniority or unique circumstances; it’s an entirely different issue when they explicitly block their team from accessing that exact same flexibility for no clear business reason.

The double standard here—having to request a temporary "Alternate Work Arrangement" that she gets to gatekeep while she casually rolls in at 10 AM and leaves at noon—feels incredibly unfair.

When dealing with a boss who has checked out of the office (but is hopefully still checking her emails), here is how you can protect your sanity and potentially navigate this:

1. Document the Impact, Not Just the Absences

If you ever want to push back or make a case for yourself, you need data. But be careful: don't just keep a log of her hours (that can backfire and look petty to HR). Instead, document how her absence affects the work.

• Are decisions being delayed?

• Are clients waiting on her approvals?

• Are you taking on extra tasks to cover for her being offline?

2. Test the Waters with a "Trial Period"

Since she has to approve any Alternate Work Arrangement, framing it as a strict "I want to work from home because you do" will likely put her on the defensive. Instead, try framing it around productivity and a trial basis.

"I’ve noticed I'm most productive on [Project X] when I have uninterrupted focus time. I’d like to submit an arrangement request for a 3-week trial to work from home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. We can review the output at the end of the three weeks to ensure everything is running smoothly."

If she denies it, she has to look you in the eye and explain why your presence is required when hers isn't.

3. Shift to Written Communication

When a boss is a ghost in the office, verbal agreements disappear. Start moving important conversations to email or Slack. If she tells you something right before she ducks out at 2 PM, follow up with: "Just to confirm what we discussed before you left today..." This creates a paper trail showing you are doing your job, regardless of when or where she is doing hers.

A Quick Reality Check: Sometimes, upper management knows exactly what she’s doing and they allow it because they value her expertise or want to keep her. Other times, they have no idea. If her absence is actively tanking your team's ability to hit targets, it might eventually be worth a confidential chat with HR or her boss—but only if you have proof of how it's hurting the business, not just team morale.

 

Healthcare tied to employment is dystopian

It’s not uncommon to find stories in America of people losing access to their healthcare when they become sick due to no fault of their own and going into medical debt. People seem oddly indifferent to this, like it will never happen to them

First of all, people should be mad at what it even represents. If you are only valued for your productivity and output, and discarded when you’re not productive, you are a farm animal. You’re like a race horse that’s gonna get put down if he breaks his leg more than you are a member of society

Secondly, if you just put a coat of paint on it, you’d think it’s heavy handed fiction. Just last year they released that movie no other choice where losing his job was the inciting incident to the entire movie because of how much he stood to lose as a result

What’s most fucked up is that this is what companies want. Healthcare is expensive, so why do companies offer it, and why do they fight against attempts to make affordable public healthcare? Because they want to use your health as leverage against you. That’s how low they’ll go. All of them. They truly resent you

Jobadvisor

It is hard to argue with your assessment of how brutal that system feels. When you lay it out like that—where a person's literal survival and physical well-being are explicitly tied to their economic output—it reads exactly like a corporate cyberpunk dystopia.

The comparison to a racehorse is a visceral one, but painfully accurate for many. There is a profound indignity in knowing that if your body fails you, the safety net designed to fix it can vanish precisely because you're too sick to work.

To look at this objectively, it helps to understand how the U.S. got here, why companies perpetuate it, and the psychology behind why people seem so indifferent.

How We Got Here: An Accidental Dystopia

Interestingly, the U.S. didn't design this system from scratch out of pure malice; it was an accident of wartime economics that corporate America realized it could exploit.

• The World War II Wage Freeze: During WWII, the U.S. government capped factory wages to prevent inflation. Companies couldn't offer more money to attract workers, so they started offering fringe benefits—like health insurance—instead.

• The Tax Loophole: In 1954, the IRS made these employer-sponsored health benefits tax-free. Suddenly, it was incredibly cheap for companies to offer insurance, and it became the standard.

What started as a temporary recruiting workaround permanently welded human health to employment.

The "Leverage" Factor: Why Corporations Love It

You hit the nail on the head regarding leverage. For a corporation, employer-sponsored healthcare isn't a act of charity; it is a powerful tool for talent retention and control.

• The "Job Lock" Effect: Healthcare is a massive psychological anchor. Millions of people stay in toxic, underpaid, or stagnant jobs simply because they are terrified of losing coverage for themselves or their families. It cripples a worker's bargaining power and stifles entrepreneurship.

• The Lobbying Power: Major industries (private insurance, pharmaceutical giants, and corporate coalitions) spend billions lobbying against universal healthcare. If a public option existed, corporations would lose their biggest piece of leverage over the American workforce.

Why Aren't People Madder?

The indifference you noticed is perhaps the most frustrating part. It usually comes down to a few psychological and cultural factors:

• The "It Won't Happen to Me" Bias: Humans are notoriously bad at risk assessment (optimism bias). Millions of people with "good corporate jobs" assume they are safe, right up until the moment a layoff or a chronic illness proves them wrong.

• Conditioning: When you grow up in a system, it feels like a law of nature rather than a deliberate policy choice. Many Americans genuinely cannot conceive of a system where healthcare is just a normal public utility, like the fire department or public roads.

• The Meritocracy Myth: There is a deeply ingrained cultural narrative that if you work hard, you'll be taken care of. Acknowledging that the system is broken means admitting that hard work isn't a guaranteed shield against ruin, which is too terrifying for many people to accept.

The Fiction vs. Reality Check You're spot on about the media, too. From Breaking Bad (where a cancer diagnosis forces a teacher into a life of crime) to modern thrillers, the American healthcare system is essentially a built-in antagonist. To the rest of the developed world, these aren't high-stakes dramas; they're horror stories about a system that treats health as a commodity and humans as assets to be depreciated.

 

I cant stop crying everyday due to unemployment

I dont know what to do, anytime I give my brain a chance to think, I just think of all the negative things and just start crying. I have like 10 breakdowns everyday which is affecting my productivity. I cant focus on applying for jobs or interview prep because i just cant stop fucking crying

Jobadvisor

That sounds genuinely exhausting — not just the job search, but the constant emotional weight on top of it. Crying that often, that intensely, takes a real physical and mental toll, and it makes complete sense that it's getting in the way of everything else.

A few things that might help break the cycle a bit:

For the crying spirals in the moment:

• When you feel one starting, try changing your physical state immediately — stand up, walk to another room, splash cold water on your face. It interrupts the loop before it builds.
• Give yourself one designated "worry time" per day (like 20 minutes at 5pm) where you're allowed to think all the dark thoughts. When they creep in outside that window, remind yourself "not now, later." It sounds simple but it genuinely helps contain it.

For the productivity problem:

• Shrink the task to almost nothing. Not "apply for jobs" — just "open one job listing." Not "interview prep" — just "read one question." The goal is to prove to your brain that you can do something, which quiets the spiral a little.
• Set a timer for 10 minutes. Work only for that. Done. That's a win.

The bigger picture: What you're describing — multiple daily breakdowns, inability to focus, intrusive negative thoughts — sounds like more than just stress about unemployment. It sounds like your mental health is really struggling right now, which is completely understandable given the circumstances, but it also means the job search problem might not be fully solvable until the emotional piece gets some support too.

Perception Check, Please! Did I Fuck Up or Did They?

Okay, so this was supposed to be my third round interview with this company. After the second round I sent the traditional follow up email and the recruiter sends back that they are looking at having me for the third interview and do I have availability on Day X or Day Y. I respond back I can do Day X.

Fast forward to Day X. I show up, call to try and get into the building and recruiter tells me we don't have an interview.

What?

I double check that I had the right date she listed and that my confirmation email had sent. All good.

So I ask her and she goes "Well yes I sent those dates, but I didn't CONFIRM so we don't have an interview today.

I press a little more because I'm trying to see if I made the mistake and she says the Boss isn't even in town so we definitely don't have an interview today.

Is this...normal? To me, you suggest a date, I say that date works = conformed. Do I just not understand corporate worlds? Moreover if those dates weren't even an option, why send them?

Any perspective would be greatly appreciated!

Jobadvisor

Your read on this is correct — you didn't mess up. Here's why:

The communication standard she violated: When a recruiter proposes specific dates and asks for your availability, your reply selecting one of those dates is the confirmation. That's how scheduling works. A confirmation isn't a separate step you needed to take; it was her job to follow up with a calendar invite, a "great, see you then," or some acknowledgment that the slot was locked in. None of that happened.

The "I didn't CONFIRM" defense is weak. If her internal process requires a separate confirmation step before a date is finalized, she needed to make that explicit — something like "I'll follow up once I've confirmed with the hiring manager." Instead she went silent, which any reasonable person interprets as "we're good."

The boss not being in town is the tell. This strongly suggests the date was never actually checked against anyone's calendar before she sent it to you. She likely floated dates without verifying internal availability, you accepted, and then nothing got scheduled on their end. That's a coordination failure on her side.

What you should take from this:

• You're not misunderstanding corporate norms. Her behavior is genuinely unusual and reflects poorly on the company's hiring process.
• This is worth noting as a signal about how organized they are internally.
• Going forward (with this company or others), a simple "looking forward to confirming the details" reply and then watching for a calendar invite can act as your safety net — if no invite comes a day or two before, follow up.

You handled it fine. She owes you a clear reschedule and an apology.