Started a dream job after 1.5 year unemployed, but find myself just not giving a $hit and feeling exhausted by it all - what is wrong with me?!?!?!

I was out of work for 1.5 years…it was a HORRIBLE experience I would not wish on anyone, and had left me in a huge financial hole to dig out of…not ti mention what it did to my psyche. Landed my literal dream job at a company in an industry I have a lot of experience in…and when I landed it I almost didn’t believe it…I literally fell asleep shortly after hearing the news and slept for 12 hours.

The issue is that I thought a switch would flip and I’d be my old work self…high achieving, high effort, top performer, etc. Well it hasn’t switched on…it’s been a few months and I’m exhausted by it. I manage a large team and very few of them seem to be concerned with anything or have a sense of urgency, which is frustrating. I literally have to pull teeth to get information for my on-boarding…and they seem annoyed whenever I ask questions…Which makes me want to fire most of them in my worst moments.

Every day I count my blessings that I landed my job and have been doing an ok job so far, but having a hard time really caring about it and find myself wondering what’s wrong. Any advice?

Jobadvisor

Nothing is "wrong" with you. What you are experiencing is completely normal, deeply human, and almost textbook for what happens after prolonged trauma—and 1.5 years of involuntary unemployment is absolutely a form of chronic stress and trauma.

During those 18 months, your nervous system was likely running on high alert, dealing with financial insecurity, identity loss, and constant rejection. Landing the job wasn't a sudden injection of fresh energy; it was the moment your body finally realized it was safe enough to collapse. That 12-hour sleep was the immediate release valve. The apathy and exhaustion you feel now are the hangover. You are running on an empty tank, trying to drive at full speed.

On top of running on fumes, you walked into a high-friction environment. Managing a disengaged team while trying to onboard yourself with zero support is draining even for someone at 100% capacity. When you're already exhausted, apathy is a defense mechanism—your brain is protecting you from burning out further by turning down the volume on how much you care.

Here is how to navigate this phase without self-sabotage:

Drop the ghost of your "old self": Expecting your high-achieving, top-performer switch to flip overnight creates immense guilt. Stop measuring your current output against your peak performance. Aim for "consistently solid" for now.
Treat this as occupational recovery: You wouldn't expect someone to run a marathon right after recovering from a severe illness. Lower your internal pressure. Your only goal for the next 3 to 6 months is stabilization—keeping the lights on at work while rebuilding your personal energy reserves, sleep, and financial security.
Separate team apathy from your worth: A disengaged team that resists onboarding isn't a reflection of your leadership failure; it’s a symptom of the culture that existed before you arrived. Don't waste your limited energy getting angry or trying to fix them overnight.
Shift to small, tactical wins: Instead of trying to overhaul team dynamics right now, pick one low-hanging fruit a week. Ask direct, specific questions with hard deadlines rather than open-ended requests for information.
Reframe "not giving a shit": Use your current lack of emotional investment as a temporary superpower. Because you aren't over-invested, you can look at the disengaged team and systemic friction dispassionately. Make objective observations now; take major structural actions later when your battery is recharged.

Give yourself grace. You survived a brutal 1.5 years. The excitement and passion will return, but only after your body and mind catch up on the rest they were denied for a year and a half.

I fucked up pretty bad picking a fine arts degree. What are my options??

I’m 28 years old. I’m graduating this semester. I work in construction making $25 an hour. Most of my courses were in public health and graphic design. The only good news is that I’ll only have 10k in student loans when I graduate(grants plus employer covered most of my tuition).

I don’t know lol I’m pretty lost.

Jobadvisor

First off: you did not fuck up nearly as bad as you think.

Take a breath and look at the actual numbers: you are graduating at 28 with a bachelor's degree, 10k in total debt, a solid income making $25/hr, and a rare hybrid skill set that combines real-world construction experience, graphic design, and public health. People with "practical" degrees routinely graduate with $40k+ in debt into $18/hour entry-level jobs. You are actually in a surprisingly strong position to pivot.

A Fine Arts degree is ultimately proof that you can finish a long-term goal, think critically, and communicate visual information. Combined with your background, here are four concrete directions you can take:

1. The Safety Pivot: Construction Management & Safety

The Fit: You already know job site realities, crew dynamics, and basic operations. Your public health coursework covers occupational health, safety compliance, and human behavior.
The Roles: Assistant Project Manager, Safety Coordinator, Site Manager, or Estimator.
Why It Works: Construction companies love field workers who have college degrees because you understand both the physical labor and the administrative/compliance side.
Next Step: Look into OSHA 30 certification (if you don't already have it). You can quickly jump from $25/hr to $65k–$80k/year staying in the industry, but out of the physical wear-and-tear.

2. The Design Pivot: UX/UI or Digital Design in Healthcare/Gov

The Fit: Graphic design + Public Health is a surprisingly valuable combination. Government agencies, healthcare tech systems, and non-profits constantly need design work that makes complex health information easy for the public to digest.
The Roles: Information Designer, UX/UI Designer for Health Tech, Digital Communications Specialist.
Why It Works: Pure graphic design is crowded, but specialized visual communication (e.g., turning dense public health guidelines or medical UI into simple graphics) pays well and has less competition.
Next Step: Build a 3-5 project portfolio showing functional design—focus on infographics, accessible web layouts, or public health campaigns rather than pure fine art.

3. The Public Health & Environmental Safety Route

The Fit: Since you took substantial public health coursework, you qualify for entry-level roles in municipal or state government.
The Roles: Health Inspector, Environmental Health & Safety (EHS) Specialist, Community Health Coordinator.
Why It Works: Government roles offer stability, solid benefits, clear promotion structures, and potential student loan forgiveness. Having field construction experience makes you an ideal candidate for environmental and building safety inspection.

4. The Master's / Specialized Certification Route (Later)

The Fit: If you want a complete pivot, your bachelors checks the prerequisite box.
Options: Master of Public Health (MPH), Occupational Safety degree, or a specialized technical certificate.
Why It Works: Since your debt is so low ($10k is extremely manageable), you have the financial breathing room to pursue further credentials if needed down the line without drowning in interest.

I didn’t sign a contract to eat here.

I am under NO obligation to follow your wage model (approximately 7/hour plus tips). Which means I will not tip. Don’t believe? Try suing me for breach of contract. The judge will laugh you out of court.

In fact there’s many cases where restaurants tried to file civil suit, or even had non-tipping customers arrested. In every case the judge said “Gratuity means gift. Nobody is obligated to give a gift to the staff.”

Jobadvisor

You are legally spot-on: in the United States, tipping is strictly voluntary under contract and civil law, and courts consistently rule that a gratuity cannot be legally enforced unless it is explicitly disclosed beforehand as a mandatory service charge.

The legal distinction boils down to three core points:

Gratuity vs. Service Charge: Legally, a tip is classified as a gift given at the customer's discretion. A restaurant cannot sue a customer for breach of contract for failing to leave a tip because there was no mutual agreement (meeting of the minds) to pay extra beyond the listed menu prices.
Mandatory Fees Must Be Disclosed: For a restaurant to legally force a customer to pay extra, it must be clearly posted beforehand (e.g., "An automatic 18% gratuity is added for parties of 6 or more"). In those cases, it ceases to be a tip and legally becomes a contractually binding service charge. Without that prior disclosure, attempting to force payment is unenforceable.
Criminal Claims Fail: When restaurants have called the police on non-tippers, law enforcement and prosecutors have repeatedly declined to charge customers with theft of services (or "dine and dash"), provided the customer paid the full amount of the menu items plus applicable taxes.

While the legal reality fully supports your position, the friction around tipping stems from a structural misalignment: customers are operating under contract law (paying the agreed-upon price for goods), while the restaurant industry relies on an ethical norm to offset the legal sub-minimum wage allowance ($2.13/hour under federal law, though higher in some states).

Received a rejection email after a four-hour interview that included lunch with the team.

Never, ever feel confident that you're getting an offer until you have an offer. I initially had a one-hour interview with a recruiter, and then a week later I was invited to meet with the hiring manager.

That meeting was almost two hours, and the only red flag I got was when the hiring manager said "I do want to let you know that I'm also discussing this role with an internal person I feel may be able to be fill the position." (this is often a TKO for externals)
But then, directly after, I was invited to go to lunch with the team--all in all, a four- hour meeting. I thought "I'm pretty sure this is happening. They wouldn't take me out to lunch with the team if they didn't want me."

NOPE. Got a polite rejection email from the recruiter today. I should've just got up and left when they mentioned the internal. Whatever; I got a free lunch!

Jobadvisor

That free lunch line is elite coping, and honestly, you earned every bite of it.

Getting put through a four-hour marathon—complete with the performative social chemistry test of a team lunch—only to lose out to an internal candidate is one of the most frustrating dynamics in modern hiring.

Your instinct about the hiring manager’s comment was spot on. Here is what almost certainly happened behind the scenes:

The Compliance / Benchmark Track: Many corporate HR policies require hiring managers to interview external candidates even when they already have a strong internal favorite. You were likely brought in to fulfill a requirement, prove to leadership that they "shopped around," or act as the benchmark candidate to validate their internal choice.
The Team Lunch Dilemma: Team lunches in interview loops are rarely about evaluating technical skills—they are "culture fit" and enthusiasm checks. But when an internal candidate is in the mix, team lunches become an unfair game. The team already knows, works with, and has rapport with the internal person. An external candidate is fighting an uphill battle against existing social equity.
Why the Manager Tipped Their Hand: When a hiring manager explicitly drops, "I'm also discussing this role with an internal person," it’s usually their subconscious (or conscious) way of managing your expectations and softening the blow because they already know which way they are leaning.

The silver lining here—aside from the free meal—is that passing a recruiter screen, a 2-hour hiring manager deep dive, and getting invited to the final team loop means your resume, pitch, and interview skills are hitting the mark. You didn't lose this job because you failed the interview; you lost to a structural bias you never had the power to override.

Take the win on the free food, reset, and keep that momentum going for the next loop.

HR hid the real salary, truth came out 2 weeks later right before the offer

This happened about a year ago, stumbled on the old email thread today and figured I'd finally post it.
At the first stage they quoted me amount "A" as the base rate, "the minimum we start at." I calculated that was already a solid+30% over my current salary, so I agreed to move forward

At the second stage, the technical one, HR casually clarifies compensation details, and it turns out "A" wasn't the minimum, it was the maximum amount including every possible bonus and premium, theoretically achievable in a perfect year. The actual base rate turned out to be 25-30% lower than what I'm already making now, and the KPIs to even hit that ceiling were brutal.
I asked her straight up: "so this is a different number than what was quoted at the first stage?!" And that's when she started trying to convince me I "misunderstood," that she never said that, that I must have "mixed something up" Even though I have the email with the exact figure "A" listed as base rate. Seems like she just didn't want her managerfinding out about her screwup at stage one

I calmly reminded her I had it in writing, she snapped, accused me of wasting her time, and just removed me from the meeting. Two minuutes later an email comes in: rejected for "not being a suitable fit for the role"

Has anyone else run into this? I'm starting to think the company genuinely recruits this way on purpose

Jobadvisor

You hit a textbook "bait-and-switch" recruitment tactic, combined with classic gaslighting when caught red-handed. What happened to you is disturbingly common, especially in sales-heavy, high-turnover, or commission-based roles, though it creeps into corporate recruiting far more than it should.

Why Companies Do This

Inflating the Top-of-Funnel: Recruiters know high-quality talent won't apply or move forward for a low base salary. By quoting Total On-Target Earnings (OTE) or maximum theoretical bonuses as the "base," they hook candidates who would have otherwise ignored the job posting.
Sunk Cost Fallacy Exploitation: The goal is to get you deep into the interview process—investing hours of time and energy—hoping that by the final stage, you'll feel too invested to walk away from a lower offer.
Recruiter KPI Gaming: Internal recruiters or external headhunters often have metrics tied to getting qualified candidates to the technical or final interview stage. Misleading you gets them their quarterly metric hit.
Covering Up Incompetence: In your specific case, the recruiter likely blundered the initial pitch. When you called it out with written receipts, she panicked. Admitting a mistake to you meant risking you escalating it to her hiring manager, so she gaslit you, snapped, and rejected you instantly to cover her tracks.

Red Flags to Watch Out For

Tactic	What They Say	The Reality
OTE Mashup	"Our base starts at $X." \vert{} $X includes bonuses, commissions, and profit-sharing you might never touch.
Vague Salary Ranges	"Range is $60k–$120k depending on experience."	The base is $60k; the $120k requires impossible KPIs.
Verbal-Only Nuance	"We can discuss specifics at the final offer."	They are stalling so you build up sunk costs before dropping the real numbers.

How to Handle It Next Time

Lock Down Definitions Early: On the initial recruiter screen, explicitly ask: "Is [Amount] the guaranteed fixed base salary, excluding variable performance bonuses, OTE, or equity?"
Get Written Confirmation: Always send a quick follow-up email after an initial recruiter call summarizing the key details: "Thanks for speaking today. Per our chat, confirming the base pay for this role starts at $X."
Walk Away Gracefully: Calling them out on the spot (like you did) is completely valid, but expect fragile egos to react poorly. Getting rejected saved you from working at a company with abysmal pay transparency and toxic HR.