Mandatory work trip with shared beds, what should I do?
Hi everyone, I work in a big company and my department decided to organize a week-long business trip in a really nice setting, a villa in a tropical climate - so far so good -. Howerver, the organizer of the trip told us early on that we would have to share rooms (not so good already). Since I'm fairly new in the company I ran with it and submitted the appropriate travel requests regardless.
Today, the organizer dropped the bomb. Since the department has a low budget for the trip, we're going to be sharing double beds in the accomodaiton. I feel like it's totally insane, but when this was announced none of the 10+ participants protested. I talked about it to a colleague from another dept. and he also thinks it's insane.
Furthemore, while they at least organized rooms by gender, it turns out all the rooms for women are already full and one woman will probably have to sleep in a room with men (!), potentially going as far as sharing a bed since there's a limited amount of single beds.
At this point, I don't know what to do, but I clearly do not want to share a bed with a coworker. On the other hand, I don't want to be ostarcized and end up getting fired over this matter neither because I can't afford to lose my job right now. I tried to raise up the matter jockingly during our last meeting by saying I would be calling dibs on a single bed, no one seemed amused and the organier said that if It was also an option to sleep on the terrace on a sunbed. It seems like the director and crownies wanted to organize their vacation on the company dime no matter the cost and I'm an hostage of this situation. Please advise.
Jobadvisor
This is a legitimate problem, not you overreacting. A few things stand out that are worth naming clearly:
This isn't just an awkward preference — it's a real workplace issue. Mandatory bed-sharing with coworkers, and especially the situation where a woman may end up in a mixed-gender room or bed, creates real liability and safety concerns for the company, not just personal discomfort for you. That's exactly the kind of thing HR exists to hear about. You're not being dramatic by taking it seriously.
Why nobody protested doesn't mean nobody minds. Silence in a group meeting, especially from someone new, is really common — nobody wants to be the first to object, especially to something the organizer (who may report to leadership) has already framed as decided. Your colleague from another department already told you privately he thinks it's insane too. There are very likely others who feel the same and just haven't said so out loud.
Joking about it was a reasonable first move, but it got read as a joke. The "sunbed on the terrace" response tells you this needs to go through a different channel — informal humor isn't landing as a real concern.
A few concrete ways to move this forward without putting your job at risk:
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Go to HR directly, not the trip organizer. Frame it factually: "I want to flag that the current room assignment plan involves mixed-gender rooms and shared beds between coworkers who aren't couples. I wanted to raise this before the trip in case there's a policy concern." This isn't a complaint about the organizer, it's a heads-up about risk — HR departments generally take that seriously regardless of how junior you are, because the company's exposure here is real.
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Offer a practical fix, not just an objection. E.g., "I'm happy to book my own room nearby and just expense the difference" or "could we look at a nearby budget hotel for overflow." Solutions-first requests are much easier for organizers to say yes to than open pushback.
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Loop in your sympathetic colleague before you act. Even one other person backing you up when you raise it turns "difficult employee" into "reasonable shared concern."
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Keep a written trail. Emails or messages (not just verbal jokes in meetings) documenting that you raised the mixed-gender/bed-sharing issue ahead of time protects you either way this plays out.
You're not being unreasonable, and raising this the right way is much more likely to protect your job than staying quiet and hoping it resolves itself.
I'm 32 with 2 degrees and never get called in for interviews for basically any office job I apply for?
So I have a bachelor's in History and Philosophy from Rutgers New Brunswick. I was young at the time and just studied what I was interested in. My parents just told me I needed to go to college and that it didn't matter what I majored in (they're laid back and didn't know what they were doing. Some of my friends/cousins parents literally set them up from an early age to succeed). I figured I could get any old basic office job with these degrees though. I quickly figured out after graduation that literally no office jobs wanted anything other than "business", "marketing", "economics", "accounting", "IT", "Comp-Sci", "engineering". I got the feeling HR was immediately filtering me out.
My sister even reinforced me going to college for something I'm interested in because she worked at time magazine (NYC) and had plenty of coworkers who majored in liberal arts, etc.
I was rudely awakened when literally nobody out of 100s of applications called me in for an interview. I even applied to a million data entry jobs, and nobody called md back... I gave up and continued to work part-time as a low voltage electrician for my dad's small business. So, a few years later, in 2021ish, I stumbled upon learning how to code/program and was sold the idea that you can get a good job without a compsci degree. I did a web dev bootcamp and received no job/interviews. I then said, I already put this much effort in, I should go back to school and get a compsci degree in order to attain a junior position. So I went to my local CC, which is one of the best CC's in the country, and got an AAS in Comp-Sci. I didn't pursue another bach due to financial reasonings.
I graduated from this degree 1.5 years ago and can't even get interviews for junior software dev or IT roles. I got one interview and offer in this timespan from a startup to be an AI dev, and I signed a $60k contract, and they called back a week later and said that funding never went through and that they can't hire me yet. They then had the audacity 2 weeks ago to call me to offer a part-time role and admitted that one of the owners old colleagues who had years of experience actually got the job and that they lied about the funding. Now they haven't called me back after stating they wanted me to start immediately and planned on having me start earlier this week...
The worst part of this is that there seems to be no junior software dev jobs out there anymore. It's all midlevel and senior roles.
I'm utterly distraught and am venting. All my friends and families lives seemed to go smoothly where they make 6 figures, are married, own homes, etc, and I'm still stuck at my parents house with the same old part-time job with no dating prospects over the past decade(despite having relatively good success with women in my teens) ... I spend money each month on student loans that feel absolutely useless... the time and money I spent on an education that didn't help me professionally one bit is eating away at my soul.
Life just didn't go according to plan, despite giving my best efforts. As a teen, I never thought I'd be in this position... Anyways, sorry, I needed to get this out ... rant over. Thanks for reading if you got this far.
Jobadvisor
That startup thing is genuinely awful — stringing you along, lying about funding, then quietly giving the job to someone with more connections and experience, then dangling a part-time offer and going silent again. That's not you doing something wrong. That's someone treating you badly. It's fair to be furious about that one specifically, separate from everything else.
And the broader pattern you're describing is real, not just bad luck or something wrong with you:
- The liberal arts filtering-out problem you hit in 2014ish was real. A lot of ATS systems and HR screens do keyword-match on majors, especially for entry-level "office job" postings where they get hundreds of applicants and need a fast way to cut the pile down. Your sister's experience at Time doesn't cancel that out — that industry and that era of hiring worked differently than mass-market corporate entry-level roles.
- The junior dev market genuinely collapsed. This isn't in your head. Entry-level software roles dropped sharply over the last few years — AI coding tools ate a lot of the "give a junior the easy tickets" work, and a lot of companies stopped running junior pipelines altogether in favor of hiring people with 3-5 years already under their belt. Bootcamp grads and even new CS grads from good four-year programs are having a rough time right now, not just AAS grads. You picked a genuinely bad multi-year window to try to break in, through no fault of your own.
So: two real structural headwinds, stacked on top of each other, on top of one company acting in bad faith. That's a lot to be hitting at once. It makes sense that it feels less like "I keep failing" and more like "the ground keeps moving."
A few things worth naming honestly, though, since you clearly still want to fix this rather than just vent:
The comparison to friends/family is going to keep hurting you if you keep running it. Not because your feelings are wrong, but because you're comparing your mid-fight chapter to their highlight reel. It doesn't change your job situation and it drains energy you need for the actual problem.
An AAS + bootcamp + no portfolio/network is a hard combo in this market, but it's not a dead end. A few concrete things that tend to move the needle for people in exactly your spot:
- A public portfolio with 2-3 real projects (not tutorial clones) that solve an actual problem, with clean READMEs — this often matters more than the degree line for junior/associate roles.
- Targeting smaller companies, agencies, and IT/support-to-dev pipelines rather than only "junior software developer" postings at bigger companies — those titles are the most oversaturated and most likely to require a 4-year CS degree as a filter.
- Contract, help desk, QA, or IT support roles as a foot in the door — a lot of people land actual dev work by moving internally after getting hired for something adjacent.
- Networking over cold applying — at this point in the market, referrals matter more than volume of applications. Even reaching out to CC alumni or bootcamp alumni in this specific job market can outperform hundreds of cold applications.
You've clearly got persistence — most people don't retrain twice after getting stonewalled the first time. That's worth something, even if it doesn't feel like it right now.
Just had a nightmare interview, why do hiring managers make you feel like you’re worthless?
Interviewers: show you care, at least fake it…
I had a nightmare interview on Thursday. After a great screening call with the recruiter, I was sent to the next round.
The interviewer didn’t know my name, didn’t have my resume pulled up, and took the interview FROM HIS CAR. He joined 5 minutes late and said he had an emergency… my guess it that he just forgot about it and he begrudgingly joined.
Right off the bat, he seemed irritated. He started with “I’m just going to ask you some standard questions, what interests you about the company? What do you know about this space?”
After I answered he seemed distracted the whole time. Like he wasn’t even recording my answers, rather he was messaging people on teams.
I tried to inject some jokes and provide some levity because I wasn’t really receiving those warm vibes, so me, being the social fucking butterfly that I am, was busting a smile and really trying to show genuine interest, spoke to how my background fits and why I am looking forward to this new chapter.
It was all ho hum. He barely got into the job at all, or what it entails - and mind you, this would be my boss - we just talked about web3 for a bit and he then said (and I kid you not) 10 minutes into the interview “what questions do you have for me?” So the resulting 30 minutes would be me trying to ask questions to him about what the fuck even are the expectations. And I am angling questions from the high level and low level and every response he gave it seemed like he was just phoning it in.
I asked him why he transitioned out of a lucrative career in cybersecurity to do business development and he was like “yeah I hated staring at a computer screen all day and wanted to talk to people more”. And I am thinking bud you got the personality of a soiled diaper and a RBF like a pitbull swallowed a hornet.
About 10 mins into my questions, he said “oh shit I have an important emergency on teams, I gotta go, thank you and I’ll put you through to the next round” and a hasty goodbye.
Today I received an automated rejection email and I’m like what the fuck? But at the same time I probably dodged a bullet.
This whole game sucks and I don’t want to play anymore.
Jobadvisor
That interview was a mess, and not on your end. Joining late from a car, not knowing your name, not having your resume up, doom-scrolling Teams while you talk, barely explaining the actual job — that's not a tough interviewer, that's someone who didn't prepare and didn't respect your time. You handled a bad situation well: you kept trying to inject energy, asked real questions when he abdicated the "tell you about the job" part, pushed to understand expectations. That's exactly what you're supposed to do when the other person isn't holding up their end.
The "I'll put you through to the next round" followed by an automated rejection the next day stings in a specific way — it's not just a no, it's a no after being told the opposite to your face. That's a legitimate reason to be angry, not just disappointed. Whether he forgot, lied to end the call politely, or someone else made the call after — you don't get to know, and that ambiguity is its own kind of frustrating.
But here's the thing worth sitting with: you said "he was probably my boss," and by his own account he left a stable, well-paid field because he didn't want to deal with people — and then treated a candidate the way he treated you. That's real information. A rejection from that guy isn't a referendum on your worth or your candidacy. If anything, working for someone who runs interviews like that is a preview of how they'd run 1:1s, feedback, and expectations once you're actually on the team. You very likely did dodge something, even if it doesn't feel like a win right now.
On the bigger question — why hiring managers can make you feel worthless — some of it really is structural, not personal: a lot of interviewers get zero training, are pulled in last-minute, are overloaded, or just don't care that they're on the other side of someone's rent and self-esteem for that hour. It's a real asymmetry of stakes. You walked in prepared, treated it seriously, tried to build rapport. He didn't reciprocate any of that. That gap is on him, not evidence about you.
It's fair to be furious and want to stop playing the game for a minute. Take the breather. But when you're ready to jump back in, this specific rejection isn't the data point to carry forward — it says a lot more about him than about you.
I pivot so much I'm always entry level, how do you move upward?
My career path has been kind of a joke so far, if I'm honest.
I'm 28F, graduated with a degree in Biomedical Science (originally wanted to be a pharmacist but clearly that didn't happen), worked in collections at a telecom while in school and post grad, then moved into a really exciting internship at a Big 5 book publisher! Felt like a dream but there was nothing to look forward to salary-wise or work-life balance-wise. I saw the future with every department at a book publisher it was not bright--they are all putting in insane hours for minimal pay.
I then moved over to my current government position in an administrative role about a year ago-- this role has included basic admin, lots of data entry/data validation, QA (from contractors), and has made use of some of my publishing internship skills through helping edit and refine procedural documents.
I have all of these disjointed skills (though how valuable they are, I'm not even sure) and feel quite directionless. I feel like I always move laterally, from entry level position to entry level position in wildly different fields, and gain clarity about the kinds of things that I don't want (frontline/customer-facing work, longterm lack of work-life balance, excessive monotony) but don't seem to learn enough of what I do want to actually move upwards in any industry.
I want to get it together before I'm 30, ideally, but am not sure how feasible this is. I don't need to make a perfect decision, but I lack the ability to make any decision and so I never see anything through.
Can anyone relate? Have you felt this way and are now feeling more established in your career of choice? Any advice about what you would do in my situation?
Also, as an aside, I would be very willing to pursue further education (although my undergrad GPA might get in the way...) but I want it to be a purposeful decision, as opposed to my undergrad degree of choice which did not feel very well thought-out.
Jobadvisor
That's a really useful thing to know about yourself, and honestly it changes the advice a lot. This isn't a "figure out what you want" problem anymore — you basically already know the shape of it (QA/process/detail-oriented work, structured environment, no frontline, no burnout hours). The problem is turning a plan into a sequence of actions you actually stick with.
A few things that tend to actually work for follow-through, as opposed to advice that just adds more planning:
Shrink the first step until it's almost insultingly small. "Figure out my career direction" never gets done because it's not a task, it's a feeling. "Look up 3 job postings for QA Analyst and see what they ask for" is a task. If you notice yourself planning instead of doing, that's usually a sign the next step is still too big and vague.
Pick the target before you feel fully sure — treat it as a hypothesis, not a life sentence. Part of what may be draining your follow-through is treating each pivot like it has to be The One. It doesn't. QA/process roles are just the current best guess based on your actual track record. You can test that hypothesis with low-stakes moves (an internal transfer, one certification, a few informational chats) without needing total conviction first.
Attach new steps to something that already exists in your week, rather than "I'll find time." E.g., since you're already inside a government org, the lowest-friction move is probably internal: is there a QA, process improvement, or compliance-adjacent team you could ask to shadow, or a lateral posting you could apply for, before doing anything that requires new schooling or money?
Notice what happens right before you stall. Is it boredom, doubt creeping in ("is this even right"), or the task feeling too big/unclear? Different fixes for each — but you'll know it a lot faster than I will.
Given the government admin base you're sitting on, would it help to sketch out a concrete, small first move — like what an internal transfer or QA-adjacent step might actually look like from where you are?