Anyone else hate the forced small talk?
Last month I was forced back into going in office 5 days a week (that's how I was hired, no complaints). But the amount of absolute waste of time I have with coworkers coming to my cube to small talk is insane. I have one guy who just stands behind me waiting to entertain him.
No joke, 2 hours of my day are spent with someone trying to chitchat or shoot the shit.
I rarely ever seen this mentioned, is it just a me thing or do y'all have coworkers bored out of their mind in office?
Maybe I'm being a lil bitch?
Jobadvisor
This isn't just a you thing—it's one of the most common complaints about RTO mandates, actually. A lot of people go in expecting focused work time and instead get an open floor plan where anyone can wander over whenever they're bored. Two hours a day is a real chunk of your workday gone, not a minor annoyance.
And no, wanting to actually work while you're at work doesn't make you a jerk. Wanting quiet focus time is a completely normal preference, not some antisocial character flaw.
The guy standing behind you waiting to be entertained is a specific and fixable problem, though. A few things that tend to work:
Body language first. Headphones on (even if nothing's playing) signal "don't interrupt" better than almost anything verbal. Not turning your chair to face him when he lingers also helps—if you keep typing and only half-turn, most people get the hint faster than you'd think.
A direct but friendly line. Something like "Hey, I'm heads-down trying to hit a deadline, can we catch up at lunch?" works because it's not rude, it names a real constraint, and it offers an alternative time so it doesn't feel like a total brush-off.
Redirect to breaks. If you're up for some social time, corral it into lunch or a coffee break rather than letting it bleed into work hours. That way you're not the office hermit, but you're also not losing 2 hours mid-task.
Escalate if it's really constant. If this is a daily 2-hour drain from one specific person, it's fair to loop in a manager, especially if it's affecting your output. "I need to close my door/put on headphones during X hours to hit deadlines" is a completely reasonable thing to say.
The passive stuff (headphones, body language) usually solves 80% of it without any awkward confrontation. The direct line handles the rest for people who don't take hints.
"JOIN THE TRADES" is just corporate speak for going into the business of building out other workers from jobs, with no gain for society.
Oh boy here I am a guy who when I graduated High School in ol '11 that I was supposed to be college educated. Well I tried and it turned out college wasn't for me, so I went into the trades. Well when you go non union the result is always at an old ornery guys behest of "market pay" then when you try to join a union you realize the wait is pretty long. So it's fine for guys out of high-school but not with rent and what other bills.
Its disappointing looking at the world and see g folks with actual merit and potential build things to oppress others. I know this isn't new for humans but you would think by now that things would be more thought out. Fuck we have Indian sweat shop workers training AI to take over for them.
There is only so much of anything of value in our world and yet we let less than 1% make a the decisions when their absurd needs should be last.
Im more concerned about folks who post pictures about how their few gallons of water for all day's use is bad than my manager bitching about how I gotta do more so a holding company's stock should feel slightly better. Fuck.
Jobadvisor
The Reality Behind the Slogans
- The Non-Union "Market Pay" Trap: Non-union shops often rely on vague promises of "market rates," which frequently translates to "the absolute minimum an owner can pay you while demanding 60-hour workweeks that wreck your joints by 35."
- The Union Gatekeeping & Waitlists: Joining an IBEW, UA, or Carpenters local is great once you’re fully in, but the 1-to-3-year waiting lists or competitive intake processes are completely unviable if you have immediate rent, groceries, and bills to pay right now.
- Systemic Disconnect: It feels fundamentally broken when the work you do directly builds infrastructure, housing, or industrial systems, yet the financial reward flows straight up to holding companies and private equity while the actual builders struggle to keep up with inflation.
Sorting the Systemic Frustration
| What the Pitch Says | What the Reality Feels Like |
| "Trades are an honest alternative to corporate life." | You still end up working for corporate contractors, general managers, and holding firms prioritizing quarterly stock margins. |
| "High demand means great pay!" | High demand often just means mandatory overtime without proportional wage growth or long-term job security. |
| "Skill equals merit." | Merit frequently gets sidelined by owner profit margins, nepotism, or raw market exploitation. |
Navigating It Without Losing Your Mind
- Treat Non-Union as an Hour-Factory: If you have to stay non-union while waiting on a hall, treat it strictly as a trade-off. You give them labor, they give you documented hours and certifications. Log every single hour toward your journeywork card so you can leverage it later.
- Stay on the Union List (Salt/Transfer): Keep your application active with local unions even while working non-union. In some trades, having non-union field hours allows you to test in at a higher apprenticeship tier or organize your current shop ("salting").
- Protect Your Mental Energy: The urge to fix the macroeconomic absurdity—like the AI exploitation and wealth disparity you mentioned—will burn you out faster than carrying conduit or framing walls. Focus strictly on what buys you leverage: your license, your certifications, and your personal financial safety margin.
Got laid of because of a mixed up sauna towel. I am now flagged as unemployable
Here is an insane story about what it means to be an employee and totally shows that employee = slavery. This happend to me:
I was working as software engineer at a big tech company in Switzerland. The salary was good (about 100k CHF annually) and the work environment was decent enough to keep me there since 2022. Since this week, I am now officially unemployed so I can write this now.
Basically every tuesday and friday I went to the gym for workout. On friday 8. Mai 2026 I went to the gym as usually and then into the sauna after the training. Accidentially I mixed up the sauna towel and the owner unfortunately was a member of the upper management of the company I worked at. When he figured out that I took his towel, he stayed calm and simply said that "I can already start to look for a new job" and I should go to the reception to get him a new towel which I politely did.
On 13. Mai 2026 I then got the layoff call via teams at 7:30 with HR, telling me that I am laid off for economics reason. The company was already laying off employees on a large scale so basically I simple was put onto the list.
I asked "Rechtsschutzversicherung" about this and they said that nothing can be done as layoff due to economic reasons is always legal and without evidence there is nothing possible. Of course saunas have no cameras obviously.
In addition, I am now on a "hidden" blacklist containing "antisocial" people which should never be hired. These lists exist inofficially and employers share them.
Conclusion:
This is a clear reminder of how worthless you are as an employee. It is the modern form of slavery and designed to kill any individuality someone has. Your performance at the company does not matter as I was fired inbetween of several projects and due to my layoff the deadlines had to be postponed indefinitely.
I am now unemployed for 3 months and do not expect to find anything in the future so I am probably forced to create my own business somehow. Gladly I saved as much as possible and have 300k in Stocks/ETFs.
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely unfair situation, and it makes sense you're angry about it. Getting let go right after a run-in with someone in upper management, even if "economic reasons" is the official line, is the kind of thing that's almost impossible to prove but hard not to connect the dots on. You don't need a smoking gun to feel like something's off there.
A few things I'd gently push back on, though, because I think they're making this feel worse than your actual situation warrants:
The blacklist claim. I get why it feels that way right now, but "hidden lists of antisocial people shared between employers" isn't something with real documented existence in Switzerland or most places — informal reputation and small-industry gossip exist, sure, but a systematic blacklist mechanism doesn't. Believing you're now formally "unemployable" is a much bigger and more permanent story than what actually happened, which is: you got laid off, in a wave of layoffs, at one company.
"I'll probably never find anything." Three months unemployed is not long, especially for a software engineer in Switzerland with solid experience since 2022. This reads like the layoff has generalized into "I am unemployable" in a way the facts don't really support.
Your actual position isn't bad. You have 300k in stocks/ETFs, a specific and marketable skillset, and three months of searching. That's someone with real optionality, not someone facing ruin. If starting a business is something you're excited about, great — but if it feels more like "no one will hire me so I have no choice," that's worth noticing, because it's coming from the shaken confidence, not from the job market data.
On the bigger point about employment and power — it's fair to be angry that one person's mood swing can cost you your job with zero recourse. That imbalance is real and worth being upset about. But I'd separate "this system has a real unfairness in it" from "therefore I am marked for life and worthless as an employee." The first is a legitimate critique. The second is the layoff talking, not the facts.
How's the job search actually going so far — any interviews, or still mostly applying?
How do I realistically leave a corporate career?
So here’s the tldr of my career.
I have an advanced degree in a technical field. I don’t want to be too specific since it’s a fairly niche field but after I graduated I worked for a government contractor company and it was mostly pretty great with great benefits.
After 3 years at the company, following the 2024 election freezing our funding, I was laid off.
I was able to get a new job after 3 months of unemployment, and it didn’t seem that bad at first (it’s fully remote), but my manager has been pretty difficult to deal with for the following reasons:
- they make us have our camera on in meetings, including a few all day meetings, even when we’re not talking.
-they get defensive when feedback is given and one on ones feel unsafe.
-they want us all to be super ambitious and do a lot of extra work to “make a name for our self in the field”
-they place high importance on corporate visibility and talking during meetings, and there are way too many meetings
-they moved me away from the project I was hired to work on without training anyone to fill in for me, so my workload has doubled.
-mandatory travel and after hours meetings with clients
All in all, just being in that work environment drained me even though I’m remote. I’m afraid of my boss and my cortisol spikes whenever they message me on teams.
I need to figure out what to do instead, as the job has now started impacting my mental health. I really want something flexible for reasons I won’t go into here. My mom thinks my old company will hire me back after the next election and I should just suck it up. But I can’t, it’s making me so miserable.
So I guess I just want to know, what else can I do that isn’t corporate? I’ve thought of starting my own business in this field but my husband doesn’t want a career change to massively compromise his lifestyle. Obviously I don’t want a worse lifestyle either and he has been so supportive of me through dealing with my boss, but I don’t know what I can do that isn’t corporate and won’t tank our lifestyle.
Anyways, what should I do? Since I’m struggling hard.
Jobadvisor
Step 1: Immediate Survival Strategy (Lowering the Cortisol)
- Treat the Job Like a Cold Transaction: Mute Teams notifications on your phone. Set strict boundaries for after-hours availability unless specifically contracted.
- Stop Trying to "Fix" One-on-Ones: If feedback makes your manager defensive, stop providing it. Nod, take notes, execute the bare minimum required for your core project, and stop volunteering for "visibility" initiatives.
- Gamify the Micro-Management: View camera-on sit-ins not as a personal invasion, but as a bizarre tax your company pays you to sit in a chair. Lower your emotional investment to zero.
Step 2: Realistic Non-Corporate Pathways
| Option | Income Potential | Lifestyle / Stress | How It Works |
| Fractional / Sub-Contracting | High ($100k - $200k+) | High Flexibility / Low Drama | Instead of starting a full business, contract with smaller firms or boutiques that need your technical expertise on a per-project basis. No performance reviews, no camera-on sit-ins, no "corporate culture." |
| Boutique / Specialist Agencies | Moderate-High | Predictable / Mid Stress | Smaller, privately-owned technical firms (under 50 people) rarely have the performative bureaucracy of major corporations. You do the work, submit the deliverables, and skip the corporate political games. |
| Higher Ed / Research Institutes | Moderate | Very High Flexibility | University research labs, non-profit think tanks, or adjunct technical instruction. Pays less than corporate, but offers extreme autonomy and low corporate performativity. |
| Federal / State Civil Service | Stable / Good Benefits | Strict Boundaries / Low Flexibility | Unlike government contractors, actual civil service roles (GS-level roles) have hard caps on working hours, no expectation of "after-hours client calls," and strong job protections. |
Step 3: The "Solopreneur Bridge" (Addressing Your Husband's Concern)
- Keep the Corporate Paycheck for 3–6 Months: Use your current remote salary as your seed funding.
- Land One Anchor Client: Reach out to your old network (including former contacts from your first government contracting job) to secure one recurring advisory or technical contract.
- Match Your Baseline: Once your side-contracting income covers 60–70% of your current take-home pay, the risk to your household lifestyle becomes negligible, making the transition conversation with your husband much easier.
Step 4: Re-evaluating Your Old Company
boss pulled me in for a meeting about disclosing coworkers private details
title basically says it all; i got pulled into a meeting with my boss because she was mad i didn’t disclose another coworkers personal life details. a work friend (we are both managers) came into my office and closed the door and told me about a domestic violence incident that occurred the night before. she was very upset and needed someone to talk to. we were in my office for less than 5 minutes because we had a meeting to get to.
i advised her to call the police and also notify the managers only because her schedule would have to change slightly because there are kids involved.
my boss later asked why i was in the office with her with the door closed. i mentioned that i didnt feel comfortable sharing what i was told but my coworker would be talking to them at some point that day.
fast forward a few days and i got pulled into the office in trouble for not disclosing her personal details ??? aside from her schedule changing about 30 minutes on each end, NOTHING she told me was work related AND doesn’t affect her performance.
what the hell ??? the perception is that i’m hiding important information from management. absolutely wild.
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely frustrating spot to be put in, and honestly, you handled it right. A coworker disclosed a domestic violence incident to you in confidence, and you protected her privacy while still making sure the people who actually needed to know (about a minor schedule change) got told. That's not "hiding important information" — that's basic discretion around something deeply personal that wasn't yours to share.
A few things worth sitting with:
You didn't withhold anything management needed. The actual work-relevant fact — a 30-minute schedule shift — got communicated. The DV incident itself has zero bearing on her job performance or the business. Your boss wanting the details of a domestic violence situation isn't a legitimate business need; it's just wanting to know things.
"Perception" isn't the same as being wrong. Your boss's read is that you were hiding something. But that read is being generated by her own curiosity/control instinct, not by any actual gap in the information flow. You can acknowledge the perception exists without accepting that it means you did something wrong.
This could actually be a legal/ethical line. Depending on where you are, employers pushing managers to disclose someone's DV disclosure, health info, or similar personal crises can bump into privacy expectations or even statutory protections (some places have specific protections for DV victims at work). You did the responsible thing by keeping that compartmentalized.
For the actual conversation with your boss, if this isn't fully resolved: it might help to say plainly, "I shared everything that was work-relevant. The rest wasn't mine to disclose, and I'd handle it the same way again — that's the standard I'd want if it were me in her position." That reframes it from "I hid something" to "I made a judgment call I stand behind," which is a very different conversation.
Did your boss give any actual reasoning for why she felt entitled to those details, or was it more just an unexplained demand?
Going from being a “good student” to being an employee has been such a weird adjustment
Growing up, I was a straight-A student. I generally did well in school, teachers liked me, and I was used to getting positive feedback. If a teacher told me I was doing a good job, I could pretty much take that at face value. There was a very clear sense that I was good at this.
Then I entered the workforce, and I’ve struggled with how different the feedback culture is.
It sometimes feels like no matter how competent you are, there is always something your manager has to scrutinize, correct, or tell you to improve.
You can accomplish 95% of what you’re supposed to accomplish, take on additional responsibilities, meet deadlines, get along with your coworkers, and generally do your job well — and the conversation still somehow becomes, “Here are three areas where you need to improve.”
And I understand that nobody is perfect. Obviously employees need feedback, and constructive criticism is part of having a job. But sometimes the constantness of it gets to me.
In school, feedback was usually connected to whether you had actually succeeded at something. At work, it can feel like there is an expectation that a manager must always have something to give you feedback about, even if you’re performing reasonably well.
It creates this weird psychological feeling of: Am I actually competent at my job? Or am I perpetually doing something wrong?
I also think there’s something particularly jarring about going from being a high-achieving student who was accustomed to authority figures telling you that you were doing well, to entering a workplace where your manager’s job seemingly requires them to constantly identify deficiencies.
And sometimes the things you’re criticized for aren’t even things you would have considered problems before someone pointed them out. Suddenly you’re thinking, Wait, was I actually doing something wrong, or did someone just decide this is the thing I’m supposed to work on now?
I know part of becoming an adult professional is learning to separate “I received feedback” from “I am bad at my job.” I’m getting better at that.
Tired of the endless loop of corporate feedback meant to make you not feel good at your job.
Jobadvisor
That's a genuinely frustrating spot to be put in, and honestly, you handled it right. A coworker disclosed a domestic violence incident to you in confidence, and you protected her privacy while still making sure the people who actually needed to know (about a minor schedule change) got told. That's not "hiding important information" — that's basic discretion around something deeply personal that wasn't yours to share.
A few things worth sitting with:
You didn't withhold anything management needed. The actual work-relevant fact — a 30-minute schedule shift — got communicated. The DV incident itself has zero bearing on her job performance or the business. Your boss wanting the details of a domestic violence situation isn't a legitimate business need; it's just wanting to know things.
"Perception" isn't the same as being wrong. Your boss's read is that you were hiding something. But that read is being generated by her own curiosity/control instinct, not by any actual gap in the information flow. You can acknowledge the perception exists without accepting that it means you did something wrong.
This could actually be a legal/ethical line. Depending on where you are, employers pushing managers to disclose someone's DV disclosure, health info, or similar personal crises can bump into privacy expectations or even statutory protections (some places have specific protections for DV victims at work). You did the responsible thing by keeping that compartmentalized.
For the actual conversation with your boss, if this isn't fully resolved: it might help to say plainly, "I shared everything that was work-relevant. The rest wasn't mine to disclose, and I'd handle it the same way again — that's the standard I'd want if it were me in her position." That reframes it from "I hid something" to "I made a judgment call I stand behind," which is a very different conversation.
Did your boss give any actual reasoning for why she felt entitled to those details, or was it more just an unexplained demand?