A female boss I worked for, pulled an employee retention tactic that still gives me the chills.

She paid dogshit salaries to all her employees. And yelled at them enough to keep them overworked and burnt out.

When one of them tried to resign, she said "fine you can leave us but I won't be giving you any salary slips, no experience/recommendation letter and neither acknowledge that you ever worked here.
You get to leave the company when I decide for you.
You have already stayed here so long that if you decide to disappear tomorrow it will leave a gap on your resume in your next interview."

I never yell at co-workers but I did get yelled at quite a lot of times (2019 - pre covid).

I was leaving the office on time.

Just another reason I support people working from home.

Business logic:

Meeting starts at 9:45 AM. They only really wanna talk about the features they have on the horizon and how innovative and distruptive and rich we'll be. We spend 10, maybe 15 minutes talking about UI and details of the feaure. The meeting ends a few minutes before 12, so that's 2 hours of lunch (I wanna respect the schedules we had pre-covid to keep that rhythm). I start working again at 2 PM, but 15 minutes later, I get called again by one of the managers to hear more about this new great new idea they have.

So I work about 7-9 hours a day. But HR and management want to spend 3 of those hours. Suggestion: we'd improve our productivity by about 35% if we cut those daily meetings.

wow office is full of pessimistic and unhappy people. being a covid graduate i didn't knew the sadistic life of office goers . can some of you pre covid people share instances of a positive ofice environment that made you go to office each day?

Work is still going great, but I'm killing myself with general anxiety about other things...

Covid, laptop is gone for now, phone is acting up, I don't have any backup device, I'm running out of money, need to fix my teeth soon enough, health-wise I'm pre-diabetic and almost obese, (not look-wise, rather weight-wise) as well I will need to check for hormones because I'm growing body hair more than I should and still am losing head hair more than I should, and I should quit smoking.

... but I still love the work I do, so what does life and gods have against me? :|

I have been taking deep breaths more often to just not lose my shit these days. Like, unless I end up in a great situation next, this all is so unfair.

well had a low-grade fever all over my body for like 4 days
finally crashed yesterday it seems and actually got tired. got the sickness brain malaise

sucks

I've been sick 3 times in the last 4 months. this might actually be optimistic. I started seriously trending up with my brain improving after the new year. damned VAIDS

when I was 17 the high school I went to asked for a release form from my mom to give me vaccines. I didn't know anything about them so I got her to fill it out. the nurse asked me which ones I already had and I said I don't know. I guess you can give me all of them. because I didn't know anything about what vaccines were

so I got about 15 vaccine shots in one day. I didn't even get sick the day after or anything. went about my life as normal

but now thinking back in retrospect, suddenly I had developed attention issues / ADHD. I was extremely smart so it didn't do anything to my schoolwork, but it annoyed me especially socially-speaking because I would get bored easily and have trouble paying attention to stuff. still being smart you can guess what you missed easily enough. it just made me feel weird and isolated and that was that

around 19 I started having like, a constant cold/flu. it was driving me nuts. this kept going until I was 21. I was complaining about it to my mom and she didn't know what to do. I went to doctors but they were useless. one guy gave me penicillin which was useless. I figured I was just unlucky, not that doctors are taught wrong on purpose (back then I hadn't yet done my health science degree, I had dropped out of it because of the realization that it was a waste of money since the teachers actually didn't teach you anything. it was sad. so I switched to comp sci because I already knew a lot about computers, thinking it was the school and not the health field -- the comp sci degree actually taught a lot though)

eventually my mom had talked to somebody I guess in the old country, and they suggested I get echinecea. I found a place to buy it and started taking it. my symptoms went away and I was so scared they'd come back I took that pill for 3 months. I only stopped because turns out it made me allergic to my favourite rayon shirt -- like if I touched it I got creepy crawly feels on my skin lmao

... and then I never got a cold or flu again actually, not until COVID at 28 I guess (wow I really have missing gaps in my memory, because it doesn't feel that long ago). I never pieced this together before but I've been analyzing it now. I did get fevers if I was stressed -- like over exercising, or the time I got my wisdom teeth taken out, but I never officially had a cold or flu.

I got the COVID vaccine in late 2021. now it's early 2025. that thing fucked up my life. it's been 4 years. how has it been 4 years? I actually can't remember one of those years at all...

this timeline is pretty similar to the vaccines I got as a kid. my brain started improving this year. it makes me so sad. I used to be 145 IQ. then I couldn't even remember a grocery list of 3 items at the store. I would talk out loud because I couldn't think inside my own head... it was really bad. I'd have lapses in time, turn yellow, my toes are STILL purple. I can't eat most food and even the food I can eat can be sus on me. every moment of existence is a gamble on my health. I can't eat any sugar and I don't know why, I can't eat any flour and no it's not gluten or glyphosate. i cant even eat fruit. I can't even eat canned corn lol. I can't eat anything pre-packaged at the store maybe because they use seed oils. I just live off butter and meat -- and sometimes the meat can be too fatty for me. I can't drink teas I used to drink a lot of. hell I even react badly to like certain ginger spices but not others. like Jesus what the fuck. and every time if I eat the wrong thing minimum 5 hours or at worst 3 days it knocks me out. the amount of rage I have at my life being totalled by this thing cannot be understated.

but I started being able to think about January. I've been exponentially regaining myself since. but I've also gotten bouts of like the worst flus I've ever had, and I had pneumonia as a kid!

I wonder if it's just my immune system coming back. just like what happened at 19-21

I'm too scared to take echinecea. I can't eat onion or garlic because they're immune modulating, and I guess it like asks too much of my body so it knocks me out. I tried an echinecea pill before after this sickness and while I don't remember exactly what happened because of all the brain issues probably, I do remember it was bad. there's a lot of herbs and supplements I can't touch if they are supposed to strengthen your immune system

but maybe now I'm getting sick so much because my body is ready and strong enough