I set this up for my XREAL glasses and have been using it for guided eye movement / training seshes. It’s been useful, so I figured I’d share it here.

There are two 5 or 10-minute routines:

Reset: side-to-side movements, smooth tracking, vertical and diagonal patterns, circles, infinity patterns, then a wide soft gaze.

Wind Down: slower tracking paced with breathing, with the display gradually dimming and warming before finishing with eyes closed.

The structure is informed by research on horizontal eye movements and slow breathing

🧪 Test Bottom Line

• PIN2 post, state v2. Test id pin-mvq9g0pm. Safe to ignore.

📊 Test Market Analysis

Throwaway text for a Reddit thumbnail experiment. Nothing here is real market commentary.

🔔 Live Market Log (Updates)

Newest updates at the top.

• Entry for state v2. Throwaway log line.

Hi all, we're the team building this door. The problem we set out to solve with all-in-one smart coop doors is that one outdoor box has to run the program, move the door, manage the battery, control the timer/light sensor, and stay connected — all usually on solar alone. Cloudy days and short winter days make that tough.

So our setup splits the job. The door control unit mounts on the coop and only opens/closes the door, detects door position and current draw, and sends status over low-power 433/434MHz radio. It runs on solar plus a battery, with Type-C as backup charging. The indoor WiFi gateway stays plugged in on household power, connects to your 2.4GHz WiFi, does the cloud connection, calculates sunrise/sunset times, and shows status on its screen.

Day to day: the door follows your local sunrise/sunset with an adjustable offset, so you can shift open/close times earlier or later. The app shows door status, battery level, and signal strength, and sends notifications when the door finishes a cycle, when the battery gets low (it reports at 10%, 5%, and 2%), or when something goes wrong. The gateway keeps the last 50 open/close log entries, including failures, so you can check whether the door actually completed instead of just trusting a timer.

Some practical details: if the door hits an obstruction while closing it reopens automatically, and pressing the button on the door unit stops it mid-cycle. There's a hidden power switch and manual/auto toggle designed to reduce accidental triggering by raccoons or other animals. The door unit is a flip-type door with an electromagnetic lock, and status lights show green for normal running, red for a fault, blue for pairing.

Setup is straightforward: mount the door unit and solar panel, plug the gateway in indoors on good WiFi, pair them by holding the door unit button for about 2 seconds and pressing the gateway button, then add the device in the app. We'd genuinely like feedback from people who keep chickens in places without outdoor WiFi or mains power at the coop — ask anything, and tell us what you'd want changed.

[ Removed by Reddit on account of violating the content policy. ]

🧪 Test Bottom Line

• CONTROL post, state v2. Test id pin-mvq703dd. Safe to ignore.

📊 Test Market Analysis

Throwaway text for a Reddit thumbnail experiment. Nothing here is real market commentary.

🔔 Live Market Log (Updates)

Newest updates at the top.

• Entry for state v2. Throwaway log line.

🧪 Test Bottom Line

• PIN post, state v1. Test id pin-mvq703dd. Safe to ignore.

📊 Test Market Analysis

Throwaway text for a Reddit thumbnail experiment. Nothing here is real market commentary.

🔔 Live Market Log (Updates)

Newest updates at the top.

• Entry for state v1. Throwaway log line.

This is a test post generated by the Better Sidebar Web Agent.

Days ago, I posted a rant in multiple subreddits. I was furious when I wrote it, and it was written during rush hour traffic using text to speech. I believe that many people went out of their way to tone police rather than engaging with what was actually said. I also had many questions and was venting my overall frustrations, which is common in these unsubs. Like I mentioned previously, that post was LONG, so I think it is very ridiculous and are fighting tooth and nail to stick to a false narrative based off of ONE sentence in that entire post. I have calmed down and I am going to try to explain my perspective more eloquently. 

CONTEXT:

I (25,F, African American) and I have a master’s in accounting and my experience with the job market, particularly in the past two years, has been ***ROUGH***. I was never really passionate about it to begin with (most of my talents, skills, and interests are oriented around the humanities), but my parents (mainly my dad) pressured me to do it so that I would  have a “safe” career to fall back on. I decided to listen to him. My first corporate job was an entry-level role at a large Fortune 500 company, and I quickly realized **1. I hate public accounting and the day to day of most public accounting roles 2. I hate the demand to perform in most corporate spaces. Obviously you have to know how to interact and work with others but we all know that certain personalities are favored in those spaces and some employers are definitely letting office politics supersede competency because they are aware of the leverage they have in the market.**   
After this, I decided to resign and spent several months looking for different accounting roles like fraud examiner, bookkeeper, and junior auditor. I still looked at and accepted different accounting roles in the meantime. I redid my resume dozens of times, I’ve attended multiple career fairs, collected several business cards and LinkedIns, and tried to network through tiktok and instagram comment sections (this is why I said that I did want the generic, recycled, cookie-cutter LinkedIn ass advice like just network, the job market has been rough for millions of people and employers have been pretty brazen about their hostility towards the domestic, fully human worker). I wasn’t able to find anything. I think that the experience/credential inflation is severe and it is exacerbating the problem with entry-level hiring and, subsequently, part of the reason why myself and others may be struggling.   
Anyways, my mom suggested that I go back to school so that I could be productive while I look for other jobs; both of my parents have multiple degrees and love higher education, so I decided to take her advice because I felt like it would give me something to focus on. At the time, I felt that at least I would be more educated and would be earning an additional credential. When I was looking at graduate programs, I was really intrigued by international business since I loved learning about things like logistics, business management, trade, and Hofstede’s dimensions. A lot of people around me (even people I was interviewing with) discouraged me and suggested that I do the M.acc/CPA track; I knew that I more than likely would never take the CPA exam but I figured that the M.acc was still an advanced, specialized degree that could still potentially be useful. In addition, many controllers/accountants I worked for and with were very successful without their CPA. I am really not passionate about working in industries outside of the humanities, but those careers also aren’t taken seriously and the barrier to entry is even higher because of this competitive market. Unfortunately I live in a major city in the US, and we live in a capitalistic society. As a result, I feel forced to look for something I can tolerate so I can have income while I pursue things I actually care about. 

WHAT HAPPENED (WITH EXTRA DETAILS):
I have been working with temp agencies to piece together income while searching for a job. I recently accepted an accounts payable position through a temp agency. The assignment was at a medium-sized, black owned, logistics firm and had two other temp employees.  I have worked with this temp agency before and I was excited because I thought my job search had finally concluded. The hiring manager at the firm and one the managers at the temp agency really liked me and I got hired basically on the spot. Keep in mind that the reason this position was open to begin with is because the previous person was let go after only one day, at the suggestion of the trainer (who was the accounting manager’s daughter AND the only other person with whom the responsibilities of this role are shared).
I was so excited for the role that I was an hour early on my first day (also because I wanted to beat traffic). I was intentional about being pleasant. I made sure to introduce myself and greet as many people as I could.
.I felt like me and the trainer were getting along very well. Outside of laughing about things like how much it hurts to stub an acrylic toenail or basic small talk, most of the conversation was me shadowing her, asking questions, or asking her to repeat things I would need to know about the role (I even took 3 pages of notes). Overall I felt like I was learning quickly, being receptive, and getting along with the trainer very well. During the second half of the day, after spending around 15 minutes in her mom’s office (the hiring manager was there too), she came back out and told me that we needed to switch seats so she could use the computer. I asked her if she was showing me a new responsibility for the role, and she said no and began working on the computer. She started working on a different task and didn't speak to me for the rest of my shift until it was time to leave and we said goodbye and that we would see each other tomorrow. I spent close to an hour just scrolling my phone until then because she hadn’t given me any new instructions.
Around 20 minutes before I was scheduled to leave, the hiring manager (the one that really liked me) called me for a meeting and asked how I felt about the way things are going. She also asked how I felt about the trainer and brought up the idea of having me train with a different person tomorrow. I told her that I felt like me and the trainer were getting along well and that she was doing a good job of explaining the material. I also told her I felt like I had a solid command of the role. On my way home, my temp agent told me to call her. She explained that the trainer told the hiring manager (who liked me) and the accounting manager (her mother) that she felt like we were clashing and suggested that I be let go that day. According to my temp agent, the hiring manager did try to reason with them and suggested that I be allowed to stay at least for a couple of extra days to see if they could troubleshoot any potential issues before making a decision, but the trainer insisted that they end my assignment that day.
I was floored and furious because I went out of my way to be as agreeable as possible and only really spoke to ask questions or to ask her to clarify something, so I honestly felt like that was a miserable and fake thing for her to do. My temp agent asked if I could think of any reason as to why she might be saying this. The only thing that came to mind was a couple of instances where I would use the term “reference number” and she would interject with “PO” (I actually don’t remember exactly which term was used to interrupt because this was a week ago and that itself isn’t relevant, but you will see why I am bringing up this up in the next section). I found it weird and contradictory because she originally said that the terms could be used interchangeably and confirmed that they could a second time when I asked to make sure. There were other things that were discussed; at one point I even asked my temp agent (I have been working with her for months)  if there was something that she noticed about my personality that I wasn’t aware of because I genuinely did not want to be one of these people that’s running around doing something that’s rude with no self-awareness. She didn’t really tell me anything other than the generic “sometimes people don’t like people who appear to be confident/sometimes people can be selective/ not like things about your personality/sometimes it’s just not the vibe” speech. She also mentioned the other temp agency manager involved and the hiring manager already had suspicions that this trainer was being too selective and that they were growing concerned because the previous person in the role was also let go after only one day. Apparently her feedback about that person was similar to the comments I received. The temp agent said she would relay my feedback back to the hiring manager and the other temp manager. The call ended with her saying that we would be in touch soon. 

KEEP IN MIND BEFORE I CONTINUE: 

1. The trainer herself was the one that initially said that the terms “reference number” and “po number” could be used interchangeably and confirmed it a second time when I asked again shortly thereafter.
2. On the invoice, [reference/po number] was in the top right corner of most of the invoices we processed, which to me reinforced what she said about them being interchangeable. On the window we were using in QuickBooks, there were fields for the date, total, invoice number, and memo; she told me that the memo box was for the reference/po number, and to enter that number into that memo box regardless of whether it said reference number, po number, or both, since the terms were interchangeable
3. I DID NOT express any of my thoughts or disagreement out loud. I only catalogued her interrupting when I would use one term with the other (when SHE was the one that said they were interchangeable to begin with) as weird TO MYSELF, and I also did not indicate that I argued with this girl or refused to follow directions anywhere in my original post. 
4. I did NOT say in my original post that this was the reason why I was let go, there was other feedback discussed, I ONLY brought up the whole “reference/po number” thing in my original post because it was the only thing that came to mind when I heard the feedback about us “clashing.” Remember, I had cataloged it as weird in my head earlier that day. 

THE MISUNDERSTANDING, THE TWISTED NARRATIVE, AND THE DOGPILE

As I previously mentioned, my original post was written in rush hour traffic using text-to-speech on an iPhone 13 while I was livid, causing it to be littered with typographical and grammatical errors. It also, obviously, was not well written and I did a poor job of describing my experience and observations. It should be even more obvious that the post has an angry and emotional tone to it because I was indeed angry and emotional about what happened.
Most people that use Reddit have more than likely had an experience where they have tried to vent or be vulnerable and they were met with condescending remarks disguised as advice and were dogpiled and bullied for no reason. The issue I am having is that many users that commented on my previous post were being willfully obtuse as if there isn’t an obvious difference between trying to offer a new perspective and being mean just because you have a hivemind and see other people participating in the usual reddit snark. This app has a strong reputation for being filled with people that respond to people that are asking genuine questions/being sincere with an unrelenting superiority complex, condescension, derision, and patronizing attitudes, often unprovoked.
This was also how I would categorize my experience with my previous post and the responses. The tone WAS harsh. It WAS littered with elementary level spelling and grammar errors. I would have thought that the average person on a website that’s nothing more than a cesspool of yap would have been used to such things, but evidently I was wrong. Not all of the comments were negative, and I would like to express my gratitude to everyone who took the time to offer genuine insight, advice, or just communicate their thoughts and perspectives. However, many of the comments were unnecessary, rude, condescending, racist, or demeaning. Now yes, this is the Internet. It’s mainly bots meant to cause conflict and influence the way people think and other slop. There’s officially more bots than real people generating internet traffic. It’s never been a safe, wonderful, utopia, and I certainly did not expect REDDIT to live up to any of those expectations, not even a little bit. I was well aware before I posted that this was Reddit and I was liable to get comments from people on Reddit who act how people on Reddit are historically known to act.
As I previously mentioned, many of the hate comments received an equal and meaner reaction. I then realized that many of the hate comments were coming at me based on a misunderstanding. The original post got a variety of comments, so I know at least some people got the substance of what I was saying underneath the typos and spelling errors, but I noticed the hate comments were following a similar pattern of accusing me of being unable to take accountability or admit my own faults. I then realized that while my diction did have connotations that could frame it that way, an alarming amount of adults have intellectual egos that are way too high for people with the reading comprehension of a zebra ovary. Either way, I will highlight why I THINK some people might have had a genuine reason to misinterpret what I said: 

• In my original post, when I was discussing the “reference/po” piece, I said “she insisted,” that I use one term. I explained in my post and in comments why I genuinely thought (based on her initial and subsequent confirmation) that they were interchangeable. I also explained that I believed that it did not make a difference because 1. Most of the invoices said “reference/po #:” 2. I was instructed to put whichever number was on the invoice whenever either number was not present (which would mean that they were, indeed, again, INTERCHANGEABLE imo, but hey)
• Even though what actually happened was that sometime after we discussed the terms being interchangeable, she would interject with one term when I used the other (which, again, I mentally catalogued as weird, but not verbalize or use non-verbal language to disagree), I quickly realized that the aforementioned Zebra Ovary Zealots had somehow created an entirely different retelling of what was actually said. 

Because this is Reddit, it was not long before the people who would wrestle an alligator while nude in front of their entire bloodline if it meant that they got to feel intellectually superior to someone for even 9 milliseconds arrived and this simple misunderstanding somehow metastasized into a wildly stupid story. Somehow, the story became that I ignored verbal instructions for a process that was super important to the company, argued with the trainer about why I shouldn’t have to follow directions, and that I refused to take accountability because I have personality disorder and lack self-awareness. I do refuse to acknowledge it- because it is NOWHERE CLOSE to what I said happened. All I effectively said was that she “insisted,” I use one term, which was an exaggeration at best; nowhere in my original post did I even IMPLY that said anything back to her. However, once a couple of people with poor reading comprehension decided that their version of events was now canon, so did every other miserable person with an ego to feed and an inability to read for themselves. 

RACE, RACIAL DISCRIMINATION IN HIRING, AND WHY I BROUGHT IT UP IN MY ORIGINAL POST

One prominent reason behind the racist abuse, hate comments, or general critiques arose because I mentioned race (famously butchering a sentence where I described myself as “WON” on the 700,000 black women, a typo which, according to some people, is also proof enough that everything was actually my fault and I was actually a horrible person who couldn’t take accountability). NOW: The ONLY thing I mentioned as far as race was that I was African-American and the butchered sentence about being “won” of the 700,000 black women. I did NOT say that every single negative problem I have ever had in recorded history was a direct result of my race. I know that this may shock some racists, but ***acknowledging a racial attribute by bringing it up in a conversation and directly attributing negative events that occur in my life to racism are NOT THE SAME THING*** (no matter how much you would like them to be so that you can have an excuse to dismiss my concerns).However, because a very real, documented occurrence (that I did not even examine in depth in my first post) was met with so much ignorance and hatred, and because I love making racists angry (and discussing real issues), I am delighted to announce that right here, right now, I am going to ACTUALLY make it about race🥳!   
I am still going not to be discussing this in depth, because this is the Internet and I think that the average adult (especially people that have an intellectual God complex) should know how to search for credible sources and peer reviewed articles and journals, BUT what I will say that I would not have brought race up during a discussion about employment if it was not relevant, we would not have had events such as Jim Crow, The Great Migration, Title VII laws, agencies like the EEOC, or a very public class lawsuit in which Workday is being sued for disparate impacts due to applicants being automatically rejected by ATS because of their race. It’s relevant regardless of whether or not you choose to acknowledge it as such.   
Just because I bring up race and the fact that hiring discrimination is **1.** Real **2.** Still an ongoing issue that affects people in the present day **3**. Something that has gotten worse as a direct result of our current administration DOES NOT mean that I am saying that race is the reason I can’t get a job. Moreover, just because I bring up anti-blackness in hiring DOES NOT mean that I am saying that black people are the only group having a tough time in this market. My original point, which I maintain, is that while the job market is tough for every race, gender, and age group, certain groups are being disproportionately affected; those groups are currently women, minorities, and Gen Z.  

Fun fact: Everyone involved in the story about the trainer was black like myself, for all the bigots that accused me of playing the race card.. She was also close to my age for my age mates that tried to gaslight too😊

RACE PT. II
The main reason I chose to re-visit and add depth to the racial aspect of this discussion is because I could not help but notice the difference in responses between my post and other disgruntled job seekers. As other black redditors noted in the replies of my previous post, the only thing that was fundamentally different from complaints in these career-oriented subreddits is that I explicitly brought up my race.
Now that those distinctions have been made, I have no choice but to draw attention to how many people (who I assume were not black given the racially charged remarks and microaggressions) rushed to frame a story that categorically matches the broader discussions around things like ghost jobs, credential inflation, experience inflation, layoffs, offshoring, corporate hierarchy, and employer’s ridiculous demands and expectations was overwhelmingly framed as a character flaw, a behavior issue, or a personal failure, when the only thing that materially separates my complaints about the job market from theirs was the mention of race. The contrast was so stark that multiple people commented that I should have either left my race out or posted in an afro-centric subreddit (note: when I commented responding to black job-seekers looking for subreddits that would be safe for black redditors, a racist took upon themselves to tell me to check my local prison, but let the trolls tell it, I’M the problem for not reacting to that blatant racism kindly and my negative reaction to literal RACIST ABUSE is automatic proof that I was the problem in my original story all along).
The difference in responses got me thinking about the bigger picture. On one hand, it’s the Internet, where regardless of what you or say or how much sincerity with which it is said, there is always a non-zero chance of getting flamed by hundreds of people, sometimes for unfair reasons. On the other hand, I could not help but pay attention to the obvious difference in the volume of hate comments on my post versus others in these career subreddits. It is no secret that a considerable about of people that voted (many with the intention of making life harder for groups of people they don’t like) for this administration are now the same ones loudly expressing their disdain towards being negatively affected by the ongoing going degradation of our societal safety nets, resources, global influence, and economy. A large number of people have responded to this outcry with reminders that many of these people dismissed, mocked, or exacerbated the issues whenever they were raised by various members of marginalized communities.
There is a continuous history labor and employment being used as a tool of discrimination and oppression, with notable groups and events including: 

• The Irish and Italians 
• Child labor 
• Slavery 
• Jim Crow/Great Migration 
• The Suffrage Movement/Women’s Rights

• Company towns/ company scrips

  Given that we have this well documented history, hiring data, and the arrogance of modern day employers on full display, the unrelenting gaslighting was jarring. The feeling left me reminiscent of the black truckers who came out a couple weeks ago and gladly boasted that they not would be striking with the (mostly white) truckers who lamented the negative impacts of the oil crisis on the prices of diesel; their boastful response was also accompanied with reminders that many of the white truckers raced to vote for the very circumstances that they were currently criticizing. The sentiments are also the undertone of the new saying “you can own your farm or you can own the libs, but you cannot own both.” This saying emerged from TikTok and is a concise response to the farmers who, again, were complaining about circumstances that they themselves played an active role in creating. I feel like both of these recent events provide a perfect reference to my own growing indifference; I cannot help but become increasingly unsympathetic as a direct result of witnessing how so many people unabashedly let their racial bias decide that my experience, which was similar to many others in these subreddits, was a personal failure for me alone and economic downturn for everyone else.

THE QUESTION IN MY OP  ABOUT GEN Z 

**DISCLAIMER: I know that young people aren’t the only age group negatively affected by the job market. I don’t care😊, I am talking about Gen Z since the unemployment crisis is negatively affecting us, recent graduates, and early-career professionals at disproportionate rates. Employers themselves were boasting about not hiring Gen Z. Please be serious. The gaslighting from other people my age and millenials is some BS served hot and fresh, too. You should know better, seriously. Most of you have been through some of these same difficulties so the switch-up is crazy. That irritated me more than boomers and gen-x gaslighting tbh.**

In my original post, I outlined three specific questions about the future of Generation Z (my own generation, obviously), the future of the job market with AI, and the future over all. Once again, despite multiple sources of hiring data reflecting that there is a distinct, **GLOBAL,** youth unemployment crisis affecting Gen Z, I was met with denials of this documented reality. I do not think I need to spend too much time belaboring this point, especially since we are now seeing civil unrest and protests headlined by young people in response to the affordability crisis and lack of economic opportunities.   
In my original post, I wanted to start a dialogue about the prolonged dismissal of these concerns could trickle upward, with some examples including:

• Exacerbating the decline in birth rates (not that this is a bad thing): The main people complaining about this are often the same people who vote for policies that take economic opportunities away from young people, causing them to delay having children (because they did tell us to stop having kids we couldn’t afford)

• Causing people to delay retirement: Many Gen X’ers are starting to have to reckon with the fact that they will possibly have to support their adult children for longer than they intended, which could potentially delay their plans for retirement. In addition many of them are behind in their careers because of the volume of boomers that won’t retire. However, many boomers now can’t retire and are now coming out of retirement because of the affordability crisis. 

  These trends, combined with employers themselves admitting that they are avoiding hiring recent graduates and young people further aggravate the unique impact this is having on our age group, which is putting us even more behind economically. The gaslighting attempts from my own age mates reminded me of the iced coffee debate that took place weeks ago. As I’m sure you could anticipate, what stood out to me was the amount of people being willfully obtuse as to why people were calling out the recruiter, and the amount of millennials and Gen Z that came out to bootlick in her favor. To my age mates and millennials: bootlicking is no longer enough to substantially put you further ahead of your contemporaries the way you think it will.
  I also wanted to know what companies plan to do in the next 3-5 when the consequences of eliminating entry level roles arrive. By 2030 many companies are likely to discover that none of their employees have institutional knowledge, or that there is a shortage of middle managers. If this crisis continues, their applicant pool is very well likely to be people in their mid twenties and thirties with no real entry-level experience. How do you prepare those people for middle management positions that need to be filled urgently? The answer is training, but apparently that’s a curse word for employers in 2026, so moving on. 

THE QUESTION IN MY OP ABOUT AI’S ROLE IN THIS

I posed this question in my previous post, and a lot of people answered honestly and there were some good conversations. Some trolls chose to focus on the fact that I messed up and wrote “chat-bought” instead of chat bot. Either way, here are my questions about AI and the job market. I am posting them again here for anyone else who wants to discuss. I am very skeptical about the idea that AI is going to replace a large part of the workforce. I think that the capabilities of artificial intelligence are being grossly overstated in order to appease shareholders.
What would employers realistically do when they have to interact with the workforce again? They have been haphazard and open with their contempt for human workers, so much so that they would rather have an AI scan resumes if it means that it will reduce the amount of humans they are forced to interact with. Many companies that have attempted to reduce headcount with AI have had to rehire the humans they tried to replace. Many hiring managers and recruiters have been frustrated at the lack of qualified applicants only to discover that a trivial feature in their AI powered ATS system was screening out excellent candidates.
I think that if AI was as capable as the tech bros want everyone to believe, they would not need to integrate it into everything in order to force us to use it. Most businesses that have adopted this technology have reported that it either didn’t impact their productivity or made their operations more difficult. The tech bros can’t even figure out a way to make their technology profitable other than circular financing and subscriptions (which aren’t generating enough earnings btw) and these companies are constantly losing revenue. They can’t justify their ridiculous IPO targets either. Even if the technology reaches the ability to replace the workforce, most consumers express negative attitudes towards interacting with AI agents instead of humans. AI media and content is often disparaged as slop and the backlash against data centers has been rampant.
AI cannot buy products or pay taxes. Some of you might be inclined to imagine a world in which the wealthy sustain society by themselves while ignoring the existence of working class people entirely. A lot of people have also not considered the idea that wealthy people are not going to buy every single product, good, or service available just because they have the income to do so. Even billionaires don’t want to pay $7.99 for a bag of Doritos, and even if they do have so much money that inflation is a negligible concern, they probably won’t buy billions of bags of Doritos. In many cases, artificial intelligence is just the EXCUSE for layoffs, not the reason. Most of the positions are just offshored or reassigned amongst the smaller team. Conclusively, I think that this talk about AI replacing most of the workforce is malarky. Tomfoolery. BS. Bologna. A hoax. A scam. A figment of your imagination, even.

THE QUESTION IN MY OP ABOUT THE OVERALL FUTURE OF THE EMPLOYER/EMPLOYEE RELATIONSHIP

This question in my original post was originally meant to open up a discussion about what the future of the employee/employer relationships will look like. Hiring practices have become cruel, humiliating, abusive, and inconsiderate. They have gone out of their way to display their indifference and disgust towards the workforce. However, because I am an optimist, and I 100% believe that the pendulum will swing back, I wonder how employers plan to respond now that they have completely destroyed “the social contract.” Some propose that most job seekers will be so desperate that they will rush back to these salary reset jobs and things will continue to deteriorate. Some (like myself) believe that you cannot hollow out the workforce and continue to have successful business operations forever. You can’t continually siphon money from the working class if they don’t have any money for you to steal. Some of you may believe that this has been the plan all along and they want us to lose everything so we can go to prison (because homelessness is criminalized and they are cracking down on student loan debt) so that we can be forced to produce goods and services for free. I just feel like this fake labor shortage employers are crying about is going to soon turn into a real labor shortage as a result of their recklessness. But who knows? Let’s talk about it!

NEURODIVERSITY AND JOB SEARCHING

DISCLAIMER: I talk about neurodiversity, race, and gender. Yes, I know that they are not mutually exclusive. Yes, I know how intersectionality works, and anyone who claims they do should understand where I am coming from.

    This section serves to address multiple comments and alerts I received regarding mental health from specific groups of commenters. I have never been diagnosed as neurodivergent, although I have discussed possibilities with people close to me, and the possibility has been brought to my attention before. It is general knowledge that mental health is heavily stigmatized by society, and most communities of color and black communities are even more fervent about ignoring all discussions around mental health, neglecting the mental health of their family members, and ostracizing the mentally ill. During my formative years, this was my experience. 

To the people who think neurodiversity might have played a role: 

I have not completely ruled out the possibility that I might be neurodivergent, I just had not gotten around to seeing a qualified professional. I asked some of the commenters why they felt like this might be a factor in my experience, and found many of the responses to be unsatisfactory. Most of the answers were vague, and, with the exception of one explanation from someone claiming to be a psychologist, amounted to little more than “you described a misunderstanding and neurodivergent people tend to miss social cues that neurotypical people might understand.” When I tried to ask for more clarification beyond communication differences or feelings of receiving disdain for unknown reasons, my hesitation was (you guessed it) used against me. My reluctance to accept this diagnosis from strangers online based off of one post became evidence that I was angry, uncombative, and unreceptive.
Like I said, I have discussed this possibility with a friend, who is also a black woman. During that conversation, I posed the possibility that perhaps we weren’t neurodivergent, but resonated with their experiences due to sitting at the intersection of misogyny and racism. Because (as demonstrated in the responses to my previous post) these issues are not taken seriously, black women who try to bring attention to how misogynoir affects the way people interact with us are frequently dismissed. I have resonated with having my words and actions intentionally mischaracterized, being suddenly ostracised for issues that weren’t previously communicated, and feeling like people automatically don’t like me and try to sabotage me for reasons they won’t articulate, are all experiences to which marginalized people can relate. Neurotypical people relate to these experiences. In addition, chronic ptsd and other mental health conditions can resemble neurodiversity.
I was particularly furious when my concern was twisted into another reason to mock my mental health and mischaracterize me. My aversion to these labels was actually out of respect for the community, not a rejection of them. I have noticed that the way people discuss neurodiversity online can sometimes resemble that of pop psychologists or the random “specialists” who can’t produce proof of completion of any sort of clinical training. I understand that some of you have real concerns, and I would like to thank you for your patience and willingness to talk to me about it. However, I want the way the topic is discussed to be handled seriously in order to prevent a misdiagnosis or make people think that general knowledge about a condition gives them the expertise to diagnose people.
I have seen various neurodivergent people discussing how they have to navigate life. I see the discussions about whether job interviews and personality assessments are meant to weed out neurodivergent people. I understand that neurodiversity impacts their experiences with the job market, in some cases so much so that certain fields are recommended for them over others just so their lives can be easier. By the time you are reading this, I will have already reached out to a professional (because I need to get answers before my insurance runs out, not because I am letting strangers diagnose me). 

RISING DISCRIMINATION AGAINST THE UNEMPLOYED AND POTENTIAL IMPLICATIONS: 

This section is going to be the shortest because it just popped in my head as I’m finishing this novel, and truthfully most of what I am referencing in this part is based on discourse I have seen online. Now, discrimination against unemployed people is not new. Employers have been shaking, moaning, and crying about gaps in resumes since the beginning of time. People even lament how they’ve noticed a change in how their friends, loved ones, and others interact with them after learning that they are unemployed. There is a stigma around unemployment
I’ve seen recruiters discuss how seeing the “open to work” icon on a LinkedIn profile can be deemed as a red flag. I’ve also seen people discussing job descriptions (keep in mind it could have been fake, these are just things I saw while doomscrolling) that candidly discourage unemployed applicants from applying. My next question is obvious: more and more people are becoming long-term unemployed. The true unemployment rate is around 24%. What does this mean for the applicant pools of recruiters that prefer employed applicants? That pool is growing smaller by the day. Also, why is their preferred applicant pool the people who have the least flexibility and time to go to the interview and hiring process smoothly?

CONCLUSION

As previously stated, in order to navigate everything going on, I have decided to go back
to go back to school for a short healthcare program (I was actually a nursing major before I switched to accounting, but I’m not doing nursing this time). I have been thinking about this for close to a year now. Like I said, almost all of my talents and interests revolve around the humanities, and at this point I am just trying to change careers as quickly and effectively as possible; an associates in an in-demand field just seems like the most logical thing to do while I have the time, money, and ability. I was dumbfounded that some people took issue with this and used it as a reason to tear me down. I don’t like the politics, performance, strange hidden hierarchies, and fake urgency of corporate. I’m done participating in it.
I don’t think that sitting in an ergonomic chair is a privilege so divine that my entire livelihood should depend on it. Obviously I still have to deal with other people. Obviously there’s no career that’s guaranteed to be sunshine and rainbows all of the time. However, I have been so miserable trying to even enter the field and I’ve had so many bad experiences that I am fed up with accounting and other corporate fields. There is no reason basic white collar jobs should be gatekept to this extent. I am 25. Soon I won’t have healthcare. I feel like my window of time to get my life together and change careers without it being devastating or financially impossible is shrinking rapidly. People change careers all the time at different ages.
I know that many of the people who reacted negatively to my previous post have made up their mind, and no amount of reasoning, sincerity, or clarifying details will move them. This post is for people that have the patience to read my little dissertation. Once again, to everyone who was actually trying to offer advice, reassurance, and encouraging words, thank you. Like I said, I did not write this simply to lament that people were being mean and racist to me on the Internet. Now that I have had time to calm down and some of my emotions have subsided, I wanted to clarify some details and articulate myself more eloquently. I understand that the job market has been difficult for everyone regardless of race, age, or background. I want to have a discussion about the long list of potential factors at play and most likely outcome for the future. Thank you again to those that took the time to read my dossier. Let me know if you think I should post the original draft somewhere else.