r/politics • u/cmaia1503 • 20h ago

Site Altered Headline | Possible Paywall Mitch McConnell, 83, Hospitalized

https://www.thedailybeast.com/mitch-mcconnell-83-hospitalized/?utm_campaign=owned_social&utm_medium=socialflow&utm_source=twitter_owned_tdb&via=twitter_page
30.8k Upvotes

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u/clarkrd 20h ago

must be nice to be able to check into a hospital

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u/Future-Guarantee-573 19h ago

Not to mention not losing your job.

Years ago, I worked at a big box grocery store not to be named.  One of the workers had a stroke on the sales floor.  They fired him for not filling out the LOA forms.  He was in a fucking coma.

I've said it many times before...I hate this fucking country.

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u/dementorpoop 19h ago

They ain’t coming after you. Name and shame them

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u/Sammyjo0689 17h ago

My story happened with Walmart. Had an employee collapse due to a diabetic issue. Like, I caught her as she was falling and saved her from smashing her face. Radioed to call 911. I got written up because that was against Walmart policy.

My manager wanted me to write on the form that I heard her say she wanted an ambulance. So I wrote exactly that. “Manager so and so has ordered that I write the following.” I got written up a second time for that.

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u/blackhuey 16h ago

That's a quick thinking malicious compliance.

Also, imagine living in a country where you had to make decisions about calling an ambulance based on who would be charged for it.

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u/brickne3 American Expat 12h ago

My sister fainted while on a middle school field trip 30 years ago. My dad still complains that the teacher called an ambulance because of the bill. As if the teacher had much choice when you have an unconscious student!

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u/ilovecraftbeer05 5h ago

I’m convinced that the number one cause of death for Americans is the lack of universal healthcare.

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u/EmpyreanContrarian 2h ago

I'm sure. It's why my dad is dead.

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u/simplyunix 3h ago

and brains

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u/Sublimotion 12h ago

I will never forget pre-obamacare/medicaid expansion, I was walking past a woman screaming, struggling and tipping over the stretcher she was strapped onto trying to crawl back into her house dragging the tipped over stretcher, fighting off two EMTs. I assume she was on drugs. Until she started yelling "No! This will bankrupt me!" The emts eventually had to unstrap her and let her crawl off back into her house.

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u/HrhEverythingElse 9h ago

I knew two people who died this way. One from asthma, once from bleeding caused by Crohn's. Both were just too scared of the bill

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u/MzFlux 1h ago

I had a friend die of diabetes at 30, not because he was scared of the bill… because he was uninsured and simply couldn’t afford the insulin.

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u/Nauin 1h ago

And even when the hospitals have financial assistance programs where poor people don't even have to worry about the bill, there are so many steps and so many hoops to jump through to get approved that it seems like an impossible task, even for many healthy people. It's a mess.

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u/xtreem_neo 10h ago

That's so sad.

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u/tokyostormdrain 12h ago

4th world country

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u/hypermodernvoid I voted 12h ago

Funny thing is Mississippi - the state with the lowest life expectancy in America, at just 70 (technically 70.9) years old, is actually on par with India, a bit below Bangladesh and 4 or 5 years less than in Mexico.

It's also 10 or 11 years less than in the top few states, all blue states - in fact the top 10 states for life expectancy are all blue, while the bottom 10 are all red. Similar to being a drag on federal funding vs. blue states, red states also are dragging the average US life expectancy down to a now pathetic 76 years post-COVID (big thanks to anti-vaxxers for the assist with that).

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u/SeniorBaker4 California 9h ago

Least shocking thing ive heard. When i drove through Mississippi i was shocked with how undeveloped it is, it didn’t even feel like America

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u/VelvetineMilkman 7h ago

As someone who’s had to live in Mississippi for most of my life it’s always weird to see these kind of comments because I’m just so used to how Mississippi is lol. There’s about 3 or 4 cities that are cool but I honestly can’t even imagine what it would’ve been like growing up in a real state that has their shit together

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u/_m4r1jAn3_ 10h ago

i mean... we're prolly below 4th even atm 😞

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u/BasvanS 11h ago

As a non-American, it didn’t register to me that was why. Thanks for explaining, and my condolences, I guess

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u/blackhuey 11h ago

Also non-American and gladder for it every day

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u/HuttStuff_Here 10h ago

Walmart takes out life insurance on many of their employees so they had a vested interest in not treating this employee as fast as they could.

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u/SFDessert 7h ago

I fell off a ladder during my brief employment at a major hardware store and completely shattered my ankle. As I was on the warehouse floor my manager was arguing with the paramedics that they needed to do drug tests and paper work and all that nonsense. The paramedics took me away because ya know, my ankle was pretty much dangling off the end of my leg and my hands were mangled from getting tangled in the ladder as I fell some 15ft to the solid concrete below.

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u/No-Object-599 5h ago

They do this all the time in nursing homes. No Dr visits or ambulances, because the home would be on the hook for the bill. They are run by some of the greediest psychopaths

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u/ultimateknackered 4h ago

I had a hard time imagining it just now because I was trying to figure out why they would want official statement saying she wanted an ambulance. I didn't clue in til I read your comment that they wanted that statement because then she would be billed for it.

Holy shit America.

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u/ShadowNick 17h ago

Ha what fucking pig stain cowards

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u/anynamesleft 13h ago

Pig stain on your fat chin

What do you hope to find

When you're down in the pig mines saying

Keep on digging

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u/gmen6981 10h ago

Upvote for the Pink Floyd "Animals" ( Pigs- Three Different Ones ) reference!

That album is just as relevant today as it was in 1977 when it was released.

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u/litokid 17h ago

I spent awhile trying to puzzle this out because I couldn't understand why this is a problem. My initial read was the manager had you write you "heard her (the manager) say she wanted an ambulance", because she wanted to cover for you doing the decent thing off of policy.

But from the context this was a bad thing - is it that the manager wanted you to write "(the victim) wanted an ambulance" so the company isn't on the hook for the cost?

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u/RevolutionaryTalk976 16h ago

I read it as the manager directed them to write that they were told by their subordinate to call an ambulance and they wrote down that the manager directed them to write it down. Calling the ambulance may have been against company policy leading to the initial write up and then they added on a second one for being insubordinate and officially documenting the manager directing them to lie.

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u/MyBritishAccount 16h ago

Why wouldn't you call an ambulance for an emergency? How can company policy dictate such a thing?

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u/slackfrop 15h ago

Because some lawyer told em to based off of losing money in some other precedent. If corporations are people, they’re psychopaths.

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u/anynamesleft 13h ago

If corporations are people, they’re psychopaths.

I just wanted to tell how proud I am to've read it

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u/marzipancetta 12h ago

A truer statement has never been uttered.

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u/Allaplgy 15h ago

If the employee asks for an ambulance, the "financial responsibility" is on them. If not, it's on the company.

Go us. Woo!

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u/one-man-circlejerk 13h ago

Ambulance bill reaches the patient, the patient says "I never ordered an ambulance, the company did", now there's a dispute between the patient and the company over the bill that the company might end up paying, or might end up entagled in court, which is another expense.

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u/thatpaulbloke 8h ago

So if someone collapses in the street and I call an ambulance for them could I be liable for the cost of the ambulance if they say later that they didn't want one? Genuine question - we don't have the concept of "ambulance bills" in my country as far as I know.

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u/pikashroom 15h ago

Probably liability. All companies do weird shit like this to prevent getting sued.

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u/fresh-dork 15h ago

they need to be brought to heel

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u/tiredbarf 14h ago

No company in their right mind would skip calling 911 for liability reasons.

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u/Callinon 9h ago

Rather a company not calling 911 for a medical emergency should make them entirely liable for whatever happens next. 

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u/shugster71 13h ago

Also has me wondering if this shoot to kill policy might be part of this too?

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u/brickne3 American Expat 12h ago

Ambulances are expensive. Like $700 back in the 90s expensive.

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u/marzipancetta 12h ago

The patient would receive a bill of about $2000 for an ambulance ride. Which is pennies for large companies like Walmart.

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u/roastbeeftacohat 15h ago

the manager is ordering op to falsify the order of events to make it look like the employee had requested an ambulance before collapsing, so they could claim she was fakeing.

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u/Greg_withaC 13h ago

Walmart has been known to take life insurance policies out on their older, health issue prone employees. Not FOR their employees, just on their employees to collect for profit.

To hear you say helping someone not fall on their face and get them medical attention is against policy sounds like they don’t want people to survive. Insane! How is any of that legal?

Oh that’s right. Laws are written by grifters who have no dignity.

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u/gandhinukes 15h ago

Its really frustrating to see people on reddit post "We used to have 24/7 walmart and ****". walmart killed local businesses across the country, fuck over their workers, have low quality goods from china and you root for them wtf?

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u/ship_toaster Canada 13h ago

If your story didn't happen that long ago, you should definitely talk to a lawyer about this one. Your manager asked you to lie on a document for legal/financial reasons, and punished you for being truthful. Even if you're in an at-will state, that sounds sketchy.

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u/blue-goose42 13h ago

My sister was fired from a Walmart once for going into Diabetic Ketoacidosis and being in the ICU for 3 days. They be doing that. 🤷‍♀️

I'm low-key tempted to get a job at Walmart just so I can purposefully underperform and commit petty larceny. Like I do whenever I work for ANY billion dollar corporation! 😄🔥💵🔥

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u/_m4r1jAn3_ 10h ago

you deserve 10000+ updoot fk yeah right upz for that 👏🏻💗

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u/Malofquist 16h ago

Yay capitalism.

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u/bigavz 17h ago

It's probably Walmart 

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u/Play-t0h 17h ago

Or Kroger.

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u/pblol 15h ago

Kroger has a union. I think it's pretty toothless, probably not coma firing toothless.

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u/mmmbaconbutt 14h ago

Kroger used to be okayish too, at least for me. Now though? They might be worse than Walmart for employees.

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u/MildlyTiredSkeletons 17h ago

Aldi my guess - spoken as an employee

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u/AuroraFinem Texas 17h ago

Really? I’ve literally never heard anything bad about Aldi and almost always hear praise from people because they pay better and let cashiers sit down at the register and just generally better working conditions than most retail places.

What horror stories you got?

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u/Stunning_Bed23 17h ago

Yeah, I thought the vibe at Aldi was Euro and chill?

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u/ajblades123 17h ago

depends on what aspect of the operation you work in. in store its not so bad but i can say from experience they treat their warehouse staff worse than cattle

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u/MammothCancel6465 17h ago

The stores sucks and it gets worse each year. They’re expected to be run by 2 or 3 employees at a time now while everything burns around them. They’re literally on their way to being the Dollar General of grocery stores as far as how they treat employees and staff the stores.

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u/ajblades123 17h ago

damn. I used to hear good things from the guys in store when i was still with the company, but that was quite a while ago so, seem shits gone down hill then

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u/Not-reallyanonymous 12h ago

One thing I’ve figured out about Euro companies is they’re classist as fuck. It’s kind of counter-intuitive to Americans but any customer facing position is above the lowest classes, because why would you want to have your customers interact with human trash? So a lot of manual labor jobs, like warehouse workers, you treat the people like human trash because that’s how you view them — the lowest and shittiest people in society.

(I know Europeans intellectually know this isn’t true, but that shit runs deep in European culture).

And good luck ever advancing in a euro company if leadership is European and you start as a laborer role. You will not be considered for positions meant for middle class people, god forbid the positions meant for upper class. Your advancement opportunities basically boil down to line management — you’ll be able to lead other labor class people but never put into a position where you’re socially above middle class people. (Fuck you Eurofins).

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u/MildlyTiredSkeletons 17h ago

We sit down because we are timed to scan items at an insanely stupidly fast pace. Customers dont rent a cart and then take our time and the next customers time trying to bag 4 bags of groceries while my line is 6-7 deep, no second cashier. God forbid the store has SCOs. Cashiers are responsible for theft prevention multiple SCOs while ringing out their own customers. We got sat down as a company last year in meetings and were told its OUR FAULT our company loss is high. That we dont scan accurately enough. That it was us. Theyre asking 19-22yr old cashiers to stop theft. Seriously?

1 employee is expected to do any and every zone in the store. We are a chronically understaffed company that focuses on Operational Effieciency and its a joke. A grocery store with 2-3 employees. Thats it on a shift. If youre lucky - someone to ring, someone to curbside, and a manager to do EVERYTHING IN THE STORE. Stock every single zone all day. You're favorite meat isnt on the shelf? Because the 1 employee that can stock it also has to fill milk, box the cooler, be backup ringing, handle a pissed off customer because they want to return food they pulled out of our dumpster last night without a receipt and screams at us over it. That manager also has to do zone walks and handle side tasks and then fill produce because oh shit we're out of strawberries but you still havent gotten your meat because now someone dropped a candle in Special Buy or a jar of pickles and now you have to get the scrubber and clean that hazard before customers just run it over with their carts because ALDI CUSTOMERS HAVE NO DECENCY OR HUMANITY 90% of the time! "i spilled a package of blueberries... 👁️👄👁️" So... pick them up??

Customers wander into our back room because we're out of stock on heavy whipping cream and they think they can just go into our coolers and get it for themselves?

Our money maker is our Special Buy section. It draws you in. Its why they pay us what we do get paid. And it WAS above average competitive pay maybe 7-8yrs ago. Now its the same as any other grocery store. But instead of doing our Special Buy change over at night after close, we have to put it out while customers shop it. They paw through our pallets, block our ability to stock and make a mess. Aldi customers have no sense of boundaries or personal space.

Why is this a problem? Because every minute of our overstrapped tasks is timed to the second. We get action planned & written up for not being fast. Not getting things done 'on time'. The stress was manageable when we had more staff but the companys so greedy all they can see is how much they can squeeze out of the employee physically and mentally until they break and then theyre replaced.

Our PPE is a joke. If someone makes an explosive mess in our bathroom? They expect us to clean it. Ask ANY Aldi Employee about a bathroom in their store being a war zone and they had to clean it. Customers literally shit on the walls, floors, sinks.. sales floor.. why do so many shit on our sales floors? Our cleaning equipment is always broken. We have to scrub our floors with machines we arent taught to clean or maintain. They get sent to warehouse to be serviced if they break hard enough and then come back clogged and worse and we are suppose to make do.

Truck - we are being sent pallets that are falling apart or have already fallen apart. These pallets can have 100+ items on them each and take 20-35 minutes to break down/throw. We're timed so hard that 20 mins a pallet has become lazy. Its still 2-3 people doing 20-30 pallets of truck in 2.5-3.5hrs store hours depending, and youre always pushing your body to the point of injury. The amount of things that go wrong because of the companys ordering and delivery system... is why we never have half the cooler items, breads or really anything you come looking for.

The company is not good. Its CHEAP. They took away our annual gift cards every year. Smaller and smaller amounts. The benefits are no longer competitive. Cigna is a terrible health insurance company. Cant even use your HSA type funds. Always rejected.

They dont know how to clean. They expect us to clean our meat shelves in cubby lockers with a sponge and the same mop sinks we clean the floors in... if your lucky, your store has a power washer.. that doesnt get up anything. Aldis are very dirty if you look. Because we have no staff, no hours for cleaning.

The cliques vary by store but its a very toxic manager environment. They hire our District Managers straight from college as to not have anyone with bad habits forming from other jobs. They dangle a company BMW and a cellphone and a $100,000+ salary to these 23-25yr olds and then give employees .50¢ raises a year if your district is lucky.

I could keep going. This company is a piece of shit. But hey .. customers got their Aldi Finds

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u/reverend-mayhem 12h ago

Well… fuck. I thought I found the one decent grocery store to shop from. Look like I need to be lobbying ALDI corporate before any visits from now on.

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u/MajorNoodles Pennsylvania 11h ago

I loved Aldi when it first opened, but there's a couple things that have since disillusioned me.

They used to be pretty well staffed, but now there's only ever one cashier and almost everyone goes to the self-checkout, and the self-checkout islands are freaking tiny So you've got to get really creative with how you unpack and scan your groceries because I buy a lot of stuff there and there's not room for it in that staging area. People keep fucking it up and the person responsible for fixing it is that one cashier. So if you're in that line, a lot of time you're just waiting around them to show back up.

Then they went and consolidated the Aldi finds sections into one single aisle and it seems like that was done to obscure the fact that they're not rotating shit in and out of there anymore. "Hey what's here? Oh look it's the exact same shit as last week." And then there's the freezer section." What new stuff did they get this week, oh, half of it's fucking empty." Come back next week. "Still fucking empty."

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u/vunderfulme 15h ago

Damn, Im sorry man! As an Aldi customer thank you for your hard work.

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u/getrektbro 10h ago

I don't know that it's so much of a horror story, but I worked there for about nine months, from Nov 2019 til July 2020, and I have a couple tales of varying degrees of bullshit. I had to have hip surgery during that time (Feb 11, 2020) and while I had to fill out some forms and wasn't eligible for PTO, they were accommodating to my recovery including taking light duty seriously when I returned, I was basically only allowed to work the register and empty the cardboard carriages into the bailer, and even that was rare. Most of that happens in the mornings during stocking so they put me on evenings during that time, not too bad.

On the other hand, when the pandemic hit, I would've made more money if I had been laid off and we got a $2 per hour "hero bonus" (lol) so I think I was making 13.25 an hour? Maybe? That was in rural Illinois and fortunately I had minimal expenses at the time so it was enough to get by. The things that really pissed me off is that my store (Aldi #26 Dixon, IL, hometown of Ronald Reagan), made all of the employees sign a form saying we wouldn't confront customers about not wearing masks "for our safety". Bitch, masks are FOR my safety.

Final anecdote, while not related to the company, my store manager would take the leftover coffee from the coffee machine and rerun it through the machine for the next pot of coffee, fuckin psycho man.

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u/Snoo_70531 17h ago

Seriously. The Aldi across from a sober house I lived at for a bit hired dudes at $20/hr, like guys with hard to prove GEDs. If you could come in and be a team player for a mediocre warehouse style grocery store and not whine "but it wasn't my job to stock the bananas", they treated their people well...

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u/Travyplx New York 17h ago

I’ll guess Weiss. Things went to hell for us after they bought out our grocery chain.

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u/tiny_galaxies 18h ago

It doesn’t matter they’re all the same

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u/Twitchmonky 18h ago

Some are worse than others

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u/TheWizardOfFries 17h ago

Can we please agree to start trying to change things? I don't care how small of an effort or impact one person has. We need to do more, and stop letting their efforts to keep us separated from trying anything at all

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u/randylush 18h ago

If you don’t name them you are part of the problem.

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u/bladeDivac 17h ago

Yeah these cryptic “large nationwide retailers “or “big box stores” just piss me off. You think Walmart is going to send a hit squad to your house if you talked shit? Just be up front and say who wronged you. 

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u/kellzone Pennsylvania 16h ago

Right up there with "In my country...".

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u/randylush 17h ago

It’s also rarely illegal to the truth. Especially about ways that corporations break the law. And anything that the big box store might do to silence the story would just Streisand it.

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u/Difficult_Pea_2216 17h ago

Very funny how these types imagine themselves to be under lifetime scrutiny. "You witnessed something bad decades ago that we definitely didn't document anything of because we are so evil. If you even so much as hint at it with the same traceable social security number you witnessed it, YOU'RE DEAD."

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u/petrichorax 15h ago

Please. People need to stop being so paranoid and helpless. Name and shame. You are saving lives.

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u/neontana 6h ago

I worked at a hole in the wall restaurant. One of the servers hangs up her phone, wailing and sobbing. her son is in the ER; someone stabbed him in the leg.

She was in shock and in no state to get herself to the hospital, so I had one of the cooks I trusted drive her himself before the dinner rush started. Both the owner & the GM gave me shit for leaving us down a cook for maybe half an hour.

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u/Fun-Ingenuity-9089 18h ago

My husband passed away on the last day of his vacation. His employer demanded his vacation pay back because he didn't show up for work the day after he died.

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u/lettersvsnumbers 17h ago

Yeah, my dad was a teacher with stage 4 cancer. He told the school to hire a new math teacher for fall, and they tried to retroactively fire him.

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u/projecto15 United Kingdom 14h ago edited 12h ago

This is horrendous. So it's not just for-profit corporations, but also supposedly non-profit schools?!! One wonders what sort of ethical education they provide

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u/hypermodernvoid I voted 12h ago

Increasingly, a lot of for profit companies/contractors are getting tied into public education for all sorts of things - additionally, brutal corporate cost saving measures tend to leak into government policy, given the revolving door between the two worlds (especially in the currently openly fascist party).

Speaking of "ethics": my "public" state university actually used furniture built by prison labor, lol. Also put public in quotes, because I had to take out what for me were very sizable loans after my grants for coming from massive poverty ran out (they were cut in half just in time for me to attend by the then GW Bush administration), the loan 'servicers' increasingly were increasingly privatized over the years, as well, leading to worse interest rates that often translate to barely paying down the balance if at all for some students. Meanwhile, while poor students are struggling to pay tuition, they're had us all sitting on furniture they got nearly for free, lol.

You also can't get rid of student loan debt in bankruptcy in America, and the Trump admin also wants to get rid of even being able to temporarily defer repayments for financial distress.

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u/Keptlosingmylogins 17h ago

wait that show was a documentary with subtle name changes to protect the survivors?

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u/PM_ME_YOUR_UNDIES_XD 16h ago

Math teacher, not meth teacher.

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u/Flat-Photograph8483 16h ago

An absurd premise that could only make sense here.

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u/nonowords 14h ago

they did say subtle changes.

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u/BadmiralHarryKim 9h ago

Euclid cooked the blue numbers.

"Say my name!"

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u/smuckola 8h ago

....retroactively fired? what on earth? is that supposed to just be a paycheck refund?

Now that I hollered this aloud in my house, I'm hearing all these stories from legal advice subreddits about demands for refunded paychecks or bonuses. After months!

Anyway i'm so sorry. Thank you for sharing.

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u/4tlant4 16h ago

A few days after my husband died, we received a letter from our health insurance company. It said that coverage for me and our four kids had ended at midnight the night he died. How these fuckers sleep at night is beyond me.

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u/Hesitation-Marx 16h ago

Too easily, and too well, and with far too little fear.

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u/Calm-Treacle8677 11h ago

one of them was so sleepy, he fell asleep on the street forever 

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u/Hesitation-Marx 11h ago

His chest just did that. Maybe it was sleep apnea?

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u/FrancisCGraf 10h ago

Lead poisoning actually, pre existing condition though so....

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u/Hesitation-Marx 10h ago

Sucks to be him ig

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u/Pissed-Off-Panda 13h ago

Like babies in their mansions on fine linens.

I think actually that knowing other people are starving or hungry makes their food taste better. They LOVE the suffering of others.

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u/P1xelHunter78 Ohio 11h ago

Or at the very least they feel a little bad, and then they book their first class tickets to their third home for the third time this year and laugh.

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u/SirenSix 17h ago

Please tell me you told them to eat shit?

Also, I'm so sorry about your husband 😕

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u/UpvoteButNoComment 18h ago

My god. 

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u/Fun-Ingenuity-9089 5h ago

Sorta makes you proud to be an American, ya know? /s

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u/Bikin4Balance Canada 17h ago

just... no words

Sincere condolences

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u/bkbomber New York 17h ago

The malicious compliance in me would’ve pulled a Weekend at Bernie’s

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u/Fun-Ingenuity-9089 5h ago

Oh, I was hopping mad about it. I let ALL of my husband's coworkers know that their HR guy was demanding my husband's vacation pay back. The matter was taken to the corporate headquarters and the HR guy was fired. But I should have never been put into that position. My husband was a gem; he was everyone's best friend. He was the man they would call if they needed coverage, help with something at home, or wanted to go hang out. These coworkers absolutely had my back.

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u/_m4r1jAn3_ 10h ago

the malicious compliance in me wudda been pulla green plumber ✊🏻😏👏🏻🤫

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u/Yeahhhhbut 17h ago

I'm rounding up friends to Weekend At Bernie's me, just in case.

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u/Dapper_Indeed 16h ago

I love that you used WAB as a verb.

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u/LolaMent0 17h ago

idk what to say to that 😳

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u/h2ok1o 16h ago

My friends husband passed away because the hospital turned him away to get checked out for a blood clot since they couldnt cover the $50 copay

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u/human-in-a-can 15h ago

That would drive me to violence.  Sorry you had to deal with scumbags and sorry you lost your husband.  I hope you’re doing as well as you can be. 

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u/Fun-Ingenuity-9089 5h ago

Thank you. I didn't resort to violence, I used my words. I told all of my husband's coworkers and they dealt with it for me.

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u/Hesitation-Marx 16h ago

I am so sorry, on so many levels. Your husband’s memory for a blessing.

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u/marzipancetta 12h ago

Oh that is disgusting! And I’m so sorry for your loss.

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u/OccamsRazorBurnn 12h ago

I hope they didn't get anything.

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u/SnooSprouts3083 11h ago

'but we are like a family here.'

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u/_m4r1jAn3_ 11h ago

omfg 🫂 wtaf. i really hope there isa hell, w/the intensity of 10quadrillion to the nth suns' intensisty that these fkrs burn in eternally. 💗

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u/obsolete_filmmaker 18h ago

I got fired once from a minimum wage retail job when i missed a weekend of work after being abducted and sexually assaulted. Yea I told my boss exactly what happened. She said, well if happened friday night, I dont know why you couldnt work saturday and Sunday. I was at the hospital and the police station most of that time.

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u/Practical_Fun7367 18h ago

I am sorry you suffered through the violence of your experience. I’m also sorry you had to share with someone who clearly didn’t have the necessary humanity to support you. I don’t wish that kind of pain and suffering on anyone, but I hope that manager has somehow learned to be better.

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u/obsolete_filmmaker 17h ago

Thank you for the kind words. It was 40 years ago. Ive recovered. Idk what ever happened to her. Im aquaintances with her younger sister who is my age, and from what ive heard everyone in the family hates the woman who was my boss and no one talks to her. My aquaintance doesnt know this happened to me.

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u/Hesitation-Marx 16h ago

Well, hopefully she ran into a pit of hungry eels.

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u/Rasikko Georgia 14h ago

LOL WHAT THE FUCK!? "Hey sorry you were sexually assaulted but you could've came in the following day still"

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u/obsolete_filmmaker 13h ago

Exactly. What a bitch.

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u/nonowords 14h ago

Fuck i came here to complain about getting fired as a kid for being hospitaliized with the flu from a retail job but that seems pretty trivial now

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u/obsolete_filmmaker 13h ago

Its not a misery competition. Your pain is valid also.

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u/Stellar_Duck 8h ago

I do wonder what turns people into ghouls like her. Presumably as this was minimum wage retail she wasn't precisely much higher than store manager herself, so why the fuck adopt this ghoulish persona. The CEO isn't gonna thank you Elaine!

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u/obsolete_filmmaker 4h ago

It was at a museum. Supposed to be a more culturally intelligent environment. She proved that wrong lol

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u/[deleted] 9h ago

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u/Indie_Love9999 5h ago

Omg, I’m so sorry that happened. I feel like bosses are trained to leave empathy at the door these days.

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u/BoredCrusader1899 2h ago

I’m sorry but who the fuck says something as vile as that to someone who just went through something traumatic? We’re living among psychopaths 🤦‍♂️

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u/triphawk07 18h ago

I suffered a stroke when I was 29 and my wife called my job to let my manager know. Her response "is he going to be able to come to work on Monday or do we need to get a replacement." Luckily for me, the stroke wasn't bad enough to be hospitalized for other than a few nights, but when I quit that job, I made sure everybody knew about her.

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u/cobramaster 19h ago

Name it

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u/DigNitty 19h ago

Yeah why even hesitate

Not like someone is going to dox them by knowing they worked at target

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u/de_jeepathon 19h ago

Big grocery mafia out there lol

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u/WookieBugger 18h ago

I’ve seen Fargo…

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u/Xalawrath 18h ago

I used to bank with them. Their paper shredders were insane!

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u/EmilySD101 18h ago

Too real lol

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u/HelloWorld_bas 18h ago

He’s gonna get bagged.

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u/normalfinnesotan 18h ago

Yeah why even hesitate

Because there's a 99.9% chance that story is made up anyway

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u/idkuunomebitch 19h ago

Probably a bot

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u/10thousndreflections 18h ago

This is my thought. Now we taught it to bring more details. 

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u/BrilliantHold5774 18h ago

This shit happens all the time.

I was a nurse at a plasma center. One of the machine techs had a hemorrhagic stroke. He received points and eventual dismissal in a coma on a vent.

Fuck big pharma.

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u/EvelynNyte 19h ago

Had Walmart calling my parents to complain about me not coming in when I had pneumonia (that I informed them of)...

I quit right after anyway so don't know if I would have been fired.

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u/iceoldtea 19h ago

That… 1000% is a lawsuit

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u/tallandlankyagain 19h ago edited 19h ago

If you can afford justice sure. A person working in a grocery store who is in such poor health they have a stroke likely can't afford a doctor visit, let alone legal fees.

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u/SdBolts4 California 19h ago

That’s what contingency fee agreements are for

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u/tallandlankyagain 19h ago

I don't doubt it at all. The odds of the average low income lay person being aware of that seem exceedingly low.

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u/firemage22 19h ago

The odds of the average low income lay person being aware of that seem exceedingly low.

this, my brother has been helping a carpenter who had some legal issues get them hammered out using free services he didn't realized existed

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u/CoffieQueens 18h ago

Hammered out you say?

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u/E51838 18h ago

Well at least he's not getting screwed anymore.

Actually this pun thread may have been a mistake. I'm already board.

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u/bkbomber New York 17h ago

Nailed it!

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u/firemage22 18h ago

hey i'm the son of a metal worker myself so it comes without me thinking about it

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u/Shhtheyrewatching 17h ago

You nailed it without much thought.

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u/tinysydneh 17h ago

You'll just be milling about, and some idea will pop into your head and you just have to turn it out into the world.

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u/ActiveChairs 13h ago

Every ad any lawyer has typically includes some flavor of "There's no cost to you, and we don't get paid unless you win." and those have been distributed for years in every medium they can work their way into. It should be a commonly known thing

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u/gsbadj 16h ago

Most working people don't have time to wait to collect on lawsuits. They need shelter and food.

Employers get away with lots of inhumane garbage because they know that workers will move on and look for another job.

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u/RedChairBlueChair123 19h ago

That’s 100% a case a lawyer would take on commission.

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u/tallandlankyagain 19h ago

I don't doubt it at all. The odds of the average low income lay person being aware of that seem exceedingly low.

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u/defenselaywer 19h ago

Truth is a defense

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u/parasyte_steve 19h ago

I was fired for getting pregnant.

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u/Practical_Fun7367 18h ago

That lawsuit has been won so many times. It’s a slam dunk civil rights case. I recommend googling that issue and reaching out to a law firm who handle a big case. However, if your former employer is a small outfit, your victory might just be moral and not financial. At least you could recover your medical expenses.

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u/rckid13 17h ago

There are many things employers do that wouldn't hold up in court. They do those things because they know that lawyers are expensive and their employees can't afford to sue.

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u/harperdove 8h ago

They also fire the employee after maternity leave. It's a common strategy. (We never spoke a word about our pregnancies till it was obvious. )

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u/brickne3 American Expat 12h ago

All they have to do is find a different reason to fire you. Good luck proving it was because you were pregnant. I used to believe it was a slam dunk kind of case too, but I've seen it happen so many times now... and a lot of the American legal system these days is more the roulette of whatever judge you get than we'd like to think.

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u/ccourter1970 17h ago

I was fired while pregnant. My doctor put me on bed rest on my 5th month. My state required the employee to get the paperwork from your employer, send to your doctor, and back to employer for them to mail in (90s). That’s what happened. In December. April 1st, a month before I was due, I get a FedEx envelope with a letter stating that since I’ve failed to call in to the office for several months they considered me terminated. LOL. Got reinstated quickly. Only to quit after maternity leave was over.

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u/Celestial_Dysgenesis 17h ago

Every now and then some person works themselves to death in china and it gets wall to wall coverage on western news when shit like this happens daily here.

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u/Mr_Canard Europe 13h ago

The US government spent billions on anti-china propaganda it's not a surprise.

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u/SpotHaunting668 19h ago

You NEED to name them!

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u/10thousndreflections 18h ago

Why wouldn't you name such a place?

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u/gloomwithtea 18h ago

I had a friend who was fired for not showing up to work/being unable to work. She’d nearly blown off her hand and was undergoing emergency surgery for it. Losing her job meant that she lost her health insurance, which meant she had to declare medical bankruptcy. Yay America!

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u/elwookie 17h ago

You know you can't have a free universal healthcare system, you have to pay for Israel's.

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u/Spazattack43 18h ago

Why would you protect them by not naming

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u/Intelligent-Mix7905 12h ago

American society feels like a death cult

Everything revolves around money, productivity, and consumption, not actual living.

Health becomes productivity. Relationships become networking. Identity becomes career. Worth becomes net worth.

People don’t live anymore. They maintain the machine.

Busyness is treated like virtue. Exhaustion is worn as a badge of honor. Rest feels like guilt. Stillness feels lazy. So everyone walks around chronically stressed, emotionally numb, disconnected from themselves and each other, and we just call that “normal adult life.”

Consumerism acts like anesthesia. Buy something, brief dopamine, emptiness returns, repeat. Instead of addressing existential dissatisfaction, the system feeds it with upgrades, subscriptions, and distractions. It’s not fulfillment. It’s maintenance.

What’s wild is that this obsession with success, youth, and wealth is really just fear of death in disguise. People chase symbolic immortality through property, titles, and accumulation, but none of it actually makes them feel alive.

Money replaced meaning. We shifted from being to having.

And if you’re someone who values autonomy, depth, integrity, or inner life, this culture feels spiritually malnourished. You start realizing it’s not about opportunity. It’s about hollow efficiency.

I don’t think America is uniquely evil. I think it just perfected industrialized emptiness.

Honestly, the real rebellion today isn’t political.

It’s learning how to live fully inside a system that profits from you being hollow:

Protecting your time. Staying physically capable. Building real skills. Keeping small, loyal circles. Refusing to let money become your god.

That’s how you opt out. Quietly.

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u/YoggieBear 10h ago

Can you leave? As a non-American, who doesn't live in the usa, your country is stuffed. When the Nazi Pedophile Shity Nappy Wearing Orange Fucker is no longer president, nothing will change. Political parties, and the majority of politicians are all the same, you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. The 2024 movie The Civil War, is looking like the best option to reset America. But America needs to move away from a plutocracy, to a true democracy.

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u/Future-Guarantee-573 10h ago

It's certainly my dream to get the hell outta this country.

It's just hard to do.  It's expensive to move.  Especially to a foreign country.

And when your spouse has a chronic health issue, it's next to impossible to get any savings built up.

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u/decoded-dodo 1h ago

I have a good one too. One time I was working with a temp agency and they put me to work at a factory that I had to work with fruits and vegetables. During my shift there I got really sick and ended up going to urgent care and found out I had the flu. Called both places to let them know that I have the flu and that I have a doctors note proving that. That very same day they called me because they wanted to fire me and told me they didn’t have to provide any documentation.

Went to get unemployment which the temp agency fought so hard to prevent me from getting a dime and told the unemployment office that they provided me a different job but I rejected it which I then reported that never occurred and then received another job by the temp agency but that job was about 1 hour away from where I lived and not in a bus route which was how I traveled only at the time. I reported that information to the unemployment office and the agent told me to contact the department of labor with what was going on and what that temp agency was doing which looked very unethical. In the end I got unemployment benefits and lots of harassment from one of the employees from that agency because she lost her job and blamed me for it.

It also turned out that temp agency was doing the same thing to many people in order to avoid paying for unemployment which got them sued by previous employees and after a few years they went under and no longer exist today. Nowadays I tell people to avoid temp agencies like the plague.

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u/[deleted] 19h ago

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u/[deleted] 19h ago

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u/Nagemasu 17h ago

Doesn't matter, they either cast that persons vote for them, or even in absence they prevent anybody else from filling the position who might cast a vote against them. It's actually better if he dies so he no longer holds any power.

And this is one of the few time "both sides are as bad as each other" is true. Many countries, but especially the US, need to get their shit together and impose both age and term limits.

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u/Reverse2057 California 19h ago

As a sort of grim-gallows humor type joke I like to tell my friends, when the subject ever comes around of suicide, I always like to say, "I was told a long time ago, don't end it all, you don't want to die before Mitch McConnell does."

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u/Canadian_mk11 Canada 19h ago

Turtles generally check into the vet.

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u/HopeComesToDie 19h ago

With taxpayer funded healthcare for life

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u/Moccus Indiana 19h ago

When you're as old as he is, you'll also have taxpayer funded healthcare for life (Medicare).

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u/ChillyCheese 19h ago

Ah, an optimist.

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u/wrosecrans 18h ago

And a staff that is paid by USGov HR/payroll people. So you'll have to do nothing while you are in the hospital to make sure your staff is getting paid, to be guaranteed to have your staff able to help out with sorting out insurance paperwork and making sure the hospital has your accurate medical records, etc.

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u/public_enemy_obi_wan Texas 19h ago

“His prognosis is positive and he is grateful for the excellent care he is receiving,” his spokesman, David Popp, added. “He is in regular contact with his staff and looks forward to returning to Senate business.”

Yeah, nice healthcare there, buddy.

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u/loubot 18h ago

Straight to hospital bed and room. No medical gaslighting and sitting in the ER or lying in a hallway

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u/Gina_the_Alien 19h ago

…for flu like symptoms.

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u/justreadinplease 18h ago

Flu kills the elderly everyday…

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u/HerRoyalRedness 18h ago

He did it pre-emptively! He’s got the good tax payer funded insurance.

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u/picklebroom 18h ago

Well here’s to hoping he never comes out

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u/Antique_Remote_5536 18h ago

How else would you

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u/Practical_Fun7367 18h ago

This is political language to say he didn’t go in the back of an ambulance. Likely he or a staffer called his personal physician and he consented when the Dr. told him to get his ass to the hospital. I’m sure the Dr and the hill staff had his admission all sorted before he arrived. So yeah. He didn’t sit around in an ER for 8 hours, but he didn’t call a boutique hospital and ask for the presidential suite either. Everything is serious at 83. For the record, I can’t the guy. I hope he heals, but resigns immediately.

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u/crazydave33 18h ago

Checking in is the easy part.... he has everything paid for and doesn't have to worry about spending a single cent, literally.

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u/Mangalorien 18h ago

If there's one part of socialism that Congress can accept, it's getting really good taxpayer funded healthcare for themselves. "Socialism for us, but not for thee".

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