I donāt know if Iām cooking or if I need to get out of the kitchen, lmao, but here we go:
Iām in my late-twenties; Iām an interdisciplinary artist, and I come from a family of interdisciplinary artists, but I do not come from wealth. Iāve always supported myself through a combination of service industry and local-creative-professional work. Iām quite proud to be a working class artist, and I have met dozens of talented individuals in the exact same boat.
Iāve been hospitalized a few times, and I rely on a car for transportation & income. Both of those things are expensive, and I have outstanding debts in both categories. Iāve never had an issue explaining those debts to, you know, a human person who understands what āI come from povertyā means, but my credit isnāt great, and I have resume gaps that boil down to āa family member diedā or āI had to move suddenlyā or āI was hospitalized and couldnāt work for [x] amount of time afterwards.ā
Againāa lot of people my age, in my tax bracket, are in the exact same boat. Youāll find that itās quite difficult to survive adulthood without eventually encountering an expensive catastrophe.
Individuals are struggling to find consistent work in an industry where, previously, āIām willing to show up and do the dishes without being an assholeā was the gig in totality. At the same time, every other corporate-run restaurant appears to be understaffed, barely functional, and actively attempting to train a gaggle of teenagers who already look like theyāre on the verge of quitting.
āOn paper,ā corporations desire employees who (1) arenāt asking for full-time (or consistent) hours, (2) fit a myopic definition of ālow-riskā rooted in an accumulated assessment of ārisk factorsā and (3) donāt require ongoing investment/support. (All of those āweāll give you benefits and pay for your educationā promises on the door at Taco Bell or whatever are really just designed to trap specific, often vulnerable people in aspiring-middle-management purgatory.)
Corporations are now using AI to relentlessly āfilterā and assess prospective employees.
If you tell The Robot that you want someone with no accumulated risk factors, who doesnāt require full-time hours, AND who is willing to work for minimum wage on an ongoing basisācongratulations, those people exist, but theyāre all seventeen.
The service industry has always had a habit of churning through teenage employees, because these assessments arenāt new; but now, they appear to be happening at a truly nightmarish pace with little-to-no human buffer.
From what I can tell, this is leading to the rapid enshittification of an entire industry. Beleaguered middle managers are dropping like flies because they canāt handle it anymore, and I know, because Iāve talked to some of them. I donāt think corporations realize just how much theyāre fucking themselves over, here? Itās a real āwe keep re-enforcing the parts of the airplane where the bullet holes areā situation.
I finally got a part-time job (through local networking, I gave up on Indeed completely), and Iāve been working extremely hard trying to find ways to use my creative labor to generate income (check out my art, lol), but itās frustrating and a nightmare. I would love to hear perspectives on this from other parts of the US and the world (Iām in Texas, for context) bc The Media seems more concerned with how this is affecting, you know, the higher tax brackets
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