kaykorvid:

thesylverlining:

santorumsoakedpikachu:

autistic-knight-errant:

I honestly think that we would eliminate one of the major causes of ableism if we stopped basing people’s worth off how much revenue they generate.

This measure is worthless. Actually, it is worth less than nothing.

I used to be a programmer for a spammer. Being rather young, naive, and also desperate for some kind of income, I had no idea what “lead generation” meant and had no idea that the fact that they didn’t talk about how their nebulous product actually helped anyone was a huge red flag. I took the job, slowly learned the codebase, and it took me months to figure out what kind of practices this place actually employed.

I was asked to put in obnoxious popups, but hide the popups for traffic coming in from Google so that Google wouldn’t cut off their sponsored traffic because the site violated their standards, a few months into my time there. That was when I began to realize the kind of place I was working at. Then I was asked to create a throwaway email account to test something, and I found out what actually happened to the poor people who put their information in for Free Insurance Quotes. They were inundated with spam. I found out the company had no site of its own, just hundreds of these “Free Insurance Quotes” sites all with slightly different stock photos and slightly different forms and a “complaints” page that was very hard to find with an email that was never checked.

I was a Hardworking Taxpaying American when I worked at that job. I was, according to this capitalist logic, contributing to society and of much more value than a disabled person who supposedly is a leech on society.

I was making the world worse by working at that job. I would have been making the world better if I did absolutely nothing but stare at the wall all day rather than work that job.

Many jobs are like this. Anyone who works at an oil company is making the world worse. Anyone who works at a tobacco company is making the world worse. People in various abusive therapy industries are making the world worse. I’m sure you can name plenty of other jobs in this category. The world would be better if those jobs did not exist.

Now, I am disabled. I am chronically ill, and I cannot even work a sedentary job because having to sit up for eight hours at a time would make me have to lie in bed for days.

I am making the world much better now by replacing the invasive grasses on my front lawn with strawberries that attract native bees, by sealing my house to increase its energy efficiency, by taking care of a flock of chickens and doing my best to ensure that they have a good happy life, by replenishing the soil in the yard with compost and chicken manure, than I was at that job. And I don’t do very much – I can’t.

Equating the arbitrary numbers one accumulates for oneself to one’s actual value or contribution is a dangerous lie, and it is poisoning the planet.

This is so incredibly important. Thank you for this.

I worked at a horsetrack/casino and this also happened. I was making pretty decent money. I became a manager. Then the owner made bad financial decisions. I had to take on larger loads. I was finishing my senior year in college. I was working 12’s or more, sometimes until 7am. I stopped sleeping for more than 4 or 5 hours. I began to get sick. Colds, kidney infection, my body was shutting down.

Then I almost passed out at work. I got extremely dizzy. I felt like I couldn’t breathe. I refused the expensive ambulance ride and had my sister come to get me. And in that time I told my boss I would be back once I was done. That night. That’s how ingrained in me it was to continue working. I didn’t think that it was that serious.

I got to the ER and they found me in terrible shape. I’d been on antibiotics for weeks due to a kidney infection that wouldn’t quit. They gave me 3 bags of IV, and told me I was incredibly dehydrated, and my heart was jumping around enough for them to send me to a cardiologist. They put me through 4 tests: an ekg, a stress test, a 24 heart monitor, and a tilt table test. I was diagnosed with Postural Orthostatic Tachycardia Syndrome (POTS)

I quit my job. My boss and even the owner were worried and very caring, after all nobody meant for this to happen, and they did care for me. They’d done similar things and this hadn’t happened to them.

I was at the ripe age of 25 and suddenly I couldn’t stand for more than a few minutes. My legs cramped like I had been running just trying to make a bowl of ramen on the stove. My heart was palpitating and leaping into my throat every day. My chest from my shoulders to my ribs tightened and made it difficult to breathe. My sternum felt like I was getting stepped on.

Finally I slept. It wasn’t good sleep. The month after I quit my job I slept an average of 12-16 hours a day. I would fall asleep at the D&D table. I would be too tired to even sit at my computer to write. I was tired to the bone. I didn’t know if I was ever going to get out of it. I was lucky that I only had two classes left to physically go to, and that I had built a solid relationship with my professor. I still made A’s, and I still graduated.

I’m 25 and I take a beta blocker. I’m 25 and I can’t stand for long periods. I’m 25 and my chest still hurts every day. I’m 25 and for 3 days a month I’m laid up on my couch in tears. Im 25 and my body fights me every day. My heart, my blood pressure, my digestive system, all want to make a mockery of my living.

Because I wanted to work. Because I wanted to be successful. Because I wanted to do it all. Because I wanted to keep hearing “I’m proud of you” from my family.

I’m 25 and I’m still struggling to find a job that I can do. And my family doesn’t understand, and I don’t know if they’re ever going to understand why this happened.