Recently I saw someone reshare the Vice article from a couple of years back where someone won a lawsuit saying that their employer couldn’t force them to do fun things.
And I think a lot of people were joking about it. I mean, a lot of people don’t like their team building activities and forced activities along those lines, but go along with them. And for me, there’s a deeper part to that.
No Fun At Work
As people know, I was looking for work in early 2023, and it was very, very hard and very discriminatory. One of the particular discriminatory conversations that happened was not that I couldn’t do the job from home, because I could, but that the owner or CEO (or whoever it was in that business), whoever was in charge had decided they needed to rebuild the “company culture”. So I wasn’t allowed to work from home because, apparently, you have no culture if you do that.
And then we kept talking anyway…
And it turns out that the Company Culture was they wanted to have more time at the pub after work. So I was not given a chance to progress in a job application for something I wouldn’t participate in anyway. I really don’t drink. I’m not a complete nondrinker, but I also don’t think I’ve had any alcohol in maybe 3 years. So I’m effectively a nondrinker. Even when I drink, pubs are not a place I like to go. They’re loud. They’re annoying. They’re sensory hell.
It is not something I am gonna participate in regardless of the current level of disability I have. And this entire situation is problematic. People tend to reply to situations like this saying “Phew, you dodged a bullet there” and while it may be technically true, it is so fucking unhelpful of a comment to hear when you’re struggling to pay bills and keep a fucking roof over your head.
People will laugh at this article, but it is a very serious and actual real piece of discrimination that I have experienced.
It’s not funny. It’s irritating. And it’s perfectly legal.
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