this post was submitted on 11 Jul 2024
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I wish one of my close buddies would get this. He is nearly 30 and has never held down a job. He feels like life is pointless, has no money, cannot afford anything. He kinda wants a job, but all he can imagine are super unique positions like being a jeweler, a historic weapons restoration or other obscure jobs. I hate to burst his bubble but his jobs are often unrealistic for his experience and education level but he refuses to do some basic position.
For example, he has never owned or fired a gun and doesn't have a gun lisence but expects a museum will hire him to work on historic firearms. He refuses to attenpt to get any other positon. He is just waiting for his mom to get enough money to move to a different city so he can go to another college program to try to get this job. He won't even do the first step in my opinion which is getting a gun lisence and getting actual experience with real firearms.
these people are enabled by loved ones. he'll start trying as soon as he has to.
In my experience, entry level retail work is absolutely soul-crushing and the pay is barely worth showing up for.
People imagine getting a job and moving out of their parents' homes, living Melrose Place style in an apartment full of hotties, having a social life, hooking up, and building adult relationships. But OP's experience seems more like the exception than the rule. A lot of these places have incredibly high churn, no upward mobility, and are a huge physical/emotional suck that leaves you feeling exhausted the moment you're home.
Good for getting a leg up literally anywhere else, as they prove you can "be normie". But horrendous for any kind of actual professional career advancement outside of a casual recommendation going into your next job. And the pay is so bad that it often doesn't even cover the basic cost of living (car, food, utilities, etc). You're still going to be living with your parents. You're not going to have any kind of fuck-around money. There's no promotion path that gets you out of this hole. Its not where you want to spend one more minute of your life than you absolutely have to.
what you say is true, but it beats NEET for mental health. Got to start somewhere. Also theres no reason to only apply to retail jobs. Reach out to every company you can find that fits your criteria (geography/industry/company size, etc .) a librarian can help with this.
In my experience, it causes NEET-tier mental health. These rise-and-grind employment situations burn through people rather than developing them into more skilled and useful workers.
By all means, absolutely do that. But I see a ton of dysfunction on the corporate side of the coin that rarely gets acknowledged when we talk about "NEETs" as a social phenomenon. As though hundreds of thousands of young people just woke up one morning and all decided to be lazy at once. From my experience, people are being thrown into an economic wood chipper. Some of them escape. Some miraculously pass through. But a bunch are torn to shreds - physically, psychologically, emotionally - and then told to take responsibility for their mangled state.
I've seen this arc before, aimed specifically at minority youth groups (African Americans, in particular). From my experience, what comes next is a ton of brutal policing and human immiseration for anyone who can't climb through successfully. And then you get another Ferguson.
My mental health improved considerably after I was fired from my basic retail job and was no longer spending 8 hours a day having panic attacks and dissociating. It's not good, but it's a lot better than it was and I can't go back to living like that. Even a year later I still sometimes wake up in a panic from nightmares about working in that place.
I want to work and be productive, but every job I could reasonably qualify for has a sanity cost and I'm all tapped out.
so what are you suggesting these NEETs do instead?
Not a lot they can do. They're broke, unorganized, and incredibly vulnerable.
My parents own a swimming pool company. They were willing to pick him up and drop him off at home while he worked for them and he refused to do it. I used to work there too and I will admit it can be labour intensive, but it was a good job, working outside in small teams. Its also a good enterance into plumbing or gas fitting trades and a lot of the labour experience could be used as experience for any trade/job.
The guy defintely has mental health issues as well, he barely does any chores or anything for himself. He wouldn't have even needed an interview for this job, he could have just been ready to work one morning and started.