#worklifebalance

I was promoted to SM after completing the “high potential” program.

The reality of being a store manager is you get blamed for everything. You are the scapegoat.

A year into it, I began questioning if my paces were being manipulated, almost like a dangling carrot that I could never reach.

I was placed on an action plan. Taken off the action plan, then placed on an action plan again.

My store team was dismantled by budget cuts

Managers quit, associates quit, manager layoffs, restructuring, titles and duties changed

My hours were drastically cut

Deferred maintenance began happening

I said my happiness is worth more than stress and misery. I have notice, and obtained a job which actually has a work life balance.

How bad does it stink to service the big chains now? It’s easier to create a local Jam or honey and sell it into a Walmart locally than it is to sell for a cpg company right now. My neighbor got her honey into Walmart (9 stores) and is making more than our TSLs from that alone. These jobs are really bad right now.

With the recent reorganisations, layoffs, and an increasingly demanding workload, my motivation to attend this year’s SKO event is quite low. Also the late evening sessions and a gala dinner that runs late, makes it a long and exhausting day.

Given the effort involved in attending and also need to be present in office next day is not worth the effort and time wasted. I would rather use that time wisely, especially since it feels like a better balance for me right now.

Making your boss look good is a time-tested strategy for climbing the corporate ladder at all companies not just Verizon.

It doesn’t matter if they’re incompetent, or dishonest, or a je-k. Try to accomplish whatever goal they’re being graded on in a highly visible way. Don’t worry about the consequences of poorly thought out plans. That’s not your job. Pay lip service to whatever they’re paying lip service to.

This advice also applies to the Pulse survey. The correct answers are always everything is great.

I’m not being facetious. This is 100% real advice!

You know a company is awful when the employees get excited for layoffs. But you have to ask yourself, why do these employees feel like a layoff will save them? Payouts are chump change. A 3 year employee gets 6 weeks pay. Is this changing your life? Please don't hate the messenger... I suggest that if you are unhappy, then take matters into your own hands and apply elsewhere on your days off. VZW forces you to walk the line of happiness and integrity, all while making you jump through hoops. Use this job as a stepping stone. They don't pay you enough for this emotional abuse. The dirty little secret is that you won't find financial independence and be able to build the life you want working here. I can guarantee that this job has no future and zero career path. The sooner you accept this the happier you will be. Managers & Asst managers sit in back rooms secretly talking about their disdain for their entitled employees or arrogant district managers, all while hating life and wishing they hadn't invested so much time and life energy being stuck where they are. District managers find ways to either cheat the system or don't even know the systems and live the "do as I say and not as I do" fake lifestyle. This is not a solution to life's happiness. The leaders that do make good money blow smoke up your butt so dont be fooled by their happiness because its coming from the green you will never see. All jobs teach you something, and this job teaches you that the grass is greener on the other side of the fence. You just have to listen to your inner voice that has been telling you that you should move on. Don't be afraid. You deserve better... or if you stay, you probably haven't learned your lesson just yet. You will learn this lesson at some point. You are in an abusive relationship, and you deserve better. Be brave and don't wait for your "partner" to break up with you. Verizon hasn't and won't change. You are settling. You are being used. This job is set up to use you short term and then replace you. That is all fine and good in its own right but you have to play the game. You won't find any life long employees. Don't allow the fake kindness and occasional smile limit what you deserve. Take what you can from Verizon in the form of educational assistance or the limited financial gain it presents till you can make that next move to something that offers long-term happiness and can lead you to a better life. It's out here. I promise. ❤️ To all the haters of this message - I lived each step of this message and I won. I have receipts.

I’ve worked at a lot of places, and I’ve never seen so many highly educated, talented people counting down the years until they can leave.

Spring Campus looks amazing from the outside. Free coffee, modern buildings, walking trails, cafeterias, gyms, collaboration spaces. On paper it feels like a dream workplace.

But sometimes it feels like a white-collar day prison.

You badge in, sit through meetings, update trackers, attend alignment calls, respond to emails, complete training modules, worry about rankings, worry about reorganizations, worry about whether your work will even matter next year, then badge out and repeat the process tomorrow.

The compensation is good, but many people seem exhausted rather than motivated.

The irony is that the campus was built to attract and retain talent, yet some of the most common conversations I hear are:

• “How many years until retirement?”
• “I’m looking externally.”
• “I’m just trying to survive another ranking cycle.”
• “I used to enjoy this job.”

Maybe it’s not just Exxon. Maybe it’s the reality of large corporate America in 2026.

Curious if others feel the same:
Has the modern corporate office become a place where people build careers, or a place where people quietly wait for the next paycheck and eventually their exit?

15 Signs Your Company Stopped Investing in You

You'll see 8. Your boss won't mention any.

You haven't been told.

The behavior changed anyway.

Here's what to watch for:

1. Your career conversation stopped being scheduled.
   ↳ What isn't scheduled isn't happening.

2. Your boss stopped asking what you want to learn.
   ↳ The question follows the investment. Both stopped.

3. Cross-functional projects stopped coming to you.
   ↳ The invitations dried up because the plan did.

4. You're not in the budget planning conversations.
   ↳ The invite list shows who matters upstairs.

5. Your review stopped including growth language.
   ↳ "Meets expectations" is a quiet decision.

6. Your one-on-ones got shorter and less frequent.
   ↳ Time spent is a signal you can measure.

7. You get steady work. Your peer gets the launch.
   ↳ Stretch goes to who they're still investing in.

8. The training budget went to your direct report.
   ↳ The bet shifted. Nobody told you.

9. New hires are being mentored by your peers.
   ↳ Mentorship signals who still has runway here.

10. The capex you proposed went to your peer.
    ↳ Development capital follows people, not roles.

11. Your boss stopped introducing you upward.
    ↳ Sponsorship is the resource that runs out first.

12. Your skip-level got canceled twice in a row.
    ↳ The cancellations are the message.

13. Your conferences got cut to local only.
    ↳ Travel budgets are a clean signal of priority.

14. Your development budget got smaller.
    ↳ Some budgets don't get cut. They just vanish.

15. You're reading this and recognizing 8 of them.
    ↳ The pattern has been speaking for months.

https://scorecard.plantmanagerblueprint.com/

This place isn't worth my health or my peace of mind. What happens, happens. I've gotten out of bad situations before, I can do it again. I refuse to look back later and regret losing sleep and energy over a job that doesn't deserve it.

I'm not happy here. But I also know my friends at other companies have it worse. So I'm staying for now. But I'm curious about people who are ready to leave. What would it take? What would be the final straw that makes you quit?

Say what you want about this place, but for me, it's still one of the best jobs I've had. Pay is fine. Work is interesting. Coworkers are great. That's why I'm scared of getting laid off. I don't want to go.

Is there a single position right now where you can just work and not spend half your energy worrying about being let go?

I am asked to relocate to this year. But I don't have my team there. So, I asked for Dallas and it was unofficially granted. My husband has been laid off due to org restructure just 2 weeks ago and his health has gone down drastically, requiring at least 2 months to recover. I have asked for an extension for next year in current place but did not get granted, while my peers did not receive letters. If I don't relocate, i will lose my job too. Not sure how to navigate this with kids.

One of the most frustrating things about searching for a new job is the rambling and vague job descriptions.

You typically have to wade through two long paragraphs describing how absolutely awesome the company is and how they’ve revolutionized their industry only to reach the vaguest of job descriptions and a laundry list of requirements that no single person on earth possesses.

Things would go a lot more smoothly for the recruiters and the applicants if they:
1- Reversed the order: job description and required skills first followed by bragging about the company and the benefits they offer
2- Separated the desired experience and skills into must haves and nice to have

If they did that, potential applicants could easily decide if they’re a good fit or not and there would be fewer unqualified applicants for the recruiter to reject.

Any tips for dealing with this?

Did they change how it’s tracked? Before I recall them just caring about the 8 week average, do they care about weekly average now?

If I go all 5 days this week, and next week I go in once, wouldn’t my weekly average be 3? Or do I need to go in 3 times a week to avoid any complaints or issues?

One year ago today I was laid off. It was a rough start as I thought i was going to be at Nike for the foreseeable future.
Since then though I started a business and just hit $500k in personal earnings. Not total sales. It’s been wild. Once I let go and just immersed myself in what I always held back from doing things just took off. I’ve made more money than I could imagine and my life is mine. My schedule. I hang out with my kids when I want. Go on trips when we want. Travel. It’s crazy how much I was holding myself back with the “stability” of a 9/5.
I miss the facilities. The people. The happy hours. I work for myself so I don’t have a team. But I couldn’t imagine my life working out like it has when I was at work.
To anyone laid off. Go after it. You’re free. To anyone still at Nike with a burning desire to do something else. Just do it!
Good luck out there.

The immediate team and the manager were so toxic - I got axed but I feel much better. So, go figure. Relief

Why do I still work here?

Probable answers include, but not limited to:

“I’m close to retirement” (acceptable)
“The job market stinks” (bad answer; it hasn’t always stunk; you had plenty of time to leave when it was booming)
“Would have to accept lower pay” (possibly but su-k it up)

We have a fearless leader that is constantly threatening our jobs. Now he is going after our vacation time that we earned. SINK THE PULSE SURVEY! Make him wake up from his coffee slurping delusional mindset.

Single income and Have 2 kids in elementary school going to middle in 2 years. Frisco seems to be best so far based on what I saw in great schools. But commute su-ks. Can you please recommend other areas, somewhat closer to commute. I may have to drop off kids and pick them up as well. So some flexibility there would help.

AI/ML Engineers, Technical Managers, Architects, Reliability Engineers, Operations Engineers, Quality Engineers, Software Engineers, Data Engineers, Dev Ops, IT, Etc

Tired of wearing more and more hats instead of the company hiring more resources and constant threat of layoffs? We can no longer voice our opinions. Survey, feedbacks, Townhalls are all BS

End white collar slavery and improve quality of life.

https://cwa-union.org/

The most alarming number in the Wall Street Journal’s “Best Companies for the Future” ranking isn’t AT&T’s overall rank of 375.

It’s the Talent rank of 390.

The WSJ’s methodology specifically looked at hiring, retention, and employee satisfaction as part of future readiness. In other words, human capital.

For years employees have been saying the same thing, excessive RTO mandates, constant uncertainty, forced relocations, and a lack of flexibility are driving good people out the door.

Leadership ignored it.

Now a respected third-party ranking is essentially saying the same thing. AT&T isn’t being viewed as a future-ready talent organization. It’s being viewed as a company struggling to attract, retain, and develop the workforce it needs for the future.

Even Kevin O’Leary (hardly a champion of employee entitlement) recently warned that companies risk losing their best talent when they become overly rigid about RTO and where work gets done. His point was simple - if you make flexibility a non-starter with RTO, your talent pool shrinks and you will only attract the undesirable bottom quartile of talent nobody else wants.

And that’s exactly what many of us have watched happen… I’ve never seen this many experienced employees leave. At the same time, a strict 5-day RTO policy isn’t a selling point to younger workers who increasingly value flexibility and work-life balance, it’s a detractor and immediate non-starter. Nobody with other options will ever sign up for this prison-like micromanagement.

Talent rank 390 isn’t the cause of the problem. It’s a symptom of this bad policy.

You can mandate badge swipes. You can mandate presence. You can mandate commutes, but what you can’t mandate is that talented people choose to work here, or stay here.

At some point leadership has to ask whether a five-day RTO policy is helping build the future, or helping explain why we’re ranked near the bottom when talent is measured.

Max cap being cut from 150% to 125% so they can take that off the balance sheet and not have to pay out that additional time when we're all RIFd.

Office politics are so much worse when you have to navigate them in person. From micromanaging to bullying to being put in the middle of arguments... It drains people in a way that's much, much worse than just hearing about it or dealing with it from a distance. I'd take a pay cut to avoid it.

Turnover's blowing up at so many other companies but things feel weirdly frozen here. I'm still looking for an exit but most of my team seems fine staying put even after everything that's happened, and I can't tell if they know something I don't or if everyone's just too tired to move.

The cuts have taken place, things are where they, hopefully, want them to be, so I'm going to assume there won't be additional cuts any time soon?

Company and management expects excellence but the company can't even pay you correctly or resolve a pay issue within a 6 month time span. And then they tell you you're the problem for trying to solve your own problem since no one will actually help you resolve issues.

The most difficult part about working for this company is dealing with the company itself.

They have been pushing team members in the most recent all hands meetings to take their PTO and time off. I have never heard such a push for this from leaders. I have been with the company over 7 years now, and there’s never been mention of taking your PTO like this.

So, take your PTO NOW before you lose it to this transition.

Bumping this for important info, the OP is @a2+1ksqvmzt4.

I’m an employee who’s been through a few rounds now, and the strange part is how routine it’s started to feel. Once one layoff ends, people don’t really relax, they just start wondering when the next announcement’s coming. Most of us just keep working, keep quiet, and try not to draw attention. Sad.

I love survey time of the month. It’s hilarious that the company asks us each and every month about how we feel about them. Do they take it seriously? Absolutely not. Do they use it to weed out people who come forward to section and claims managers? ABSOLUTELY!!!

But I want to point out how hilarious it is when you answer the questions about why it’s so stressful and why you don’t want to come into the office e more -!it ends with ‘you are least satisfied with Strategy.’ Really?!?! The strategy is to grind us into oblivion. I can’t believe I’m saying this but bring Tippy back. Least Tipsord wasn’t blind to the need for work life balance…kind of. D1 injury in particular is the most likely to make you crash out from mental exhaustion and it’s very clear they don’t give a flying F!

I am about to join Q's Automotive divison, i appreciate any insights about quality of work, teams, wlb. Thanks in advance.

Since Andrew left, and he only led for approximately 4.5 years or so, the treatment of employees has gone down to the gutter. The only period in which employees were treated fairly was during his tenure. Look up the history of UHG leadership and you will see what I’m saying. I was recently laid off after working here for 15 years. They not only offered me 5 weeks of pay, they put very “questionable language” in my layoff package.
Accepting their layoff package is accepting more abuse on the way out.
• If they get sued you should be on their side.
• If you were mistreated and (I’m watering this part down) or if you saw someone being mistreated, by accepting their severance you are saying it never happened.
• If you catch wind of them potentially being sued, you should warn them
• Also they added that you should not expect any payment for any of this! hahahahaha!!!!!!
• And if they call you for help with work after you’ve left, you have 48 hours to get back to them and help. This is teetering on… “fill in the blanks”…. and not even enforceable!
Who do their lawyers think they are? Very thuggish! I asked others that were laid off with me and they had similar language. And one that worked for 3 years only got 2 weeks worth of a paycheck.
This is all provable and true! To those of you still there, this is how they treat you after years of service, that’s if they don’t put you on a CAP or PIP to manage you out like someone said in a post on the UHG link here. They did this recently to my friend who worked in UHC for 25 years!

What is your daily commute look like from home to HQ? What time you start if you have kids in school and how do you manage day to days life?

I’m starting to wonder if a regular workweek exists here anymore. Why is everyone doing extra time and acting like that’s just part of the job now?

I’m doing the work of two people.

Commuting in to an office to sit on zoom all day is expensive and depressing.

We do more and more hard work while org leaders reap all the benefits. Nothing trickles down.

I’ll just hang out doing the minimum until I’m laid off.

I joined just four months ago but I hate it already. I got lucky and another company just offered me a role that pays a little less but is much closer to what I actually want and hopefully comes with less toxicity. I am grateful for the option, but I am wondering how much it'll be an issue for my resume in the future to leave a job after such a short time.

you do not want to work at dell and you dont want to invest here. get out

I wanted to share my experience working within the Belk IT department. I have been out of this position for some time, but from what I’ve learned, it hasn't changed and it has somehow gotten even worse. While store employees face their own set of challenges, the backend IT support structure is completely dysfunctional and treats its tech workers with an absolute lack of respect.

To start, the geographical territory assigned to a single IT field worker is massive and brutal, often matching the exact same coverage area as a Regional Vice President (RVP). Despite this massive responsibility, the compensation is insulting. The pay is so far below industry standards that it rivals fast-food wages. Because of the vast territory, you are forced to travel anywhere from 30 minutes to over 3 hours just to get to a location. This makes the role completely unsustainable for anyone with a family or anyone who values a healthy work-life balance.

Once you actually arrive at a store, the execution is a joke. Nine times out of ten, a field tech is forced to escalate an issue because our on-site capabilities are severely restricted. You are then left waiting for hours just to get a response from a clearly apathetic corporate support team or an offshore team that is incredibly difficult and tedious to communicate with. Furthermore, Belk’s Point of Sale (POS) systems are completely unreliable, and actual application support is virtually non-existent. As a result, the standard "fix" is to completely re-image the machine, forcing the tech to sit around waiting hours for the process to complete just so the store can finally use the register again. And don't even try to complain or share what you've noticed with your manager. They know what's up and will never care. Ever.

There is so much more dysfunction I could detail, but I want the store employees to know this. When you see an IT person walk into your building, understand that we are miserable too. The only motivation corporate provides is an empty "thank you" from someone who never even shows up to the Teams meetings. The managers shares it with us as if we are impressed by that, and as if verbal appreciation pays the bills during a time of massive inflation and a harsh economy. The only real thanks I needed was the final good riddance to this joke of a workplace.

With all of the systems issues we shouldn’t be counted for today being in office. I went home after a few hours of spinning systems.

My son was born when I had a remote job, then Covid happened and I was home all the time (he’s always been in daycare while I’ve worked, though). Now he’s in first grade and this back to office is ki-ling me because I can’t be in multiple locations at once. I get him to school at 8. We live just north of spring and on my best days, I’m still coming into the parking garage after 9am. I have a friend who helps me with carpooling from our neighborhood a couple of days a week and gets the boys to their mutual after school activities so I can meet them there but I feel like all I do is manage a commute to satisfy a rule that is not in the best interest of anyone who wants to also be present with their children. I was always very good at my job and being the mom with fully stocked cooler at the field. I look around and wonder who else is quietly dealing with this? And why aren’t we saying anything as a collective voice. I’m tired of decisions being made for me by men whose wives or nannies have made them believe this is manageable for people who are lacking coparenting support.