I want to apologize for making it sound like I expected you all to stick your necks out for this job. I know everybody is in different places financially and cant actually afford to take direct action, and I know what that can do to you morale wise. I don't want to do anything to make you feel like you're in the wrong for not speaking up more.

I've worked way worse jobs than this. Im used to employers and supervisors who give me even less agency than I have here, even if the amount of agency we have is way less than what EMT would want us to believe. It dosn't make this job okay simply because others are worse, but it empowers me in a way. Theres nothing Ariel or Jody could ever do to me that I couldn't just brush off. I have a supportive family who I could work for if I wanted, and VR positions like this are a dime a dozen, so even the worst case scenario of me getting fired is really just a speed bump for me. They don't hold any power over me, and at the end of the day its easy for me to separate anything they do or think from my own self worth.

Ultimately though I don't really work with Ariel or Jody. I work with all of you, eight hours a day, and the apathy I feel from all of you sometimes eats at me in a way thats worse than anything anybody in management could do. I know we all need a place to vent, voicing your feelings is healthy, but way too frequently it just becomes this negative feedback loop that spirals out of control until it dosn't feel like we're content with anyone around us feeling happy at all.

I'm well aware that just speaking up will probably end up doing nothing. I have an entire year of experience with this already, and I don't keep talking about all the ways things can change for the better because im somehow ignorant of how stagnant things have been for the past year. I do it because theres no way I can make any progress by focusing on every time I've failed, and some days it just feels like thats all anyone ever wants me to do.

I don't expect any of you to suddenly become optimists or anything. I don't expect you to flip your entire world view or suppress any emotions around me because thats not exactly easy. I just wanted to say this, because its been bothering me for a while, and if theres nothing else we have control over, its how we treat each other.