Now. It sounds jaded and pessimistic, edgy too, but it's the god damn truth. So downvote away.

I don't think everyone realizes just how worthless and disposable they are in comparison to the other 300 million people and counting, not even including all the foreigners competing with you for absolute penny scraps like hyenas fighting over shards of bone in the desert.

If you do not have a major inheritance / retirement investment portfolio, successful business and the like, employers own you, they own your life and your freedom, your healthcare, the food you feed yourself with, the clothes on your back, the roof over your head etc., you are to be expected to act and work like a slave because that's essentially what you are, a replaceable warm body.

Almost anybody with an average / slightly above average intelligence level can learn the job you are going to do, and do it well, many better than you can. And if you think what you do is hard, or the barrier to entry higher, guess what, there are plenty of other people on this God forsaken planet that can do that too, and a decent chunk of them could really use a job.

Employers can, will, and continue to treat people like absolute garbage and psychopathically manipulate them as the human resources that they are so long as it maintains a profitable and economically feasible endeavor to do so