When you’re working for the man (read: any company), it’s hard to have any security about your job, no matter how good you are at it. The bottom line will always come first for the higher-ups and if you’re on the list, you’re on the list. Not only is a layoff hard to recover from financially, but it’s also hard to recover from emotionally, as it’s difficult to separate our worth as humans from our worth as workers. Our culture praises «hard work» so fervently that when we encounter a career setback, it can feel like it devalues us as individuals. Of course, the solution to this is to find self-worth elsewhere, but that’s hard to do in our contemporary climate. 

Luckily, the antiwork subreddit is an online haven away from grind culture, here to lend a helping ear to those suffering work troubles. So when Redditor u/Dry_Drummer_2297 shared their husband’s recent surprise layoff, commenters came to the rescue.