There was a discussion online recently about burnout and who should foot the bill for it. The comments were, as you’d expect, a mix of exhausted workers comparing war stories and the occasional person who still genuinely believes that “reasonable overtime” is a reasonable concept.

One comment stuck with me. Someone pointed out that if you strip the word “burnout” away and describe it plainly, what you’re often talking about is an employer causing lasting physical and psychological harm through negligence or cost-cutting. Put it that way and the question of responsibility becomes a lot less murky. We already have a principle for this in most shops: if you break it, you pay for it. Apparently that principle dissolves the moment the thing being broken is a person.

There’s a story doing the rounds this week that I can’t stop thinking about, and it’s not really about the glasses. Well, it starts with the glasses — Meta’s Ray-Ban smart glasses recording people in bathrooms, in intimate moments, capturing banking details — all of it being piped through to AI trainers who were then fired when they had the audacity to speak up about it. Over a thousand workers, gone, after blowing the whistle on what they were being asked to review.

There’s a post doing the rounds online at the moment — probably rage bait, probably reposted for the thousandth time — but it touched a nerve with me, and I’ve been thinking about it all morning. The premise: a homeowner hides 100 miniature rubber ducks around their house and leaves a note for their cleaner asking them to find all the ducks and put them in a jar, as a way of verifying that a proper deep clean was done.

There’s a story doing the rounds this week that’s really stuck with me. A woman clocks up 45 years at the Commonwealth Bank — one of the most profitable financial institutions in the country — and when the milestone arrives, her son shares what she received: a marked pin and some flowers. That’s it. From a bank that regularly posts billions in annual profit.

Her son called it pathetic. Honestly? Hard to argue.

There’s been a lot of chatter online lately about unions pushing for five weeks of annual leave instead of the current four. The predictable response has been a mix of enthusiasm from workers and pearl-clutching from certain quarters about how this will “destroy the economy” or make Australia “uncompetitive.”

What strikes me most about this whole discussion is how we’ve been conditioned to think that four weeks is somehow generous, when it hasn’t budged in over fifty years. Think about that for a moment. Half a century. In that time, worker productivity has skyrocketed thanks to technology (hello, DevOps automation and everything else we’ve built), yet our mandated time off has remained frozen in the 1970s. Something doesn’t add up.

There’s been some noise online about Amazon’s plans to replace 600,000 workers with robots by 2027, supposedly saving 30 cents per item. On the surface, it sounds like one of those efficiency wins that corporate types love to brag about in quarterly earnings calls. But dig a little deeper, and it’s just another chapter in the story of late-stage capitalism eating itself.

Let me be clear: I’m not a Luddite. I work in IT and DevOps, I’m fascinated by technological advancement, and I’ve spent enough time automating workflows to understand the appeal of efficiency. But there’s something deeply unsettling about the way we’re approaching this particular wave of automation.

Been following the latest drama unfolding with the US government shutdown and the air traffic controller situation, and honestly, it’s a perfect example of what happens when ideology crashes headfirst into reality. Sean Duffy, the former reality TV host turned Transportation Secretary, is threatening to fire air traffic controllers who are calling in sick during the shutdown. His brilliant logic? “When you come to work, you get paid. If you don’t come to work, you don’t get paid.”

I’ve been mulling over this idea that’s been doing the rounds lately - reducing the pension age for people in physically demanding jobs. On the surface, it sounds reasonable enough. After all, we’ve all seen the tradie whose back is absolutely shot by 60, or the labourer who can barely walk without wincing. But the more I dig into it, the more I realise this isn’t just about fairness - it’s about the messy intersection of work, dignity, and how we value different types of labour in this country.

The recent news of Tesla’s sales plummeting by over 80% in Sweden isn’t just another business headline - it’s a fascinating case study of what happens when Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” mentality collides with established Nordic labour traditions.

Looking at the numbers is staggering - from being one of the top-selling car brands in Sweden just months ago to dropping behind companies that sell big rigs. But what’s even more interesting is how this spectacular decline reflects a broader story about corporate hubris and worker solidarity.

The discussion around public holiday surcharges always gets heated, especially during the Australia Day long weekend. This year, there’s been quite a bit of confusion about when businesses can actually apply these surcharges, given that January 26 fell on a Sunday.

Let’s clear something up straight away - today, January 26, isn’t technically a public holiday in Victoria. The official public holiday is tomorrow, Monday, January 27. This means hospitality venues can’t charge a public holiday surcharge today, though they can still apply their regular weekend rates.