'I give up': Woman with two degrees and three layoffs says she is now rejected from janitor jobs

A post on Reddit’s r/recruitinghell has talked about someone having two degrees and IT certifications. She fought hard to get into the corporate world, worked in HR, and has been laid off three times. She is now applying to security guard and janitor positions and is being rejected from those too.

She has no savings. She is working part-time customer service. She completed four interviews and an assessment for a customer service role that turned out to be a ghost job that was never hiring.

“I give up,” she wrote.

What follows is not just a job market complaint; it is a comprehensive accounting of what it feels like when every door closes at once. The nursing school she considered is too competitive and she has been rejected from that too. Moving is not possible without money. Having children feels increasingly out of reach as her financial instability drags on. Part-time work offers no PTO or maternity leave. The tradwife fantasy she suggested by saying “f*** it, I want to be a tradwife” is not a genuine plan but an expression of exhaustion from a system that has demanded everything and returned nothing.

“It seems like I am not good enough for the working world. I am not getting any younger.”

What Reddit said

The thread engaged with the full weight of the post rather than just the job market dimension.

One commenter gently challenged the tradwife fantasy with honesty: “The kind of men you’d actually want to marry are struggling the same way you are. They’re also chronically unemployed and poor, they can’t sustain themselves much less a wife and kids. The men who want a ‘trad’ lifestyle are idiots who fail upward.”

Another offered a warning from family experience: “I have relatives that never worked and let the husband support the family. Basically, they are held hostage because if the marriage goes south, they have no skills or own money to support themselves.”

One matched the original poster’s credentials while expressing sympathy and understanding: “I have two degrees: a Bachelor’s in Psychology earned in 1997 and a Master’s in Human Resource Management earned in 2003, along with years of experience and certifications. I understand this frustration more than you know.”

And one reached for the honest bottom of the situation: “It feels sometimes like the only hope for our generation is a literal miracle, like winning the lottery or a crypto win. Otherwise, it feels like financial stability is never gonna come.”

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