The ideal employee works hard and the exhausted body and soul can exercise or meditate again in limited free time. The problem with this view is, according to burnout, that self-care is a fallacy that relieves a toxic work culture of responsibility. Connor Franta focuses in this podcast on the social causes of burnouts. He investigates Amazon’s work culture and speaks to a supermarket manager who ended up in hospital exhausted after the umpteenth cutback she had to deal with. Experts talk about strikes, the unwinding of a stress cycle and the influence of a new investor class. Moral of Franta’s story: you can’t solve a burnout with self-care. The best form of self-care remains collective action.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of 11 June 2022