Work Harder

"Work Harder" - When Your Survival Becomes Their Inconvenience This song is a receipt with a melody. December 2021. I'm dissociating from trauma, four months without pay, resorting to sex work to survive, and Apple's Business Partner Richard Victory tells me everyone is "working hard" to resolve my concerns, but most people are out for the holidays, so I'll just have to wait. I told him: "Work harder." He thought I was being difficult. I was creating documentation. "Work Harder" is what happens when you take the exact language of institutional violence, the "case closed," the "Apple's perspective," the "we don't owe that to you," the "these are separate things", and force it to look at itself in the mirror. It's what happens when your employer starves you through bureaucratic "miscommunication" for four months, then tells you the matter is "closed" without ever engaging with your arguments. This isn't metaphor. This is transcript. Every line in this song maps to actual exchanges with Apple HR. The "policy" and "process" and "closure" Richard hid behind. The way my rent didn't pause while corporate took seasonal leave. The info-dumping tactic after I disclosed my dissociative disorder. The refusal to debate, discuss, or defend, just "Apple has a policy" on repeat while I'm explaining I had to do sex work to pay my bills. I brought them a wound with a timestamp and name. They brought me a script and a neatly filed frame. So I turned their favourite corporate command into a mirror: Work harder. Actually carry the harm you cause. Write down what happened where the light can stay. Make ethics real where you hide behind forms. Until the room admits the human. Until your power learns responsibility. This song doesn't want your sympathy. It wants accountability that works as hard as the people being crushed by its absence. For everyone who's been told to wait while they're drowning: For everyone whose trauma got "batched" into one convenient email. For everyone who had to disclose their mental illness just to be taken seriously. For everyone told "we're all working hard" by people who get to rest while you fight to survive. For everyone who learned that "case closed" just means they closed their eyes. This one documents what they did. In their own words. Set to music they can't dismiss. --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- "You don't get to cut a person and call it routine." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Content warning: This song references workplace trauma, financial abuse, survival sex work, and institutional gaslighting. If you're currently experiencing similar situations, please know: documenting everything isn't paranoia—it's self-preservation. And your humanity counts more than their tidy excuse.