Your expectations are correct. This is just a horribly, inhumane comment on every level. It's the equivalent to telling someone suffering from relationship abuse "Just get a new spouse!"
What's wrong with telling the abused to exit their current situation as quickly as possible?
It's VERY WRONG to attempt to end one's life in order to exit the toxic work/relationship/marriage, like the unnamed Amazon employee did.
Let's assume you're a programmer. Ever get annoyed when someone comes along while you're dealing with a problem and goes, "Why don't you just..." without any acknowledgement of the many complexities? And that if you could "just" do this or that, you fucking would have already?
Yeah, it's like that.
Ah, "it's not always that simple". Fair enough, thanks.
(And two down votes already for asking an honest question? Stay classy, HN.)
1. They're not currently employed which means they would enter into poverty with no exit strategy for that.
2. They have children which means without relatives on both sides of the relationship willing to help with the transition to separation (and possibly divorce if they're married) it's going to be hard to do this. It also means going into poverty in some cases whether or not the person has a job since caring for the material needs of children is an added burden. And if the spouse was also abusing them that means leaving them in their care isn't an option either.
Simply put, it's not easy when it comes to leaving one bad situation. Whether it's an abusive employer or an abusive spouse.
If you don't truly believe that you can affect your external circumstances by changing your actions, you'll be constantly wondering why crappy things happen to you and looking for external saviours. If you do believe you can change your life, you'll start doing it, and your life is more likely to get better.
Sometimes people take the same approach to their jobs, their managers, all other relationships. If they leave, who else will do this job? Then the manager will lose his job, whatever else runs through their minds.
Life is never binary.
Then let them. Don't let them complain about what they're going through incessantly.
Sure, everybody complains about their job/relationships once in a while, but when that's all you talk/complain about and you get a martyr complex (I have to do this because nobody else will) that's when you remind them that this too is a choice they made.
Tell someone to "just make a choice" when if they leave their abusive relationship, their children will be devistated and they will lose their health insurance. What will you tell them? "Just go get a job with health insurance!"? I hope not.
Tell someone "just make a choice" when they have convinced themselves that leaving would be quitting, and it would go against their very fabric of who they self-identify with to do so.
So easy to make choices like you describe in hindsight, and when you have ample fallback options. But when you don't it requires great courage and an amazing support system, as well as emotional stability. Most people sadly don't have that, and to sit here and say "well it's a choice you made!" is beyond heartless. If you see someone suffering in a scenario where to you it may seem like "Well stupid! Just make a chose to leave" that is a good sign that you are probably wrong, and don't understand the situation at all. We are human beings, not emotionless robots. Our brains don't go (if desireableSituation !== 1) { leave() }
I hope you never have to be in these shoes.
Wow, way to miss the point entirely. They are making a choice. Doing something they hate to remain getting paid.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Learned_helplessness
Once you start thinking that you have no choice, that life is against you, it becomes self perpetuating. You don't tell people "just make a choice" you make it very clear that they're already making the choice. They're the ones with agency.
Sure their choices have consequences, but all choices do. Ultimately they're in charge of their destiny, unless of course they're slaves and prisoners. No matter what you think/say about Amazon, if you're a software dev at Amazon, you are nowhere near a slave or prisoner.
If you think you have no control over your destiny, you're destined to get stuck in the same rut and experience the same mistakes and pitfalls over and over again.