Seriously, every time I hear arguments similar to your coworkers, I say the same damn thing, “WTF are you doing here?”

I’ve also heard things like, “Canadians are just not competitive, too laid back, and/or lazy,” and it makes me roll my eyes, like they don’t understand the culture here and just think the US is more “healthily” competitive, people are somehow “more motivated” to work, etc.

“Like seriously, WTF are you still here?”

I grew up in another part of the world and I know what “not competitive” looks like; people literally do not want to care about competition, and their only response when actual competition comes around (inevitably when there’s a similar business in town) would be to lower prices and hammer them ads when a better player comes around. They’re so lazy that they would set up a business, treat their employees badly, have literally no proper vision and path for their business, and expect their business to auto-pilot to success, and for some, their businesses will somehow survive. Workers are also lazy; pushing responsibilities around is basically the national work culture, and those with any sense of responsibility ends up getting burdened by all the work people push around. You can certainly survive and actually thrive here if you know how to protect your time and energy, and continually skill-up (most people don’t do that), but work will feel like a slog a lot of the times just cause of all the above reasons.