Coming home too damn tired to do anything else, even including chores, is top for me.
I have dishes lying around, laundry needing to be done at somepoint, some extra small tasks to do. But, trying to go ‘above and beyond’ for a shitty job just leaves you with nothing left to do them, having to waste time off to finally do them.
I’m in a building that’s not my home, for 8 hours (used to have some days where it was 10 hours), a night. Where my company tries to tell me to treat their building that I work in, as a second home. Dealing with all of these tasks that ultimately mean nothing in the grand scheme of things. Dealing with people who conveniently forget a lot of the time, as to how to be a normal human being and they being at your expense.
And in addition to coming home too damn tired to do anything else, I’m sometimes worrying if what I’m making now for however many hours, is enough to cover everything I need to have or want to have.
Many times the people who would make the best decisions are not authorized to make decisions.
Should we go into the office every day? Well the workers say no, objective productivity measurements say no, the environment says no, but some insipid sack of shit feels like it’s better.
Should we spend twenty minutes improving this process? No, some higher up who doesn’t understand software development decided that we don’t do it that way. Keep doing it manually.
Should we compensate people well enough so they don’t leave after a year or two? No, pay the absolute minimum and keep hiring entry level people. Saving so much on labor costs!
Our Thanksgiving prime rib was over-done. We’ve been a bit slow lately, and so I’ve had to take more vacation time. Or, sit at my desk and do nothing. We don’t get as much free company apparel as my last job. There, we got Carhartts, Nike quarter zips, Weatherproof jackets, coolers… that was pretty nice.
Oh, and the main thing is the customers. I wish the program managers could do all the interacting with them so I would never have to talk to them.
That we are contributing to a dehumanizing system with no purpose other than propping up inequality and injustice and constantly generating more power for psychopaths to misuse to spread war and terror and destroy the planet and every living thing on it.
oK sOcIaLiSt
Yikes! I wouldn’t want to work at your company!
I honestly hate work itself, I’m not doing what I want if I’m working. There is no job I want.
I tell this to people and they simply do not understand. “What if you found something you like doing, then it’s not really work!” It’s still working. I will not enjoy it. I would rather have the freedom to choose what I’m doing at any particular time. People just cannot grasp that idea. But I also may not be explaining myself well, such is life.
People are brainwashed to believe that their value is tied to their productivity
Depends what value. It is good to be contributing to society. But you can still be contributing and not working 996
True, but most people confuse contributing to society with contributing to billionaire pocket linings
There is a difference
I could be a professional gamer, but doing it for 40 hours a week every week, would get tiring.
It’s the monotony that kills me in ANYTHING I do. I don’t know if it’s the ADHD in me or what, but I love variety. My job is painfully easy, but my god, it is such a drain to do the same thing day in and day out.
How to get a promotion you’re supposed to first go out of your way to do extra work they should hire for for no additional pay. I tried it at 2 jobs, both times I ended up doing the extra work for no pay for years before I left.
Meanwhile, every year, the yearly raise is less than inflation.
I don’t hate work itself. I hate companies and the system that forces me to work a job I don’t give a fuck about.
I don’t have the resources nor opportunities to just work on something I love until it can maybe make some money. Unfortunately, that’s reserved to the wealthy or the lucky. I’ve been working in private on many things that don’t earn money. Maybe what I’m working on is shit. Maybe what I’m working on doesn’t matter. Maybe it never can be profitable. But I can’t throw everything away and just dedicate hundreds or thousands of hours to it like some lucky few can.
This is why UBI will always have my support. It’s my firm belief that anti-UBI people are actually afraid of the competition is would cause. Imagine if instead of 100 people having the time and resources to compete with you, there’d be thousands, maybe even millions. Imagine suddenly thousands of people actually digging into politics and deciding they want to give it a shot. Imagine thousands deciding they wanted to do their hobby fulltime and give it a shot at becoming something. Woodworking, climbing, athletics, journalism, gaming, content creation, mechanics…
There’d be a flurry of activity.I remember an electrician lecturing me about how a desk job is not real work. I have nothing but respect for blue collar jobs. But fuck that particular guy. If he knew how intensely boring, complicated, and time sensitive some knowledge work is, he’d STFU. I never hired him again, found a much better electrician.
I was a welder who was promoted up to quality manager, and I can tell you that while my current role is nowhere near as physically demanding, it is absolutely harder.
Perhaps it’s my ADHD, perhaps it’s because I’ve never really been trained for office work, but the thing I struggle with most is prioritising tasks, making sure I’m doing enough of all the things required of me. I never had to do that before. My foreman would assign me tasks, I’d do the tasks. Easy. Also, my current role intersects heavily with health and safety legislation, so I’ve had to study for (and pass) a NEBOSH qualification. I never failed a welding test, but I had to resit the NEBOSH.
I do desk work for a company that mostly does manufacturing, and I’ve had a few of the workshop guys come into the office, take one look at my screen, and tell me they’d never be able to do my job. I usually tell them I probably couldn’t do their job either so we’re even
Who does he think designs all the shit that he works on?
I have less days off than a peasant from feudal times…
Don’t worry protoserf, feudal times are making a comeback.
Sounds like it’s time to go “below & within” for your employer
•When you have your way that works for you to accomplish something that somebody else does differently, and they insist on you doing things their way even though the end result would be the same regardless of which way you did it.
There are definitely times when there is a legit right way to do something vs a wrong way, but there are also definitely times when people insist on just adding unnecessary time and work to what you’re already doing for absolutely no reason.
Like, if you’re doing something kind of hectic, and you have tools or equipment you temporarily placed a certain way for a good reason, but it bothers somebody else to see them placed that way, and they insist on you adding additional steps to your own task instead of just leaving shit alone and letting you finish what you’re already doing. If it’s related to a safety or contamination issue, I get it, but if not, it seems pretty unnecessary. This is especially infuriating when the situation is reversed and the same people break their own unnecessary rules (like it’s somehow different because it’s them having to deal with something stressful and hectic?).
•When people act petty for absolutely no reason. Sometimes I intentionally set stuff out so I can have it all ready to use the next day. I try to avoid doing this if there is a good chance somebody else might actually need it, but, it saves me time and trips back and forth between PPE and non PPE areas when I can just grab everything and don’t have to go back and grab something I forgot. There have been a few times where I’ll have everything laid out and ready to use (on my own work area), and I’ll come in ready to just grab what I need and get started, only to find every item I had ready to go has been moved. What are the chances I neatly laid multiple items out on my own desk or work space before leaving, simply because I just forgot them or wasn’t bothering to clean up after myself?
•Having to sit in one uncomfortable spot, surrounded by other people and distractions to work on something that can 100% done on a laptop at home (or anywhere else).
It’s the feeling that ultimately what I do is meaningless.
Thing is, I work in quality management and health and safety. From a manufacturing perspective what I do is about as meaningful as it gets. I’m one of the people who makes sure that no one gets hurt! Trouble is, most people in the company seem to have offloaded their responsibility to our office, regardless of how often we tell them that isn’t true.
It should be trivial to roll out a new measure that will ensure a reduction in incidents and accidents, but that measure is only useful while the folks on the shop floor actually pay attention. And they don’t. Not until someone gets hurt, at which point we get asked why we aren’t doing more to ensure things like that don’t happen.
It’s demoralising
I love the job I do. I hate the struggle to make enough to be comfortable. Like the pay is always $12,000 lower than where it needs to be at in order to not struggle at all, and it always limits what I can afford to do when I’m not at work. I haven’t taken a proper and real out of state vacation in a decade and drive a 19 year old car.
I love what i do and the kids and people that i work with. Administration is incompetent and has become more and more micromanaging because they don’t understand that they’re the problem. I’ve been out since October, going back in Feb, will probably quit in may at the end of the school year and do something different.
None of the things you mention has anything to do with the job itself. How you show up and when is what matters.
There’s a lot of mythology around work that is just no longer true and hasn’t been true since the 1990s, if not the 1980s.
The only time your boss cares about you going “above and beyond” is in situations where it will make them look good to their boss. Don’t waste your energy going above and beyond just randomly. It won’t get noticed and it’ll only burn you out.
Providing quality customer service is never wasted effort, but it doesn’t mean putting up with entitled customers. If people aren’t interacting with you at least calmly, don’t waste the energy engaging. Don’t engage with adults having tantrums.
Most importantly - don’t dilute your wage. If you’re hourly, be meticulous about clock-in and clock-out times. Don’t do work unless you’re on the clock. If you’re salary, that means you give what you have; it doesn’t mean you kill yourself for the job. If I’m sick, my salary pays for the ~30% effort that I’ve got to give. Trying to give 100% when you don’t have it is a great way to burn yourself out and gain nothing in return. If you’re good at something other people value, never ever do it for free. All people will do is take advantage.
Most household chores that actually need to be done boil down to a handful of things that need daily attention and can be done in 15 minutes or less, the weekly crap that takes 30 minutes or less once a week, and then monthly and quarterly maintenance cycles. If you’re spending more than ~30 min. a day, plus ~1 hour on the weekends doing choring, you’re probably wasting your energy on things that don’t truly matter. You can scale back and not worry so much about keeping your space ready for a Martha Stewart catalog. Focus on what’s truly essential and let the rest slide.
So it takes about 30 minutes just to clean the bathroom. For me, that’s dusting top to bottom so the cobwebs and dust don’t build up and baseboards and light fixtures only need to be better cleaned a few times a year; cleaning the sink and cabinets, toilet inside and out, tub inside and out, shower walls, soap dishes/dispensers, tp holder, vacuuming and mopping. My bathroom isn’t that big either. Then there’s the bedroom, laundry room, hallways, living room and kitchen. That’s not counting laundry or cleaning the kitchen after meals. Can you please share how you do everything in 30 minutes a week?
That’s the trick - I don’t do everything. It just isn’t physically possible. So, I don’t kill myself trying.
For a full bathroom (sink, toilet, tub and shower), I prioritize the stuff that matters most - toilet and sink. Cleaning those takes me 10 minutes, tops. Those are what stays clean on a day to day basis. Everything else gets dealt with weekly (sweeping, trash), monthly (tub, shower) or less frequently.
The lie Americans have told themselves is that it is possible for a family of 2-4 to perform a ridiculous number of tasks to live in 4-star hotel conditions their entire adult lives. It’s a fantasy that has people killing themselves to dust corners of their homes that literally nobody sees or cares about.
You’ve got better things to do with your time than dusting. Like resting from your day job.
The way that I read the person whose comment you’re replying to you clean the bathroom in 30 min weekly that’s one weeknight clean or half your weekend cleans.
I don’t think they are saying 30 min a week, but 30 min weekly tasks over multiple days (I calculate about 4 hours per week which is close to my “maintenance” cleaning)
Ah, that makes more sense. I try to do that but the irregular work hours messes with it so I just roll with it as best I can.
