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Office jobs want you for some specific part of your brain, which they'll work until it stops working correctly. Then some hyper specific, unnamed, hard to define part of your psyche is missing all the time, and you're still expected to be able to socially function despite this, so you cobble together a backup personality that works around it, and become someone who laughs at Borat references.
So yeah, it's pretty accurate.
I got an office job a couple months ago, after years working in some pretty intense homeless shelters. Now I get paid more and 90% of my job is sitting alone in my office with zero supervision, reading and playing games on my phone. I just had a check-in with my boss where she kept telling me how amazing I'm doing at this. I tell her that I I'm spending most of my time just sitting on my ass, and she tells me that's normal and okay with this company.
It pays the bills but I really feel like I'm defrauding someone and I was definitely doing more meaningful work before. My bf says I should stop worrying and keep the easy job but it also gives me anxiety. My internalized work ethic sucks sometimes.
If you haven't, you should give Bullshit Jobs a read. It was honestly enlightening to see exactly the way I felt about my work explained thoroughly and with backing testimonies by other people in other careers who felt the same as I did. Really contributed to me knowing what I wanted to do and helped me leave that soulsucking role.
but I really feel like I’m defrauding someone
remember though time theft from your work is cool and good
They say don't look a gift horse in the mouth. I feel what you mean by internalized work ethic and defrauding someone however the alternative here is busting your ass so the company can see 0.1% growth or whatever meaningless number. All my favorite jobs have been where I do the least. Keeps the mind free of bullshit, at least for me
Weird shower thought: as a guy who’s nearly 30 now, I remember there just being A LOT of “office work sucks” media being on the TV. And it lead to a lot of my peers all being like “oh that must be why our parents are so miserable, working in an office, I never want to do that” so we all like went to trade school or graphic design college to try and become some freelancer laborer, and 15 years later a lot of us are exhausted and underpaid. I know a lot of people who today are like “yah know maybe majoring in accounting and getting a job where I sit in an air conditioned room and spend most of my time playing flash games while pretending to work wasn’t so bad, maybe my parents generation was blaming office work on their misery when it was actually something else.”
But I’ve never worked in an office so maybe it does actually suck that much. Idk.
I don’t wanna get all political but I think the connecting link is capitalism and wage theft
I don’t wanna get all political
Good we try to keep this place politics free.
:im-doing-my-part:
I mean I think another part of it is the internet and increasing computer literacy means we’ve automated a lot of the old admin jobs that had to be done by desk workers. Used to be anyone who could type and had any sort of business major from any college could land some kind of job flying a desk, updating windows to display 20 instead of 19 in the calendar or whatever BS. Nowadays teenagers can write bots to do that in an afternoon.
Now imagine how miserable you'd be sitting in an office doing a job you know you could easily automate, but also knowing if you wrote that bot you'd be jobless.
:graeber:
The work can be alienating, and social dynamics a tad weird. But yeah, for the most part you get a decent paycheck for sitting in an air conditioned room. My dad worked his whole life in a factory and then as a trucker. His advice was that work sucks no matter what you do, so do your best to get a job that won't ruin your body. I sometimes daydream about doing something more physically active for work, then I remember that I'd have to do said physical activity for 7 or more hours a day.
I'm trying to do the independent contractor thing and it's not as hard as you would think. Lot of time spent on your knees, but it's nice feeling like I'm making a difference in people's lives and I make my own hours.
Right, FWIW my parents are working class immigrants. While we had skilled tradespeople in our family, I think the assumption was that a well treated and well paid tradesperson was some weird quirk of the formerly socialist state we lived in and not something that happens under capitalism. So there was a firm belief in the dichotomy between well paid office job and getting treated like shit and ruining your body otherwise in my house. That's not quite true in practice, but how were my parents to know.
Most of my experiences working in hard labor jobs were for pretty shit pay. At least in the U.S. it's very common to make maybe a dollar above minimum wage and if you want to go beyond that you need to have a few thousand dollars in tools and a truck or go into business for yourself.
I have the dumbest office job. I go in, walk upstairs to my office, sit in my room alone all day, leave and go home. I only ever see anyone when I need to go to the kitchen, or when I go to make a copy.
and yet it's imperative that I go in. My boss doesn't even work in my building. So most of the time I don't even go in, and I never tell him. Barely even talk to him unless it's an emergency.
I like that i don't have to deal with anyone, but it's so dumb that they really want people in the space...
Gotta justify owning that office space.
the best part is, I"m kinda exaggerating because i don't even have an office space. I work in an empty classroom that they just slapped an extra desk in for me.
the students don't come in because they're still remote. The rest of the building is sorta used for differnt things, but have nothing to do with me. so either way the space is being used for something if i'm there or not.
Ah well that's cool. Er wait no its not fuck.
honestly, at this point i just don't really give a shit. I'm on a mental health break from my previous employment that fucked me up. I'll deal with internal boring nonsense rather than emotionally and intellectually abused while living in poverty.
Yeah I'm in a similar situation, I got fired (likely for union agitating but of course they didn't say that) but I had like 150 hours pto saved up so my last check plus my savings means I get a chance to take a much needed vacation before hitting the job hunt, though I already have a few places I'm thinking of applying. Literally haven't been able to take a vacation in years outside like an extended weekend here and there.
wtf is your job??
so moral of the story, I don't have the experience of this video at all, except when I ask the building secretary what she's eating for lunch.
The other woman who works downstairs and I have the same conversation
"good morning PPF, how are you?"
"good morning J---, im doin alright, how are you?"
and then she doesn't even respond so I just walk away.
“good morning PPF, how are you?”
“good morning J—, im doin alright, how are you?”
and then she doesn’t even respond so I just walk away.
lol I've had this conversation so many times
it's funny because I work in the English as a Second or Other Language field and we always have to be like 'often times, "what's up" or "how are you" aren't actual questions you need to answer'
cubicle walls aren't that high anymore. the bosses like "open" floor plans, so they can more easily see what is one everyone's screens. so, more panopticon style.
Also hot desking so you don't have an assigned space you can personalize.
A big part of why office work is so soul-sucking is because of the internal sacrifice you have to make to your individual personality.
Basically, you have to compromise who you are as a person to fit the benign, false-friendly unoffensive neutrality of the company's branding.
Since clearly the company's "personality" is just carefully curated marketing optics, it comes off as disingenuous and inauthentic. Then people sort of have to fit in those unnatural molds in exchange for the stability of working there.
I never struggled with the soullessness of office culture, although after a few years I opted out of as many group lunches and corporate retreats as I could because I'm just generally shy and uncomfortable functioning in non-work-related conversations.
I think it's just that work in general sucks. even if it's close to your passion (assuming that concept is even valid) it's really fucking hard to do it all day, almost every day, for year after year after year, whether you want to or not. what that looks like for office workers is a lot of sitting in one chair and either doing draining mental labor or tactically slacking off which creates a whole new dynamic of slowly-creeping dread. office work kind of creates the equivalent of middle class neurosis - it sucks but you push yourself in lockstep with work needs because you're terrified of losing your supposedly-easy air-conditioned job. the job is actually easier, but the massive psychic damage of all this anxiety takes its own unique toll over time.
I don't think this is going to be any different under socialism btw. labor is still alienating. rocket engineers still live in terror of screwing up badly enough to be sent down to the country. in my mind the advantages are that socialism can turn the fruits of labor to social ends, and that it's not structurally beholden to infinite growth so we could cut back working hours as productive forces advance enough to get away with it.
tactically slacking off which creates a whole new dynamic of slowly-creeping dread
This is exactly where I'm at right now :agony-soviet:
pretty much. at least, pre-covid. only differences are that 1) commuting and sitting in traffic actually sucks 2) it does get old pretty fast and 3) you do live in constant fear of your boss.
But yeah, it's definitely bullshit that office workers make more than restaurant workers.
It's bullshit that restaurant workers make less than office workers*
Small but important distinction.
you're right! thank you for the correction, comrade! that is indeed what I meant to say!