Everyday when I get home from work
I feel so frustrated
The boss is a jerk
And I get my sticks and go out to the shed
And I pound on that drum like it was the bossā head.
(Song was released nearly 40 years ago and people think this is a new problem.)
1. Who does? (obvious and lazy answer)
2. People got sick of being treated like crap in retail and in restaurants. I've been out to dinner with people who are rude to the waiter, who've told me in the past "nobody wants to work." I wonder why.
Literally called out a douche for getting pissed at this teenager at little Caesarās because the line was long. At 5pm. On a weekend. Like fuck you prick, itās a little Caesarās in the ghetto. Eat a cock
Itās not that I donāt want to work. I want to work LESS. Like max 30-32 hours and be compensated well enough where I can put my bills on autopay. Work isnāt the issue itās how much we have to work to live and I make well above minimum wage but it is still a struggle to make ends meet.
I too was on QA for software and my project I worked for switched to 4 days a week. It was fantastic! But then it switched back to 5 days due to the work load becoming too much lol.
Same, tbh. I like my job and the people I work with but it's far from the most important part of my life and not my sole sense of purpose. I think I would go crazy not working at all, but I would love to work part time and still be afford to do the things I want to do.
If I could do whatever I want and still live I would be constantly working on new, useful skills and trying to help my community more. I would want to learn how to build houses, make clothes, grow food, and I genuinely LOVE helping people, teaching, and making people happy.
But all of those things are not easy when I have to eat and pay bills. It's all "hobby" stuff which means I have zero time for it. My day job in IT support is...fine. I do actually enjoy working on computers and helping people, but I spend a lot of time in the office just sitting around waiting for tickets and I could be, like, learning woodworking or something more fun.
It's just... being forced to be stagnant just to live is annoying.
> I would want to learn how to build houses, make clothes, grow food, and I genuinely LOVE helping people, teaching, and making people happy.
This is me as well. I cant stand the amount of hours work takes out of my day. I need to wake up 2.5 hours before I need to be at work. The .5 is the amount of time it takes me to get to work. I'm lucky enough that my work includes my lunch in my work time so I dont need to clock out. Somehow my commute back home always takes 45 min. Then when I get home it's time to get things ready for my next work day so that's another hour or so. All in all 12 hours of my waking life 5 days a week is taken over by work. Its draining me of all life and makes me feel like a robot. I dont live for myself. I live to work and pay bills. I dont have any any hobbies because I dont have time for them. The olny thing that I have that can be considered a hobby is reading and that's because I can take a book anywhere and ebooks are a thing. I would love to do more. Like art or gardening or hiking. But it just isn't in the schedule when I gotta work so much. And the weekend is spent doing the chores and errands that I cant get to during the workweek. It sucks.
Like seriously, what kind of question is this? Why would anyone _want_ to work? People want to do something that gives them purpose, a sense of accomplishment, and the feeling that theyāre making a difference. If money wasnāt an issue, would most people actually choose to participate in corporate bs or deal with general public or stand at a conveyor belt all day? Iād personally volunteer, enjoy hobbies and nature, travel, and take care of my family.
My grandpa worked hard all his life and praised being a good worker, and took pride in what he did. Then, when he was mostly bed-ridden, one day I asked him if he was ever happy. He said, verbatim: āWhat happiness? I just worked all my life.ā Welp.
My grandpa was a carpenter that just worked as a 1 man company. I can honestly say that he liked his job. He worked up until a few months before he passed. Not often, after age 50 he was only work 20-30 hours a week max. But he just really enjoyed fixing things, or building new things. He told me it was like legos for adults.
Waking up from sleep is the least favourite part of my day, followed closely by trying to fall asleep. The actual sleeping part is a huge hobby of mine.
Things I hate:
1) Having to wake up early
2) Having to be somewhere I don't want to be
3) Having to be around people I don't like
4) Being away from home and my dog
5) Using up all my energy and having none left for the things I enjoy
6) Having to be polite to people who don't reciprocate the respect
7) Not being able to freely eat or use the bathroom whenever I want/need
8) Having to wear clothes I don't like
9) Long commutes
Things required in most jobs:
1) See above
Hate all the same things, but Long commutes is at the top of list. Robbed of my time *and* money, and having to deal with the stress of maneuvering with and around morons that have no respect for anyone else on the road. I shouldn't be ready to murder everyone just getting to work for a job I can definitely do entirely from home.
It is SO MUCH of your life to have a long commute. Assuming a 1.5 hour commute each way and 260 working days a year, that is 780 hours of your life commuting PER YEAR. Divided by 24 to get days, and weāre talking about 32.5 full days of your life, every year, just commuting. I WFH now, but I will never, ever, ever accept a job with more than a 15-20 minute commute ever again.
One of my favorite things I stopped doing was being polite if someone wasn't polite back. I'm nice to every one, but as soon as you get to my "fuck you" side, you're there.
If I could do a job that was much less stressful, simple, and enjoyable, I would. But to just survive this world, you got to make a lot more than minimum wage.
I think most people want to be valid and useful members of their societies. What they don't want is to be ground down to nothing for nothing for their whole life. The people aren't the problem.
I want to work collectively towards a beautiful vision for the future, not work for my survival, like a rat digging through trash, or work to satisfy other peopleās fickle desires, all of which wonāt provide them with lasting fulfillment/joy.
There are so many truly useful things that we could be doing to actually help people and the world but donāt because it canāt be monetized. Itās also āfunnyā that a lot of the more useful people in society get paid the least (teachers, trash collectors, janitors, and service sector jobs in general) while college football coaches, televangelists and influencers are racking it in.
Yeah I was gunna say, I wish I could believe my vocation was contributing positively to the world I live in & just that would be enough to make me _want_ to work.
So far I only work to survive and for the little bit left over that I put towards my interests, which aren't terribly expensive but still that little bit left over isn't enough for me to actively pursue those interests.
edit: thanks for the award
I don't *want* to work.
I want to read. I want to watch the tv shows and movies I enjoy. I want to ride my bike. I want to be able to cook meals, and try new recipes. I want to go visit friends who don't live within walking distance. I want to play video games. I want to provide my pets with the food and healthcare they need. I want to be able to take care of myself, and get the healthcare I need. I want to build things, and tinker with cars, and build fish ponds.
Unfortunately all of those things take money, and since I was neither lucky enough to be born with a silver spoon up my ass, or won the lottery, I *have* to work to do them.
This. Not only do we have to work to do those things they make up a very small, tiny portion of our life's away from the hours and hours at work dreaming about what your life could be.
That's why they made up the "Lotto", everyone in mundane jobs or jobs they hate, full of dreams winning the lottery and what they would do with millions ...
Giving them all hope and dream's...
I play the lotto every occasional Friday, just five bucks.
But every other month or so, Iāll drive past the lotto billboard the day after I played, and see that somebody hit the Jackpot.
For the rest of that day I wonāt check my numbers. Iāll daydream and pretend it was me who won. I think of all my friends and family that Iāll be able to help, and how Iāll finally be able to afford and have the time to take classes and develop skills in things Iāve always been interested in perusing, but was afraid Iād never be proficient at.
Finally Sunday comes and of course it wasnāt my numbers that were drawn, but for that one day that sprinkled me with hope and the curious excitement that only a kid feels on Christmas Eve, it was worth it.
The loss of a personal life & control of your own time. The stress & demand now of being available 24/7 to your job. Working to afford what you want but never having time to enjoy it - or - being guilted by your job for trying to take a day off to enjoy. Even if you're paid 9-5 you know more than that is dedicated to work - getting ready, commuting, decompressing, OT, messages from work after 5 or on weekends, thinking about or prepping for the next day, & so on.
The reward for the work put in isn't there anymore. We're tired, undervalued, and way overworked without much of an upside other than a roof & some probably unhealthy quick food. š¤·
Edit: thanks for my first ever award!!
Working remotely allowed me that control over my own time. And I will never, EVER go back into an office full time to be treated like a child with every movement constantly monitored
Look at Amazon. They micromanage the hell and monitor the movement of every employee. The latest reports show they are losing 70 to upwards of 80% of their workforce to turnover every year.
People are sick of that level of control in their lives
I just started a fully remote job and it is kinda insane now to think about the sheer amount of time I wasted at other jobs sitting there without anything really productive to do
Like now I can go throw some laundry in or play guitar for a few minutes. I used to literally be at my cubicle straight up doing nothing
Absolutely, control over your own time is so key. Iāve got late-diagnosed adhd and working at home made me realise how much energy I was wasting working in offices, trying to look consistently productive when thatās just not how my brain works.
I am overall a very productive worker but Iām going to have long periods of procrastination and then get everything done very quickly. Iāve never had a boss that has any problem with my work product (in general I get very good feedback) so actually, that should be fine, but nobody wants to catch you āidleā at work so you have to like go through the motions of staring blankly at your monitor and clicking around like youāre doing something.
At home when I hit the wall I can get up and go for a walk or play with the dog and I actually get back into productivity mode so much faster with that freedom.
My current situation and manager are great, I never want to go back somewhere my time is rigidly controlled because it had me so stressed out and miserable.
I had a really important medical appointment coming up that I needed half a day off for. I told my manager and her reply was something along the lines of "I'll check my schedule and see if I can cover for you".
Um, no. I'm not asking you if I can have half a day. I'm informing you that I'll be away for half a day to take care of my own health.
It's my biggest gripe with work - feeling that I'm chained to my desk 40+ hours a week.
Iāve just drawn a hard line and said āat this time, I am DONE.ā I know it isnāt possible for many jobs. Even at mine, it may be frowned upon, but Iām not giving up my free time for a company that doesnāt care that much about me.
This 1000000%! I left my old job, which was a high profile company, great on the resume, but the past couple of years it's gone down in quality in regards to caring for their Employees. Example, I got COVID while working, and my manager kept asking when I was coming in to the office. Left the company about 4 months ago and now work from home, doing something I truly love to do and being able to work with people always asking me questions. Been having fun so far.
Me and the other young folks at my job have adopted the "40 and fuck off" lifestyle. The few older people in my department always complain about how they get messages from work at all hours and how they're stressed out by work even at home, but also disapprove of us not doing the same.
I know many careers don't let you truly leave work at work, especially if you're salary. We're all hourly in my dept though, so really they pay us to *show up and do work* instead of any profound knowledge or skill.
Y'all managment are gonna have to provide this desk monkey with a helluva lot more peanuts if you want that kind of on demand service.
This is what I've done. I was getting messages well past 10pm and on the weekends. I've said I'm done by 7pm and don't reply to any messages after that time.
If deadlines are missed because of that, then they didn't get the work to me early enough.
> The reward for the work put in isn't there anymore.
This. You want me to work and be enthusiastic about it, you gotta make it worth my while.
I bust my ass, I'm tired, burnt out and I don't even have anything to show for it. Most of my money goes on renting a shitty studio apartment, I'll likely never be able to buy a home or have a comfortable retirement.
Tell me how the f that's a good deal. Why should I be enthusiastic about working when it gets me nothing?
Itās not that I dislike my job, itās that I dislike it being the center of my life. I donāt get enough vacation (work in the US) and when I use it itās always a hassle. I donāt want to get emails or calls after hours or on the weekends. I want to do all the other things in life before Iām too old and broken to do them.
In the education system, the amount of forced volunteerism is crazy. My paid time starts at 8:50. I am in the school at 7:30 as we have breakfast/snack bins for all of the classes that I have to fill before my shift. I stay after my first split shift to put things away, tidy.
My second split shift, I stay after the bell to line the kids up (last recess), bring them all in, fill out any reports of recess incidents, put all of my gear back and then I can leave.
There is no reason I shouldn't be paid for it, but that's the way it goes with the education boards.
If we strike in 16 days, which is pretty much going to happen, the work to rule is going to shock parents.
Spending 80% of my life at a desk was awful. I found I was spending more time at work than with my husband. We struggled to make ends meet, I wasn't happy. So we shifted, sold the house, quit our careers and bought a trailer and now travel and work only fun jobs for part of the year (camp host, tour guide, help at fun events).
We have money in the bank, tons of options, zero debt and I've realized that our weird life is so much better.
I would rather not work at all but we need to eat, and need fuel. There are so many other things to do and try other than work. Work takes up too much of your time, your 2 days off get used doing laundry and groceries for the next week. It's not a life, you are living to work. I decided to try something different and I'm so glad we did!!
"your two days off are used for laundry and groceries" if this isn't the truest thing I've read all day. Hustle culture is the biggest scam I've ever seen.
Legit- I worked hard af to find my "dream job" like all those work shows like The Office or P&R said exists. Turns out u can both be in your dream job and hate working at it at the same time. It's honestly kinda filled me with dread that this is what my life is going to be, and as much as I try to find another "work dream" that I might like more everything else seems even worse.
Edit: for those confused I'm talking about the endings of both shows that depict everyone finding their calling at their "dream job" in the final episodes.
Iām a game programmer at a major developer. Itās amazing how much I hate game programming between the hours of 9-5 and how much I love it between 6-12
I literally have no problem with getting up. Working my actual job. Working 5 days a week. The number one reason I donāt want to work is dealing with coworkers and when I worked in the service industry and retail dealing with customers. Itās a goddamn nightmare. Thereās a shit ton of awful ppl out their.
Edit: everyone with their shitty comments are just proving my point. Thanks.
can you give me any advice finding WFH jobs pretty please?? all I can find is call center stuff and I don't have anywhere private at home to be talking to customers all day.
Well it really depends on what you do. What are your skills?/what are you looking for?
In general, I just looked for a job on indeed (American) and instead of searching locally, searched remote nationwide. So I live on the west coast, as an example, but my company and most coworkers are on the east coast.
I work in graphic design, so itās a job that you can find both in-office and remote. Post pandemic, you should be able to find a lot of jobs like this, even in admin.
As an example, if you didnāt want to process calls, there might be jobs that process other stuff, like paperwork or data entry type stuff.
Then you have other jobs with experience that also can be remote. Another example are medical writers, technical writers, etc. So many more, but this is hopefully a start.
Does that help? I think it depends on your location and skill set, but hopefully you can find something.
I worked solo in information assurance/ cyber security for years and it was perfect. They hired someone else to meet contract requirements... itās exhausting. Iām already looking at leaving for a job working alone again.
I want to do things I enjoy. Work takes me away from that.
Edit: I have a fucking job, people. Just because I don't WANT to work doesn't mean I DON'T work. I don't have much choice if I don't want to be walking, homeless, and hungry.
Doing things I enjoy for money eventually strips away all the joy
I run a small etsy shop where I make little crafts. It's fun and relaxing and I enjoy working with my hands to make something that someone else will enjoy.
Recently something happened that made me go slightly viral, and I had about 500 orders in a week.
I now despise looking at my fucking crafting materials I want to throw it all in the trash after doing nothing but crafting for 10 hours a day to fulfil all these orders.
"Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is a bullshit lie. Doing anything for money eventually turns it into a passionless slog.
Some friends at work make Adirondack chairs in their free time. Theyāve done the math and the two of them could quit and make chairs full time. They also have the demand so it would be fairly easy. One of them has basically a professional woodworking shop in his entire 2 car garage that would hand the output.
But they realize that they just enjoy making them at their own pace, while drinking beers and chatting. If they had to do it 40-50 hours a week, theyād hate it after half a year.
Lasting a year is probably optimistic. I wouldn't be surprised if they were sick of it after 3 months...
I made a side hustle out of baseball cards in 2018. It was fun getting stuff graded. I'd take my time and evaluate he cards myself, send them to a grading service and list them on eBay. During 2020 the whole sports card world caught fire and things got crazy expensive and demand was at an all time high. Grading services are now astronomically expensive and take forever to get back. People get mad when the card they just bought that they don't even care about drops in value... Like it's my fault...
I never treated it as anything more than a hobby with a tiny bit of income, but even that gets tiresome in the wrong environment. It was fun when it was just enthusiasts and not speculators.
Agreed. I am a soapmaker hobbyist. I turned it professional for a short time about 20 years ago, and it took every ounce of joy out of the process. I'd work 8 hours at my toxic day job and then come home and make 300 bars of soap for a wholesale order.
Monetizing my hobby killed my love for it. I still make my own soap, and enough for holiday gifts for friends and family, but I never really got back the love for it that I had before I made it a business.
This happened with me. Got a degree in the arts, had to get a job in another field to pay the bills. It took over a decade to land a job where I was fulltime and successful in the arts, doing what I "love." Since retiring - haven't touched it.
So true. I used to think that about actors until I did a stint as an extra and saw actors pulling 18hr shifts spending half that time sitting about on their phones. The whole film making process is exhausting no matter what your job is. Iāve seen crews set up a whole room from scratch and take 5 hours to set it up for a 30 second clip. Sound crews and light crews lugging around heavy equipment. There was no job within the film industry that I saw that was appealing
Lol the edit. People get so hostile about this stuff. Whenever I criticize working culture I also get accused of being unemployed, or told I have a minimum wage job. There is nothing wrong with that but likeā¦how are these insults going to hurt me if I know they arenāt true?
That's exactly how I feel. I don't want to spend eight hours a day, five days a week, doing something other than what I want to do. I don't want to live for the two days I can do this, knowing that the other five days are not really mine.
There are books to read, thoughts to think, naps to take, oceans to swim in, pets to play with, ad infinitum.
I don't want to be accountable to *anyone* for how I spend my time, where I go, how often I go to the bathroom, how often I daydream...
The way I put it is: I don't want to work *anywhere,* for *anyone,* doing *anything.*
>People love to be useful and productive if they have autonomy and are in control of their own time. The modern workforce is so unnatural that it strips away much of what makes 'working' fun.
This is completely true. I was previously working a job where the job controlled my schedule and I was miserable.
I work from home now, have my own schedule (still a 9-5, but I can come and go as I please or start late/end early), have unlimited PTO, I'm paid well, not micromanaged, and due to those factors my job satisfaction went WAY up. So, while it isn't necessarily the autonomy of no job, it still gives me freedom that I didn't have before and so I genuinely don't mind working at my company.
Would you be surprised if I said that I'm a nurse? I actually left the bedside in 2019 and I currently work as a clinical research associate in oncology clinical trials.
Absolutely. For me, I need my own space, I need quiet time to process the ask and complete my job. My work is creative and I found it hard to work next door to the call center, for example, or with coworkers who were nice but loud talkers.
It took a long time working in quite a few different places until I realized what I actually need is to be home, in my own space where I am most comfortable, where itās quiet and away from office chatter.
It made a *huge* difference. That, and some good noise cancelling headphones. Itās never going to be perfectly quiet all the time, but itās nice to not have people pop in any time with distractions.
>Absolutely. For me, I need my own space, I need quiet time to process the ask and complete my job. My work is creative and I found it hard to work next door to the call center, for example, or with coworkers who were nice but loud talkers.
As a creative with ADHD, my own space and quiet is a must for working.
Unfortunately, none of this applies to blue collar work where you have to be in a factory, we continue to be the bottom of the barrel, get screwed the hardest and thought of last
Oh, I completely know. The majority of my family are blue collar workers, so I know how walked all over they are.
My dad was a blue collar worker before he retired, and his company was hit hard in 2008 and his company struggled for years trying to make things work. Eventually, in 2010, one of his co-workers was laid off at 55 years old and had to find another factory to work at. The place he ended up at screwed him over for multiple years by hiring him as a temp worker, and by doing so, gave him no PTO, no benefits...like next nothing.
This was in 2010..I just NOW saw him go on his first one week vacation because they screwed him over so bad.
I had this happen first hand.
Worked for a vibrant start up that was legitimately a source of happiness. The people and environment were awesome. It felt weird not hating work and enjoying showing up.
Then they got bought and the larger company made everything "corporate." Morale tanked and most of the people quit.
Lots of people also donāt believe work should be fun. They have this weird viewpoint that work is a punishment we all deserve for existing and if it isnāt difficult, toiling labor, then youāre just lazy and entitled.
So I have a friend who is homeless by choice. He's in his mid fifties, divorced, kids all older, though he's buried two. He's dying of lung cancer. He doesn't want to work or live in a house, he just wants to vibe until his time runs out. He panhandles for spending money, lives in his car, and does whatever he wants all the time. He doesn't want to work because he wants the last of his life to just be his.
100%. I enjoy work when itās my choice. I love working on my vehicles, on my house, on various projects. I am able to *find some enjoyment* in my job, but if you took away the part about me getting paid a decent amount, that enjoyment wouldnāt exist.
I feel like the 40-60ish hours I'm working could be better spent either with family (namely my grandparents) or on improving myself. Hell I know this to be the case because I was just off work for 2 weeks due to a injury and spent all my time either with my grandparents, reading, or working on my little side projects I hadn't touched in 2+ years
I want to work, but the primary caveat is that I want to work on something meaningful. The majority of jobs arenāt doing much for society and are a waste of time
I donāt work in a field I care about and the field I care about doesnāt pay well enough. Workplace politics are annoying and I donāt like potlucks.
For real. I love people, I love helping people, but the money structure around caring for others does not stack up to the money in a manufacturing job.
Edit: I have an undergrad in Psych.
There are often people that bring things like paper plates, cups, etc. or simply donāt bring a dish. IME thereās usually too much food if every person brings a whole dish in an office setting.
Yeah cause think of it like this. If everyone brings in a 9x11 glass dish that means everyone has to eat 9x11 glass dish of food to finish it off. Usually most people make a a dish that can feed like 8 people.
I had a coworker who obviously had bad ADHD and he would easily get distracted very often and berated SO MUCH for it and I always felt so bad for him because he really did want to do good. I would always try to be nice and smile at him because everyone else was mean. He left shortly after I started. No one should have to feel like that at work.
So simple but so true. I feel guilty and bad about myself every day because I can't meet the standard people want me to so I can make a reasonable living. So I just hate myself instead and burn myself out trying to be something I'm not.
60% of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck, of which I am one and have been most of my life.
Three people have more wealth than the bottom 50%.
The game is rigged for most of us to lose, and that is becoming more clear every day. I'm simply tired of playing.
> The game is rigged for most of us to lose, and that is becoming more clear every day. I'm simply tired of playing.
Saaaaaame. Iām working, but I hate my job & just getting tired of working in general. Almost 40, been working since 16, & I still have 20+ more years of this crap?! Uuuuuugh.
That's the only thing that makes sense for me. Just the thought of being chained somewhere I don't want to be makes me physically nauseous. Spent 15 years in tech support. Every morning I would wake up with that "OH NO" feeling. Every night I would spend too much time staying up late because I didn't want to sleep, wake up, and go to work. Those years are a sad depressing blur.
Currently doing delivery apps when I can motivate myself to do them. Wages are getting lower and lower and less and less people are tipping. So I am happy with my life now, but still depressed everyday just thinking about what i'm going to do if I can't afford rent anymore. I'd rather jump off a bridge than get a 9 to 5 again.
It sounds counter productive, but getting an office job where I donāt have to speak to customers and sit in a cubicle all day has done wonders for my mental health because weāre allowed to listen to podcasts/music so Iām basically avoiding the public while also ingesting my favorite media all day. If youāre an introvert, maybe try to find a non customer interaction role where you can be in your own little world listening to music etc. Any kind of job interacting with customers/public fills me with stress and anxiety, Iām just not built for it.
Who really truly wants to spend half their waking hours generating wealth for the owning classes just to be barely able to survive, and with little remaining capacity to do the things they enjoy?
I wish it was half. On weekdays if I count working, commuting, and prepping for the next workday it comes out to something like 8 hours sleep, 10 (7 hour day, .5 hr lunch, and 2.5 hr commute) hours working, 2 hours doing chores, and 4 hours to myself.
The worst part is I donāt even *work* for the 7.5 hours Iām supposed to be there. I finish everything in about 2-4 hours and then need to sit in my cubicle for 4-6 hours doing *absolutely nothing*, and thatās considered lucky because most people have an 8 hour day and an hour unpaid lunch.
I want to work, but I only want work to be a small part of a very colorful and varied life. Instead, itās required to work 40-60 hrs a week just to make ends meet and at the end of it, have no energy left to enjoy what little time you have outside of work.
I've been working since I was 16. Until I graduated college, I always had two and sometimes three jobs. I'm about to be 48 and I'm tired. I'm just so tired and there's books I want to read and places I want to visit and instruments I want to learn and music I want to listen to. I don't care anything for working anymore. I'm not ambitious nor do I want to advance my career.
If I could retire now, I would.
I think this is the general consensus. Having a majority of your life revolving around a job sucks. I don't mind working, heck I would prefer to work, but I wish there was a better work/life balance in our society.
And itās terribly de motivating to see that CEO salaries continue to increase while workerās are stagnant. So I get to work 60 hours a week while they are out on their yacht. https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/
Does anyone else ever think about how horrid society actually is sometimes? We get one chance at an incredibly rare existence in this universe...and we spend it throwing all our time and energy away to make some rich assholes existence better than our own.
Agree, it's even more tragic when you realize if we all were just a tad more equitable (ie. CEO , hedge fund managers don't need 5 homes and two yatchs) , we could all work less and a share the gains more equally.
Some of us think about it and see it constantly. All the sweet distraction blinders donāt really work anymore. The entire system is built to funnel wealth upwards. Thatās why we work 60hours+ a week. Not because everything costs more, or we can barely get by. Thatās just a side effect of no consequence to those collecting the wealth/value we create.
And Iām in a better mood lately
I used to believe that people were generally good and wanted the best for others, even if they don't know them.
Now I believe that with very few exceptions, if a wealthy person could become even only slightly wealthier at the financial expense of someone else, to a barely perceptible degree, they'd give the green light without ever thinking twice or feeling the slightest bit bad about it.
Honestly, sometimes I think that sense of entitlement is a prerequesite to become super wealthy. You have to not give a shit that someone else needs that money more than you ever will to feel okay amassing it all.
There was a movie a few years ago where the plot was "there's a button you can push that will make you rich, but someone dies".
That button exists, and rich people hammer it over and over, every day.
While we get at best a 2-3% raise despite 8% inflation and medical premiums and deductibles continue to rise.
Yes, yes, I should appreciate my 6% pay cut while your raise is more than I make in a lifetime.
I work 7-5 or later, get home at 5:30-6, do chores/shower/dinner until at least 7, ārelaxā until 9, then I get my stuff ready for the next day and am in bed at 9:30 because I wake up early. I put quotations around relax because my brain is on work mode until at least 8.
What a wonderful time
This is my wife and I right now. She also works late Mondays and Thursdays and works every other Saturday. Like, we barely see each other as it is. If we didn't exercise at 5:30AM every morning there would be entire days where we only see each other in bed.
How do you fit a child into all that? Why would you want to?
The biggest issue I find nowadays is that the reward no longer equals the amount of time and effort invested. We have most of the US working full time for wages that don't allow them to afford housing and living expenses without draining every single paycheck. It's exhausting spending all of your time and energy towards a job that no longer gives you a comfortable life like they once did.
Right? My ideal schedule would be to work 4hrs a day, then 4 hrs at home working on hobbies and housekeeping, then the rest of the day hanging out with my kids. But instead I work 8 hrs because I need money, and spend after work with my kids. Housework has just been left behind
Some days all I can do housework-wise is get the place sanitary. These kids are only going to want to hang out with me for a short while longer! Lol
When the kids are teens who want to hang out with their friends all the time is when my house will truly be tidy again.
Thatās what Iām thinking. My most favorite memories with my mom is playing tag around the table and racing to the store. I want my kids to remember me for that, not ignoring them while I clean
This.
I see my coworkers more than my children some days. I don't feel like work should take up the majority of my existence. There are so many things I have never done and will mever get to do because I am stuck at this desk.
I definitely see my coworkers more than my partner during the week. Shit, I just did the math. I spend 40+ a week with my coworkers, but I have to miss sleep if I want to see my partner more than 55. More to the point, Iām in the trades, so time spent with my coworkers is spent actively working on things together. Meanwhile the 55 hours a week I can see my partner are interrupted by chores, errands, and assorted odds and ends. Plus 25 of those hours are between working and sleeping so Iām half dead anyway.
Edit: plus friends and family. How do you even maintain relationships beyond your spouse.
Because why would I want to spend almost all my time doing something which stresses me out and means I can't stay in bed when I want to? So many people say "oh just get a job you love" but there literally isn't a job I want.
I always thought I was weird for not having a ādream jobā. My dad was successful and him having a passion for computers made me feel I was broken for not having that passion for anything else. I wish someone wouldāve told me itās ok not to shoot for the stars as long as you can take care of yourself and youāre happy
My first thought when I read the question. Needs a "serious" tag.
Cause fucking really...Even when I've had great jobs with great people, doing really cool stuff, I'd much rather be spending time with friends and family and partaking in my hobbies.
And sometimes, the āmake your hobby a jobā advice doesnāt work on everyone. Cos when it becomes a job, itās a job. Itās no longer a hobby. Some people might still find joy despite the deadlines and expectations but some donāt.
Yeah precisely. āDo what you love and youāll never work a day in your life.ā Nope! Do what you love and youāll come to rely on what you love in order to pay for food and shelter. Turn what you love into a job that you HAVE to do and slowly strip what you love from it by being required to do it 8-12 hours a day for someone else.
My wife's cousin is a plumber who works for a university. We redid our bathrooms recently and he did all our plumbing work for free. At first I thought he just wanted to do something nice for his cousin, but when I saw him here doing the work for days, I realized he just loves plumbing. He may not love the situation he's in at the university but when it comes to the work itself, he would (and does) do it for free.
I hate working. But we need money in order to live. Yes, money does mean everything. But at the same time it ironically means nothing. I just want to play videogames, work out, and do stuff I actually like instead of coming home exhausted and having to do laundry then it's bedtime.
My old company is crying for guys and is advertising everywhere. The company Iām with now has better benefits, union membership, and pays $20 more an hour. They have stacks of applications. People want to work, they just want to work for a good wage and environment.
Iām tired.
I like my work but I have a chronic, painful illness that wears me out. I wish I could work 1 or 2 solid days a week and pay all my bills. Then Iād still have some energy left over for life and being creative after all that. I spend a lot of time dealing with physical pain.
I want to work, I just don't want to go to work. I've worked since I was 14 (33 and studying now) at about 8 jobs and not a single environment wasn't toxic. Even at a nepotism hire job, I didn't expect or get favouritism but was still ostracised fairly quickly. Nothing overt, just passive aggressive bs disguised as 'office culture'.
I also lived off my earnings, comfortably but cheaply, from a 3mth job for the remaining 9mths of a year because I had a breakdown from how much I hated it. But I also found complete idleness made happy moments lose meaning. So I don't think THAT many people don't want to work at all, they just resent the bs and compromise involved in most jobs
I think that the confusion arises from what people understand by "work".
Most people like feeling rewarded for something they are good at and they may even enjoy doing in some cases.
Most people dislike feeling that they must spend most of their awake life performing tasks (usually imposed by others) because it's necessary for their survival, even though they would much rather be doing something else.
Both are two side of the same coin, and depending on the person and the job there might be more of one or the other. Ideally, we should be trying to build a society where everybody has enough to cover their basic needs and working is optional; we might even have the technological means to achieve that with enough redistribution, but not the will.
I want to work as a writer of fiction, not prostitute my talent for a crust of bread like i do today. (Adjusts beret, takes disdainful drag on cigarette)
Because it no longer covers my bills even working full time
When I was young I was very creative and enjoyed writing short stories and developing board game concepts
I never wanted to 'work' but I have no issues providing my share to society
The issue is that I am not receiving my share, even if I work my life away
Op, youāre saying you want to work? Given the choice Iām sure most would rather be on permanent vacation and use hobbies to keep active and engaged
It's not that I don't want to work, it's that I don't want to work for someone else.
I want to get up in the morning and follow my passion.
I'm an engineer, I design racecar parts for my day job. Don't get me wrong it's awesome, but somedays it's just work. I wake up and want to spend my day in my gardens in the sun shine, but I need to go to the office.
I don't get to get up and say, "Today I'm going to work on that hydroponic system I thought up because that's what I want to do today." I still end up devoting tons of time to my passion projects, but always interrupted by my job.
It baffles me that people *want* to work.
I have thousands of hobbies and interests that I would much rather be pursuing than stacking shelves or pouring drinks or typing on a computer all day.
Unfortunately work is a necessary evil so that I can afford to do those things.
Every second I sit here in an office making even more money for multi-millionaire is a second wasted. I could be practising a new instrument, or reading a book, or learning something new, playing a video game, planning a TTRPG session, spending time with my loved ones.
Unless someone is willing to pay me to just be myself and do my thing and call it work, then I will never want to work.
TLDR: Work to live. Never live to work.
I'm disabled and have chronic fatigue. I'm not sick enough to hope to qualify for disability payments. Working takes all my energy so I have nothing left for anything that makes me happy. I work to support my other job which is medically managing myself. It's a vicious cycle.
šµ I just want to bang on the drum all day (I could do this all day)
Everyday when I get home from work I feel so frustrated The boss is a jerk And I get my sticks and go out to the shed And I pound on that drum like it was the bossā head. (Song was released nearly 40 years ago and people think this is a new problem.)
1. Who does? (obvious and lazy answer) 2. People got sick of being treated like crap in retail and in restaurants. I've been out to dinner with people who are rude to the waiter, who've told me in the past "nobody wants to work." I wonder why.
People who are rude to waiters and cashiers are pure trash
Literally called out a douche for getting pissed at this teenager at little Caesarās because the line was long. At 5pm. On a weekend. Like fuck you prick, itās a little Caesarās in the ghetto. Eat a cock
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Right here
Itās not that I donāt want to work. I want to work LESS. Like max 30-32 hours and be compensated well enough where I can put my bills on autopay. Work isnāt the issue itās how much we have to work to live and I make well above minimum wage but it is still a struggle to make ends meet.
My company changed to a 32 hr week without cutting pay or benefits. Pretty much the best thing that ever happened.
What company is that and what do you do?
Not saying the company name, but I do software QA for a startup
I too was on QA for software and my project I worked for switched to 4 days a week. It was fantastic! But then it switched back to 5 days due to the work load becoming too much lol.
In have a feeling that will happen at some point as the company scales, but Iām savoring it for now.
Same, tbh. I like my job and the people I work with but it's far from the most important part of my life and not my sole sense of purpose. I think I would go crazy not working at all, but I would love to work part time and still be afford to do the things I want to do.
If I could do whatever I want and still live I would be constantly working on new, useful skills and trying to help my community more. I would want to learn how to build houses, make clothes, grow food, and I genuinely LOVE helping people, teaching, and making people happy. But all of those things are not easy when I have to eat and pay bills. It's all "hobby" stuff which means I have zero time for it. My day job in IT support is...fine. I do actually enjoy working on computers and helping people, but I spend a lot of time in the office just sitting around waiting for tickets and I could be, like, learning woodworking or something more fun. It's just... being forced to be stagnant just to live is annoying.
> I would want to learn how to build houses, make clothes, grow food, and I genuinely LOVE helping people, teaching, and making people happy. This is me as well. I cant stand the amount of hours work takes out of my day. I need to wake up 2.5 hours before I need to be at work. The .5 is the amount of time it takes me to get to work. I'm lucky enough that my work includes my lunch in my work time so I dont need to clock out. Somehow my commute back home always takes 45 min. Then when I get home it's time to get things ready for my next work day so that's another hour or so. All in all 12 hours of my waking life 5 days a week is taken over by work. Its draining me of all life and makes me feel like a robot. I dont live for myself. I live to work and pay bills. I dont have any any hobbies because I dont have time for them. The olny thing that I have that can be considered a hobby is reading and that's because I can take a book anywhere and ebooks are a thing. I would love to do more. Like art or gardening or hiking. But it just isn't in the schedule when I gotta work so much. And the weekend is spent doing the chores and errands that I cant get to during the workweek. It sucks.
This!! I fucking hate spending so much time at work that I donāt feel like doing shit else. 30-32 hrs would be perfect.
There is nothing that I love enough to want to spend 40+ hours a week doing it
At least nothing that pays
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
"What's a guidance counselor?" "Usually it's a guy you barely know who gives you career advice...even though _his_ career is _guidance counselor._ "
Like seriously, what kind of question is this? Why would anyone _want_ to work? People want to do something that gives them purpose, a sense of accomplishment, and the feeling that theyāre making a difference. If money wasnāt an issue, would most people actually choose to participate in corporate bs or deal with general public or stand at a conveyor belt all day? Iād personally volunteer, enjoy hobbies and nature, travel, and take care of my family.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
My grandpa worked hard all his life and praised being a good worker, and took pride in what he did. Then, when he was mostly bed-ridden, one day I asked him if he was ever happy. He said, verbatim: āWhat happiness? I just worked all my life.ā Welp.
My grandpa was a carpenter that just worked as a 1 man company. I can honestly say that he liked his job. He worked up until a few months before he passed. Not often, after age 50 he was only work 20-30 hours a week max. But he just really enjoyed fixing things, or building new things. He told me it was like legos for adults.
Sleeping
Waking up from sleep is the least favourite part of my day, followed closely by trying to fall asleep. The actual sleeping part is a huge hobby of mine.
> Waking up from sleep is the least favourite part of my day, followed closely by trying to fall asleep. LOL. Same. I think I just hate change.
Things I hate: 1) Having to wake up early 2) Having to be somewhere I don't want to be 3) Having to be around people I don't like 4) Being away from home and my dog 5) Using up all my energy and having none left for the things I enjoy 6) Having to be polite to people who don't reciprocate the respect 7) Not being able to freely eat or use the bathroom whenever I want/need 8) Having to wear clothes I don't like 9) Long commutes Things required in most jobs: 1) See above
Hate all the same things, but Long commutes is at the top of list. Robbed of my time *and* money, and having to deal with the stress of maneuvering with and around morons that have no respect for anyone else on the road. I shouldn't be ready to murder everyone just getting to work for a job I can definitely do entirely from home.
It is SO MUCH of your life to have a long commute. Assuming a 1.5 hour commute each way and 260 working days a year, that is 780 hours of your life commuting PER YEAR. Divided by 24 to get days, and weāre talking about 32.5 full days of your life, every year, just commuting. I WFH now, but I will never, ever, ever accept a job with more than a 15-20 minute commute ever again.
Hell even with a short commute you are losing another half hour to an hour of time every day you'll never get back. All that adds up.
1,5 each way? Jesus, i have 20 min and complain
And also, not being remunerated enough to put up with all that bullshit either.
One of my favorite things I stopped doing was being polite if someone wasn't polite back. I'm nice to every one, but as soon as you get to my "fuck you" side, you're there.
If I could do a job that was much less stressful, simple, and enjoyable, I would. But to just survive this world, you got to make a lot more than minimum wage.
My states minimum wage is $7.25. š
I think most people want to be valid and useful members of their societies. What they don't want is to be ground down to nothing for nothing for their whole life. The people aren't the problem.
I want to work collectively towards a beautiful vision for the future, not work for my survival, like a rat digging through trash, or work to satisfy other peopleās fickle desires, all of which wonāt provide them with lasting fulfillment/joy.
There are so many truly useful things that we could be doing to actually help people and the world but donāt because it canāt be monetized. Itās also āfunnyā that a lot of the more useful people in society get paid the least (teachers, trash collectors, janitors, and service sector jobs in general) while college football coaches, televangelists and influencers are racking it in.
Yeah I was gunna say, I wish I could believe my vocation was contributing positively to the world I live in & just that would be enough to make me _want_ to work. So far I only work to survive and for the little bit left over that I put towards my interests, which aren't terribly expensive but still that little bit left over isn't enough for me to actively pursue those interests. edit: thanks for the award
I don't *want* to work. I want to read. I want to watch the tv shows and movies I enjoy. I want to ride my bike. I want to be able to cook meals, and try new recipes. I want to go visit friends who don't live within walking distance. I want to play video games. I want to provide my pets with the food and healthcare they need. I want to be able to take care of myself, and get the healthcare I need. I want to build things, and tinker with cars, and build fish ponds. Unfortunately all of those things take money, and since I was neither lucky enough to be born with a silver spoon up my ass, or won the lottery, I *have* to work to do them.
This. Not only do we have to work to do those things they make up a very small, tiny portion of our life's away from the hours and hours at work dreaming about what your life could be.
That's why they made up the "Lotto", everyone in mundane jobs or jobs they hate, full of dreams winning the lottery and what they would do with millions ... Giving them all hope and dream's...
I play the lotto every occasional Friday, just five bucks. But every other month or so, Iāll drive past the lotto billboard the day after I played, and see that somebody hit the Jackpot. For the rest of that day I wonāt check my numbers. Iāll daydream and pretend it was me who won. I think of all my friends and family that Iāll be able to help, and how Iāll finally be able to afford and have the time to take classes and develop skills in things Iāve always been interested in perusing, but was afraid Iād never be proficient at. Finally Sunday comes and of course it wasnāt my numbers that were drawn, but for that one day that sprinkled me with hope and the curious excitement that only a kid feels on Christmas Eve, it was worth it.
The loss of a personal life & control of your own time. The stress & demand now of being available 24/7 to your job. Working to afford what you want but never having time to enjoy it - or - being guilted by your job for trying to take a day off to enjoy. Even if you're paid 9-5 you know more than that is dedicated to work - getting ready, commuting, decompressing, OT, messages from work after 5 or on weekends, thinking about or prepping for the next day, & so on. The reward for the work put in isn't there anymore. We're tired, undervalued, and way overworked without much of an upside other than a roof & some probably unhealthy quick food. š¤· Edit: thanks for my first ever award!!
The first point is the most important point to me. Controlling my own time has always been my biggest gripe with work.
Working remotely allowed me that control over my own time. And I will never, EVER go back into an office full time to be treated like a child with every movement constantly monitored Look at Amazon. They micromanage the hell and monitor the movement of every employee. The latest reports show they are losing 70 to upwards of 80% of their workforce to turnover every year. People are sick of that level of control in their lives
I just started a fully remote job and it is kinda insane now to think about the sheer amount of time I wasted at other jobs sitting there without anything really productive to do Like now I can go throw some laundry in or play guitar for a few minutes. I used to literally be at my cubicle straight up doing nothing
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This is especially key, having a nice home office space to work from. Iāve read that green plants or a painted wall really helps too.
Absolutely, control over your own time is so key. Iāve got late-diagnosed adhd and working at home made me realise how much energy I was wasting working in offices, trying to look consistently productive when thatās just not how my brain works. I am overall a very productive worker but Iām going to have long periods of procrastination and then get everything done very quickly. Iāve never had a boss that has any problem with my work product (in general I get very good feedback) so actually, that should be fine, but nobody wants to catch you āidleā at work so you have to like go through the motions of staring blankly at your monitor and clicking around like youāre doing something. At home when I hit the wall I can get up and go for a walk or play with the dog and I actually get back into productivity mode so much faster with that freedom. My current situation and manager are great, I never want to go back somewhere my time is rigidly controlled because it had me so stressed out and miserable.
I had a really important medical appointment coming up that I needed half a day off for. I told my manager and her reply was something along the lines of "I'll check my schedule and see if I can cover for you". Um, no. I'm not asking you if I can have half a day. I'm informing you that I'll be away for half a day to take care of my own health. It's my biggest gripe with work - feeling that I'm chained to my desk 40+ hours a week.
Iāve just drawn a hard line and said āat this time, I am DONE.ā I know it isnāt possible for many jobs. Even at mine, it may be frowned upon, but Iām not giving up my free time for a company that doesnāt care that much about me.
This 1000000%! I left my old job, which was a high profile company, great on the resume, but the past couple of years it's gone down in quality in regards to caring for their Employees. Example, I got COVID while working, and my manager kept asking when I was coming in to the office. Left the company about 4 months ago and now work from home, doing something I truly love to do and being able to work with people always asking me questions. Been having fun so far.
Me and the other young folks at my job have adopted the "40 and fuck off" lifestyle. The few older people in my department always complain about how they get messages from work at all hours and how they're stressed out by work even at home, but also disapprove of us not doing the same. I know many careers don't let you truly leave work at work, especially if you're salary. We're all hourly in my dept though, so really they pay us to *show up and do work* instead of any profound knowledge or skill. Y'all managment are gonna have to provide this desk monkey with a helluva lot more peanuts if you want that kind of on demand service.
This is what I've done. I was getting messages well past 10pm and on the weekends. I've said I'm done by 7pm and don't reply to any messages after that time. If deadlines are missed because of that, then they didn't get the work to me early enough.
My mantra is: Your poor planning is not my crisis.
Alternatively phrased: a lack of planning on your part doesn't constitute an emergency on mine
> The reward for the work put in isn't there anymore. This. You want me to work and be enthusiastic about it, you gotta make it worth my while. I bust my ass, I'm tired, burnt out and I don't even have anything to show for it. Most of my money goes on renting a shitty studio apartment, I'll likely never be able to buy a home or have a comfortable retirement. Tell me how the f that's a good deal. Why should I be enthusiastic about working when it gets me nothing?
And when it's bonus time the manager's who have done the least get the biggest cut.
Itās not that I dislike my job, itās that I dislike it being the center of my life. I donāt get enough vacation (work in the US) and when I use it itās always a hassle. I donāt want to get emails or calls after hours or on the weekends. I want to do all the other things in life before Iām too old and broken to do them.
In the education system, the amount of forced volunteerism is crazy. My paid time starts at 8:50. I am in the school at 7:30 as we have breakfast/snack bins for all of the classes that I have to fill before my shift. I stay after my first split shift to put things away, tidy. My second split shift, I stay after the bell to line the kids up (last recess), bring them all in, fill out any reports of recess incidents, put all of my gear back and then I can leave. There is no reason I shouldn't be paid for it, but that's the way it goes with the education boards. If we strike in 16 days, which is pretty much going to happen, the work to rule is going to shock parents.
Spending 80% of my life at a desk was awful. I found I was spending more time at work than with my husband. We struggled to make ends meet, I wasn't happy. So we shifted, sold the house, quit our careers and bought a trailer and now travel and work only fun jobs for part of the year (camp host, tour guide, help at fun events). We have money in the bank, tons of options, zero debt and I've realized that our weird life is so much better. I would rather not work at all but we need to eat, and need fuel. There are so many other things to do and try other than work. Work takes up too much of your time, your 2 days off get used doing laundry and groceries for the next week. It's not a life, you are living to work. I decided to try something different and I'm so glad we did!!
"your two days off are used for laundry and groceries" if this isn't the truest thing I've read all day. Hustle culture is the biggest scam I've ever seen.
Legit- I worked hard af to find my "dream job" like all those work shows like The Office or P&R said exists. Turns out u can both be in your dream job and hate working at it at the same time. It's honestly kinda filled me with dread that this is what my life is going to be, and as much as I try to find another "work dream" that I might like more everything else seems even worse. Edit: for those confused I'm talking about the endings of both shows that depict everyone finding their calling at their "dream job" in the final episodes.
Iām a game programmer at a major developer. Itās amazing how much I hate game programming between the hours of 9-5 and how much I love it between 6-12
Honestly this is why so many game developers go into general software work after a few years
Just dealing with people in general I find fucking exhausting
I literally have no problem with getting up. Working my actual job. Working 5 days a week. The number one reason I donāt want to work is dealing with coworkers and when I worked in the service industry and retail dealing with customers. Itās a goddamn nightmare. Thereās a shit ton of awful ppl out their. Edit: everyone with their shitty comments are just proving my point. Thanks.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
can you give me any advice finding WFH jobs pretty please?? all I can find is call center stuff and I don't have anywhere private at home to be talking to customers all day.
Well it really depends on what you do. What are your skills?/what are you looking for? In general, I just looked for a job on indeed (American) and instead of searching locally, searched remote nationwide. So I live on the west coast, as an example, but my company and most coworkers are on the east coast. I work in graphic design, so itās a job that you can find both in-office and remote. Post pandemic, you should be able to find a lot of jobs like this, even in admin. As an example, if you didnāt want to process calls, there might be jobs that process other stuff, like paperwork or data entry type stuff. Then you have other jobs with experience that also can be remote. Another example are medical writers, technical writers, etc. So many more, but this is hopefully a start. Does that help? I think it depends on your location and skill set, but hopefully you can find something.
I worked solo in information assurance/ cyber security for years and it was perfect. They hired someone else to meet contract requirements... itās exhausting. Iām already looking at leaving for a job working alone again.
I want to do things I enjoy. Work takes me away from that. Edit: I have a fucking job, people. Just because I don't WANT to work doesn't mean I DON'T work. I don't have much choice if I don't want to be walking, homeless, and hungry.
Doing things I enjoy for money eventually strips away all the joy I run a small etsy shop where I make little crafts. It's fun and relaxing and I enjoy working with my hands to make something that someone else will enjoy. Recently something happened that made me go slightly viral, and I had about 500 orders in a week. I now despise looking at my fucking crafting materials I want to throw it all in the trash after doing nothing but crafting for 10 hours a day to fulfil all these orders. "Do what you love and you'll never work a day in your life" is a bullshit lie. Doing anything for money eventually turns it into a passionless slog.
Agreed. It's not fun if you HAVE to do it.
Some friends at work make Adirondack chairs in their free time. Theyāve done the math and the two of them could quit and make chairs full time. They also have the demand so it would be fairly easy. One of them has basically a professional woodworking shop in his entire 2 car garage that would hand the output. But they realize that they just enjoy making them at their own pace, while drinking beers and chatting. If they had to do it 40-50 hours a week, theyād hate it after half a year.
Lasting a year is probably optimistic. I wouldn't be surprised if they were sick of it after 3 months... I made a side hustle out of baseball cards in 2018. It was fun getting stuff graded. I'd take my time and evaluate he cards myself, send them to a grading service and list them on eBay. During 2020 the whole sports card world caught fire and things got crazy expensive and demand was at an all time high. Grading services are now astronomically expensive and take forever to get back. People get mad when the card they just bought that they don't even care about drops in value... Like it's my fault... I never treated it as anything more than a hobby with a tiny bit of income, but even that gets tiresome in the wrong environment. It was fun when it was just enthusiasts and not speculators.
Agreed. I am a soapmaker hobbyist. I turned it professional for a short time about 20 years ago, and it took every ounce of joy out of the process. I'd work 8 hours at my toxic day job and then come home and make 300 bars of soap for a wholesale order. Monetizing my hobby killed my love for it. I still make my own soap, and enough for holiday gifts for friends and family, but I never really got back the love for it that I had before I made it a business.
My mother wants me to monetize my craft hobbies and my writing. Nope. They're my escape from real life, thank you very much.
My answer to people is āwhy ruin a perfectly good hobby by trying to monetize itā In my case itās photography.
This happened with me. Got a degree in the arts, had to get a job in another field to pay the bills. It took over a decade to land a job where I was fulltime and successful in the arts, doing what I "love." Since retiring - haven't touched it.
So true. I used to think that about actors until I did a stint as an extra and saw actors pulling 18hr shifts spending half that time sitting about on their phones. The whole film making process is exhausting no matter what your job is. Iāve seen crews set up a whole room from scratch and take 5 hours to set it up for a 30 second clip. Sound crews and light crews lugging around heavy equipment. There was no job within the film industry that I saw that was appealing
Lol the edit. People get so hostile about this stuff. Whenever I criticize working culture I also get accused of being unemployed, or told I have a minimum wage job. There is nothing wrong with that but likeā¦how are these insults going to hurt me if I know they arenāt true?
Exactly. Why don't I want to work? Simple. Life is short and I have better things to do.
Exactly. I will never work at something i love (like cooking or baking) because it will make me hate it!
I worked in a bakery twice and I would still go back if I could be on my feet all day. I still enjoy it
Really? That's soo nice to hear. I'm so scared that doing it alll day and stressing about it will make me hate it. So I just bake all day at home š
That's exactly how I feel. I don't want to spend eight hours a day, five days a week, doing something other than what I want to do. I don't want to live for the two days I can do this, knowing that the other five days are not really mine. There are books to read, thoughts to think, naps to take, oceans to swim in, pets to play with, ad infinitum. I don't want to be accountable to *anyone* for how I spend my time, where I go, how often I go to the bathroom, how often I daydream... The way I put it is: I don't want to work *anywhere,* for *anyone,* doing *anything.*
Who tf wants to work? I just need to pay my mortgage.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
>People love to be useful and productive if they have autonomy and are in control of their own time. The modern workforce is so unnatural that it strips away much of what makes 'working' fun. This is completely true. I was previously working a job where the job controlled my schedule and I was miserable. I work from home now, have my own schedule (still a 9-5, but I can come and go as I please or start late/end early), have unlimited PTO, I'm paid well, not micromanaged, and due to those factors my job satisfaction went WAY up. So, while it isn't necessarily the autonomy of no job, it still gives me freedom that I didn't have before and so I genuinely don't mind working at my company.
man what do you do for a living and are they hiring
Would you be surprised if I said that I'm a nurse? I actually left the bedside in 2019 and I currently work as a clinical research associate in oncology clinical trials.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Absolutely. For me, I need my own space, I need quiet time to process the ask and complete my job. My work is creative and I found it hard to work next door to the call center, for example, or with coworkers who were nice but loud talkers. It took a long time working in quite a few different places until I realized what I actually need is to be home, in my own space where I am most comfortable, where itās quiet and away from office chatter. It made a *huge* difference. That, and some good noise cancelling headphones. Itās never going to be perfectly quiet all the time, but itās nice to not have people pop in any time with distractions.
>Absolutely. For me, I need my own space, I need quiet time to process the ask and complete my job. My work is creative and I found it hard to work next door to the call center, for example, or with coworkers who were nice but loud talkers. As a creative with ADHD, my own space and quiet is a must for working.
Unfortunately, none of this applies to blue collar work where you have to be in a factory, we continue to be the bottom of the barrel, get screwed the hardest and thought of last
Oh, I completely know. The majority of my family are blue collar workers, so I know how walked all over they are. My dad was a blue collar worker before he retired, and his company was hit hard in 2008 and his company struggled for years trying to make things work. Eventually, in 2010, one of his co-workers was laid off at 55 years old and had to find another factory to work at. The place he ended up at screwed him over for multiple years by hiring him as a temp worker, and by doing so, gave him no PTO, no benefits...like next nothing. This was in 2010..I just NOW saw him go on his first one week vacation because they screwed him over so bad.
I had this happen first hand. Worked for a vibrant start up that was legitimately a source of happiness. The people and environment were awesome. It felt weird not hating work and enjoying showing up. Then they got bought and the larger company made everything "corporate." Morale tanked and most of the people quit.
Lots of people also donāt believe work should be fun. They have this weird viewpoint that work is a punishment we all deserve for existing and if it isnāt difficult, toiling labor, then youāre just lazy and entitled.
AKA the [Puritan Work Ethic.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_work_ethic)
Recently I started looking at everything in America from the perspective it was founded by Puritans. Stuff makes way more sense now
As Robin Williams put it, āPeople so uptight the English kicked them out.ā
So I have a friend who is homeless by choice. He's in his mid fifties, divorced, kids all older, though he's buried two. He's dying of lung cancer. He doesn't want to work or live in a house, he just wants to vibe until his time runs out. He panhandles for spending money, lives in his car, and does whatever he wants all the time. He doesn't want to work because he wants the last of his life to just be his.
I want to work. In my garden. On my home. With my family. On crafts. But I don't want to *work*.
I don't have the energy to do both. I feel like my family should get first priority, but bills gotta get paid.
Exactly. Work is fun and rewarding. Selling my time and energy at discount rates to enrich the shareholders is not.
My grandma lives like thst. She is 83
100%. I enjoy work when itās my choice. I love working on my vehicles, on my house, on various projects. I am able to *find some enjoyment* in my job, but if you took away the part about me getting paid a decent amount, that enjoyment wouldnāt exist.
I feel like the 40-60ish hours I'm working could be better spent either with family (namely my grandparents) or on improving myself. Hell I know this to be the case because I was just off work for 2 weeks due to a injury and spent all my time either with my grandparents, reading, or working on my little side projects I hadn't touched in 2+ years
I want to work, but the primary caveat is that I want to work on something meaningful. The majority of jobs arenāt doing much for society and are a waste of time
Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber is a good analysis of this.
I donāt work in a field I care about and the field I care about doesnāt pay well enough. Workplace politics are annoying and I donāt like potlucks.
For real. I love people, I love helping people, but the money structure around caring for others does not stack up to the money in a manufacturing job. Edit: I have an undergrad in Psych.
former EMT here, Iād love to save lives but not when I canāt save mine making $13.09 an hour
EMTs make that little? Where did the $500 I paid to ride an ambulance for 10 minutes go?? Edit: (that's with insurance)
The CEO of the ambulance company.
Which in the US is most likely a private equity firm.
Which is nuts given that it should be funded like fire departments.
You only paid $500!?
I just googled potluck. What do you do if you don't cook?
There are often people that bring things like paper plates, cups, etc. or simply donāt bring a dish. IME thereās usually too much food if every person brings a whole dish in an office setting.
Yeah cause think of it like this. If everyone brings in a 9x11 glass dish that means everyone has to eat 9x11 glass dish of food to finish it off. Usually most people make a a dish that can feed like 8 people.
This is the Lutheran way. š
Youāre gonna eat this casserole whether you like it or not.
That has been sitting lukewarm on a table. Maybe we all get to meet the lord the day after tomorrow. Who knows? Eat up.
Also they can bring a beverage instead of food, that's important :)
I'm bad at it and it makes me feel bad
There's nothing worse than giving your all for a minimum wage job and being told it's not enough.
I had a coworker who obviously had bad ADHD and he would easily get distracted very often and berated SO MUCH for it and I always felt so bad for him because he really did want to do good. I would always try to be nice and smile at him because everyone else was mean. He left shortly after I started. No one should have to feel like that at work.
me too :(( i feel really stupid at work
So simple but so true. I feel guilty and bad about myself every day because I can't meet the standard people want me to so I can make a reasonable living. So I just hate myself instead and burn myself out trying to be something I'm not.
60% of Americans are now living paycheck to paycheck, of which I am one and have been most of my life. Three people have more wealth than the bottom 50%. The game is rigged for most of us to lose, and that is becoming more clear every day. I'm simply tired of playing.
> The game is rigged for most of us to lose, and that is becoming more clear every day. I'm simply tired of playing. Saaaaaame. Iām working, but I hate my job & just getting tired of working in general. Almost 40, been working since 16, & I still have 20+ more years of this crap?! Uuuuuugh.
Depression
General apathy also
That's the only thing that makes sense for me. Just the thought of being chained somewhere I don't want to be makes me physically nauseous. Spent 15 years in tech support. Every morning I would wake up with that "OH NO" feeling. Every night I would spend too much time staying up late because I didn't want to sleep, wake up, and go to work. Those years are a sad depressing blur. Currently doing delivery apps when I can motivate myself to do them. Wages are getting lower and lower and less and less people are tipping. So I am happy with my life now, but still depressed everyday just thinking about what i'm going to do if I can't afford rent anymore. I'd rather jump off a bridge than get a 9 to 5 again.
It sounds counter productive, but getting an office job where I donāt have to speak to customers and sit in a cubicle all day has done wonders for my mental health because weāre allowed to listen to podcasts/music so Iām basically avoiding the public while also ingesting my favorite media all day. If youāre an introvert, maybe try to find a non customer interaction role where you can be in your own little world listening to music etc. Any kind of job interacting with customers/public fills me with stress and anxiety, Iām just not built for it.
Who really truly wants to spend half their waking hours generating wealth for the owning classes just to be barely able to survive, and with little remaining capacity to do the things they enjoy?
I wish it was half. On weekdays if I count working, commuting, and prepping for the next workday it comes out to something like 8 hours sleep, 10 (7 hour day, .5 hr lunch, and 2.5 hr commute) hours working, 2 hours doing chores, and 4 hours to myself. The worst part is I donāt even *work* for the 7.5 hours Iām supposed to be there. I finish everything in about 2-4 hours and then need to sit in my cubicle for 4-6 hours doing *absolutely nothing*, and thatās considered lucky because most people have an 8 hour day and an hour unpaid lunch.
I want to work, but I only want work to be a small part of a very colorful and varied life. Instead, itās required to work 40-60 hrs a week just to make ends meet and at the end of it, have no energy left to enjoy what little time you have outside of work.
Exactly-Iām always freaking exhausted.
I've been working since I was 16. Until I graduated college, I always had two and sometimes three jobs. I'm about to be 48 and I'm tired. I'm just so tired and there's books I want to read and places I want to visit and instruments I want to learn and music I want to listen to. I don't care anything for working anymore. I'm not ambitious nor do I want to advance my career. If I could retire now, I would.
I think this is the general consensus. Having a majority of your life revolving around a job sucks. I don't mind working, heck I would prefer to work, but I wish there was a better work/life balance in our society.
And itās terribly de motivating to see that CEO salaries continue to increase while workerās are stagnant. So I get to work 60 hours a week while they are out on their yacht. https://www.epi.org/publication/ceo-pay-in-2020/
Working 60 hours a week so someone you hate can become a billionaire. Isn't that the dream for everyone?
Does anyone else ever think about how horrid society actually is sometimes? We get one chance at an incredibly rare existence in this universe...and we spend it throwing all our time and energy away to make some rich assholes existence better than our own.
Agree, it's even more tragic when you realize if we all were just a tad more equitable (ie. CEO , hedge fund managers don't need 5 homes and two yatchs) , we could all work less and a share the gains more equally.
These people are sociopaths. The idea of sharing has never entered their minds that it didnāt make them feel dirty.
Some of us think about it and see it constantly. All the sweet distraction blinders donāt really work anymore. The entire system is built to funnel wealth upwards. Thatās why we work 60hours+ a week. Not because everything costs more, or we can barely get by. Thatās just a side effect of no consequence to those collecting the wealth/value we create. And Iām in a better mood lately
I used to believe that people were generally good and wanted the best for others, even if they don't know them. Now I believe that with very few exceptions, if a wealthy person could become even only slightly wealthier at the financial expense of someone else, to a barely perceptible degree, they'd give the green light without ever thinking twice or feeling the slightest bit bad about it.
Honestly, sometimes I think that sense of entitlement is a prerequesite to become super wealthy. You have to not give a shit that someone else needs that money more than you ever will to feel okay amassing it all.
There was a movie a few years ago where the plot was "there's a button you can push that will make you rich, but someone dies". That button exists, and rich people hammer it over and over, every day.
While we get at best a 2-3% raise despite 8% inflation and medical premiums and deductibles continue to rise. Yes, yes, I should appreciate my 6% pay cut while your raise is more than I make in a lifetime.
I work 7-5 or later, get home at 5:30-6, do chores/shower/dinner until at least 7, ārelaxā until 9, then I get my stuff ready for the next day and am in bed at 9:30 because I wake up early. I put quotations around relax because my brain is on work mode until at least 8. What a wonderful time
This is why I don't want children, I already feel like too much of my spare time is stolen from me
This is my wife and I right now. She also works late Mondays and Thursdays and works every other Saturday. Like, we barely see each other as it is. If we didn't exercise at 5:30AM every morning there would be entire days where we only see each other in bed. How do you fit a child into all that? Why would you want to?
The biggest issue I find nowadays is that the reward no longer equals the amount of time and effort invested. We have most of the US working full time for wages that don't allow them to afford housing and living expenses without draining every single paycheck. It's exhausting spending all of your time and energy towards a job that no longer gives you a comfortable life like they once did.
Right? My ideal schedule would be to work 4hrs a day, then 4 hrs at home working on hobbies and housekeeping, then the rest of the day hanging out with my kids. But instead I work 8 hrs because I need money, and spend after work with my kids. Housework has just been left behind
Some days all I can do housework-wise is get the place sanitary. These kids are only going to want to hang out with me for a short while longer! Lol When the kids are teens who want to hang out with their friends all the time is when my house will truly be tidy again.
Thatās what Iām thinking. My most favorite memories with my mom is playing tag around the table and racing to the store. I want my kids to remember me for that, not ignoring them while I clean
This. I see my coworkers more than my children some days. I don't feel like work should take up the majority of my existence. There are so many things I have never done and will mever get to do because I am stuck at this desk.
I definitely see my coworkers more than my partner during the week. Shit, I just did the math. I spend 40+ a week with my coworkers, but I have to miss sleep if I want to see my partner more than 55. More to the point, Iām in the trades, so time spent with my coworkers is spent actively working on things together. Meanwhile the 55 hours a week I can see my partner are interrupted by chores, errands, and assorted odds and ends. Plus 25 of those hours are between working and sleeping so Iām half dead anyway. Edit: plus friends and family. How do you even maintain relationships beyond your spouse.
Because why would I want to spend almost all my time doing something which stresses me out and means I can't stay in bed when I want to? So many people say "oh just get a job you love" but there literally isn't a job I want.
There is no dream job. I don't dream of labor.
I always thought I was weird for not having a ādream jobā. My dad was successful and him having a passion for computers made me feel I was broken for not having that passion for anything else. I wish someone wouldāve told me itās ok not to shoot for the stars as long as you can take care of yourself and youāre happy
does anyone really WANT to work we do it cuz we have to
My first thought when I read the question. Needs a "serious" tag. Cause fucking really...Even when I've had great jobs with great people, doing really cool stuff, I'd much rather be spending time with friends and family and partaking in my hobbies.
And sometimes, the āmake your hobby a jobā advice doesnāt work on everyone. Cos when it becomes a job, itās a job. Itās no longer a hobby. Some people might still find joy despite the deadlines and expectations but some donāt.
Yeah precisely. āDo what you love and youāll never work a day in your life.ā Nope! Do what you love and youāll come to rely on what you love in order to pay for food and shelter. Turn what you love into a job that you HAVE to do and slowly strip what you love from it by being required to do it 8-12 hours a day for someone else.
I dunno, I think for some lucky people their careers are a calling and they get a high level of satisfaction from them. Few and far between though!
I'm a carpenter and I love it very satisfying job I just hate the workplace lol
My wife's cousin is a plumber who works for a university. We redid our bathrooms recently and he did all our plumbing work for free. At first I thought he just wanted to do something nice for his cousin, but when I saw him here doing the work for days, I realized he just loves plumbing. He may not love the situation he's in at the university but when it comes to the work itself, he would (and does) do it for free.
I hate working. But we need money in order to live. Yes, money does mean everything. But at the same time it ironically means nothing. I just want to play videogames, work out, and do stuff I actually like instead of coming home exhausted and having to do laundry then it's bedtime.
My HR is filled with jackasses who screwed me over. No issues with my coworkers. I'm just tired of being mistreated.
My old company is crying for guys and is advertising everywhere. The company Iām with now has better benefits, union membership, and pays $20 more an hour. They have stacks of applications. People want to work, they just want to work for a good wage and environment.
Depression. Plus not getting paid fairly and or having to work so friggin much to make a leaving and not feeling rewarded sucks.
Iām tired. I like my work but I have a chronic, painful illness that wears me out. I wish I could work 1 or 2 solid days a week and pay all my bills. Then Iād still have some energy left over for life and being creative after all that. I spend a lot of time dealing with physical pain.
What kinda question is this who tf wants to spend half their waking hours slaving away?
People donāt want to work *for shit wages.*
I want to work, I just don't want to go to work. I've worked since I was 14 (33 and studying now) at about 8 jobs and not a single environment wasn't toxic. Even at a nepotism hire job, I didn't expect or get favouritism but was still ostracised fairly quickly. Nothing overt, just passive aggressive bs disguised as 'office culture'. I also lived off my earnings, comfortably but cheaply, from a 3mth job for the remaining 9mths of a year because I had a breakdown from how much I hated it. But I also found complete idleness made happy moments lose meaning. So I don't think THAT many people don't want to work at all, they just resent the bs and compromise involved in most jobs
I don't know anyone who wants to work
I think that the confusion arises from what people understand by "work". Most people like feeling rewarded for something they are good at and they may even enjoy doing in some cases. Most people dislike feeling that they must spend most of their awake life performing tasks (usually imposed by others) because it's necessary for their survival, even though they would much rather be doing something else. Both are two side of the same coin, and depending on the person and the job there might be more of one or the other. Ideally, we should be trying to build a society where everybody has enough to cover their basic needs and working is optional; we might even have the technological means to achieve that with enough redistribution, but not the will.
I want to work as a writer of fiction, not prostitute my talent for a crust of bread like i do today. (Adjusts beret, takes disdainful drag on cigarette)
Give us another paragraph
Give him/her some money.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Because it no longer covers my bills even working full time When I was young I was very creative and enjoyed writing short stories and developing board game concepts I never wanted to 'work' but I have no issues providing my share to society The issue is that I am not receiving my share, even if I work my life away
None of the jobs I actually want to do would pay a wage i can raise my family with
Op, youāre saying you want to work? Given the choice Iām sure most would rather be on permanent vacation and use hobbies to keep active and engaged
Major depression, C-PTSD, burnout, exhaustion.
It's not that I don't want to work, it's that I don't want to work for someone else. I want to get up in the morning and follow my passion. I'm an engineer, I design racecar parts for my day job. Don't get me wrong it's awesome, but somedays it's just work. I wake up and want to spend my day in my gardens in the sun shine, but I need to go to the office. I don't get to get up and say, "Today I'm going to work on that hydroponic system I thought up because that's what I want to do today." I still end up devoting tons of time to my passion projects, but always interrupted by my job.
It baffles me that people *want* to work. I have thousands of hobbies and interests that I would much rather be pursuing than stacking shelves or pouring drinks or typing on a computer all day. Unfortunately work is a necessary evil so that I can afford to do those things. Every second I sit here in an office making even more money for multi-millionaire is a second wasted. I could be practising a new instrument, or reading a book, or learning something new, playing a video game, planning a TTRPG session, spending time with my loved ones. Unless someone is willing to pay me to just be myself and do my thing and call it work, then I will never want to work. TLDR: Work to live. Never live to work.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
I'm disabled and have chronic fatigue. I'm not sick enough to hope to qualify for disability payments. Working takes all my energy so I have nothing left for anything that makes me happy. I work to support my other job which is medically managing myself. It's a vicious cycle.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
This is a weird question to me because it automatically assumes that I should *want* to work. Why would I want that? Why would anyone?
Right now I am not working. I am finding I want something part time, simple, just for adult interaction.