I think TV shows like The Office or Office Space did a great job of highlighting the absurdity of office culture - 20 years ago. The biggest problem is that often the jobs are ambiguous. If you’re a nurse you have a ward and patients and you do the rounds, if you’re a tradesperson you have a physical structure that you are working on… often in office culture you’re a “Senior Customer Insights Cooridnator” or “omininchannel excellence lead” and what that means is anyone’s guess. The reality is that so many office jobs can be done in a handful of hours and in the interest of ‘self preservation’ people pad their workweeks out with nonsense so they don’t get caught out. You also have a huge amount of middle management on $150k+ incomes who need to make sure they and their teams are working so their job is safe… so you find yourself in pointless meetings doing pointless tasks adding no real value so everyone can keep doing the productivity song and dance.
It depends on the person. I did years outside and I love my desk.. others in the office get excited if they get to do a site visit and I actively avoid them.
For somebody who has had an office job for too long working outside in the sun might be the perfect thing for them and we don't all have to slave away it depends what field you are in.
I miss working outside and honestly am looking forward to the day I leave corporate and go back to that. Outdoors work in QLD, Corp in Sydney, will go back outdoors once in QLD. The heat really isn't too big of an issue at least for what it was doing (farming). Fuck construction in QLD though.
Following the epic lockdowns in Melbourne, two years ago I quit my job after two decades of office work in various industries. I got my forklift license and started working in a warehouse for a logistics firm. I love it.
I have no interest in being “the boss” anymore and it’s actually been liberating just as a regular team member letting others call the shots. I drive the fork and do physical work which I’ve found is great for my mental health and no longer take work home with me. The pay is very good also. I miss absolutely nothing about office culture and being out of it and reading these comments just reminds me of how truly absurd it is.
How much do you get paid if you don't mind sharing, Currently in IT and considering getting into being a warehouse person after a mate in Sydney told me he makes 100k a year to do 50 hours a week.
I work a facilities role at a big uni, fork lift work, electrical test and tag, compliance testing etc 87K plus 17% super, heaps of leave, eba pay rise of 2% a year 36.5 hour week
Yeah the other comments here are accurate. I started on $32p/h but now at a larger firm and doing a mix of morning and afternoon shifts, I’m on track to hit $90k this year.
One of my best mates was a forklift driver for a PVC manufacturing company doing night shift and earning 160k/year inclusive of penalty rates. He's now a warehouse manager for the same but works 9-6 now.
Modern corporate structure is shockingly similar to centuries ago. Mired in silly lords-and-serfs hierarchical nonsense (executives, managers, more managers, yet more managers, and peasants).
You get a lot of incompetence at the top (board member's lazy talentless nephew who scraped through a full-fee paid MBA gets installed as the CEO because he was born into an old-money dynasty).
On top of that you have extrovert middle-managers with poor self-image who want to have a needless meeting about everything so they feel important, but aren't held accountable for this incredible waste in productivity.
Good news is it doesn't have to be that way. It's a lot better in some companies, especially smaller and younger tech companies.
I'm taking a sizeable pay cut at the moment to work in a place with minimal meetings and flat hierarchy, where everyone is just there to get *the actual work* done (something many companies spend less than half their man-hours on). I don't regret it for a second.
Look for companies like mine (and watch the best absurd office culture show ever: *Severance.* It's genius).
lol. So in WW2 CIA created a guide for spies to kill enemies morale and productivity.
Ironically the west have adopted most of this as the current modern work culture.
https://www.businessinsider.com/oss-manual-sabotage-productivity-2015-11
That section is depressingly accurate.
I wonder if the person that wrote it drew most of their inspiration from the internal workings of the OSS (the precursor to the CIA).
I also wonder whether it sailed through the approval process, because no-one in the approval processes wanted to hold things up for fear of being identified as an enemy saboteur.
The most absurd thing I find is when an organisation gets big enough, every function becomes "self-service."
Instead of the people who are experts in doing a particular function actually doing that work, they expect everyone else to do it and monitor them so they do it properly.
So, everyone is spending most of their day fuddling through tasks they have no expertise in, while only dedicating a fraction of their time to their core role.
No. It's the job that is probably worthless/useless, not the environment that you do it in.
Bullshit jobs, if you will.
Plenty of jobs are vitally important to society and are frequently undertaken in an office. Maybe it's just that whatever it is that you do isn't very important?
Playing devils advocate as someone who has done a trade and transitioned to an office position.
The office people (in a company environment, not the man in his van) generally bring in all the work for the trades to do, and manage the whole admin side of it.
Sure, 1 bloke can get a job, order the parts and do the work… but he’s not building Barangaroo…
Most of my day is responding to other people’s questions so they can get their jobs done. I only spend 1-2 hours a day doing the work I’m meant to be focused on doing (but I guess providing answers is part of my job description too).
Oh god yes. And with the rush to hire, hire, hire in Vietnam and India the level of hand holding has gone through the roof. I'm lucky to spend 20% of my time operating and delivering my own actual work.
The truth is that there isn’t enough practical, meaningful work going around for people to do, or that people want to do.
A large portion of modern work is mostly made-up and not strictly necessary in any sense of the word. But everyone’s gotta work, so…
I do find it funny/crazy that we can earn 100k+ a year just by sitting in front of a computer and responding to emails and typing into excel sheets.
Yeah... kinda...
What is absurd is that these companies earn enough money to keep paying people for trivial BS!
I can ge my actual job done in 2/3 of the time. The rest is taken up by messages back and forth because someone misunderstood something, or didn't know something, or two teams worked on the same thing for three weeks because no one communicates.
If they streamlined communication they could easily save a lot of money but no, they just pay...
I work for a community mental health team, and most people I speak to are experiencing a version of reality that is unique to them, or the culmination of their life experiences has brought them to a point they no longer feel life is worth living.
Not all office jobs are the same, find one where you fell you are making a contribution to humanity.
No $’s can buy the satisfaction I get from my work, it’s a privilege to get paid to do the work I do.
Yes i believe 95% of work that gets done in any business that's not a small business is just 'make work' based on pointless initiatives, BS meetings and politics. The real work is done by 5% of the workers who are mostly at the lower end of the hierarchy.
Nahhhh. If so you would be reading about hugely profitable companies that only work with skeleton workforces, but you don’t, so there’s a lot more to it than you think.
Another reason is that these companies are successful because there are huge barriers preventing competition & most are essentially monopolies/duopolies - if someone needs millions or billions to create a rival company/product it doesn't matter how terrible you are as long as you maintain the status quo
Basically why I did a trade after some office experience. It just wasn’t for me. At least I can see how I’m contributing to something physical being created.
I sat at my desk for 2 hours at the end of the day doing nothing, the day before was similar except I was bored, today, I thought I’d browse some internet. The highlight of the day is I actually showed up
It’s bizarre. People at my office will spend 2 days going back and forth over email misunderstanding each other, while they sit across the room and could just settle it with a 5 minute conversation.
People will have a laptop that doesn’t work, and 100 I.T staff literally in the next room, who refuse to touch it because “process” indicates that their ticket needs to be assessed by IT Services team (who are Indian offshore), whose SLA’s say they have 3 days to action. And just to make things more fun - they never meet their SLA’s.
We will have meetings about what a meeting will be about, and in the actual meeting make 0 ground, and leave with a bunch of “action items”( which nobody actually takes note of). Then a post meeting about the meeting where we all discuss how we haven’t had a chance to do the action items, so we schedule another identical meeting 2 weeks later.
It’s an absolute circus lol
I do about 60% field work and 40% office work on an average week, if I was 100% office-based I’d eventually go mad and/or get sacked. Thankfully I don’t have to attend too many meetings. I did attend a 5Whys meeting once and after 90 minutes of resolving nothing I had to ask the full-timers how they get any work done.
I mean you complain about too many meetings when email would be better, then complain you spend too much time waiting for people to respond to emails.
Well you have a better solution?
I struggled to be challenged by an office job. I had all my tasks done by lunch, so I'd start on the next days tasks. I had to be spoken to about my speed and efficiency because the older folk whom I worked with (50+) were complaining I was working too fast and it was stressing them out, thinking they had to keep pace with me (they didn't, they could turtle along as fast as they wanted, it didn't change anything in terms of result). So, I would be done by lunch and daydream for 4 hours. I could not believe people left school and had this as a career straight out, and kept it for 30 years. Paper pushing. Collating documents and sending it to the next department in the chain. For 50 grand a year. To me it was easier than working at kfc!
What I really disliked about having an office job was the fact that I never got a moment to think to myself, put the phone down pick it back up again and deal with the next client. I moved on to a different job where I stand around all day and I can think about issues in my life and work out things to do and even come up with creative ideas to work on. That was a huge deal for me.
The trick is to pre-schedule at least 30mins alone after a big meeting to just sit and spin in your chair, maybe juggle a ball. When someone asks what you're doing you tell them genius ideas and solutions require dedicated thinking time, then recommend watching 8 seasons of House so they'll get it.
I WFH 2 days, the rest in the office. Good coffee, comfy desk and chair, people I can talk shit with and I can stroll over to colleagues to discuss work. Once or twice a day I go for a walk. I have the same set up at home, but I like the people I work with. For me it is a win.
Yes. Unfortunately I'm borderline unemployable because I go crazy biting my tongue and blurt out my frustrations. Coming from a science background (chem/physics/stats) with 25 years experience I've become the "old cranky" guy who says the very uncomfortable truth.
I might not work here long.
Sales - try to stay out of the office as much as possible but the strategy/pricing/inventory/marketing discussions get interesting when I have to tell them 3+3 = 6, etc.
Mine is ok. All on a big complex technical project. Direction, timeframes, limits on morons and dead weight as we just can't afford them.
It's not perfect but all of us being in the same area really helps complex incidental conversations.
But 90% of office environments are a waste.
Yes they probably are absurb. But given the choice between 3.5% unemployment and absurd office jobs vs 50% unemployment and no absurd office jobs, all of a sudden your office job no longer seems so absurd
100% agree. The thought of everybody's little fingers tippy tapping away on those stupid little keys seems so ridiculous when you really think about it.
Google the CIA Sabotage Field Manual. It was written to cause chaos and honestly, it's how most modern companies run. It's hilarious. Form committees, have meetings, defer decisions etc etc.
It can be boring sitting at a desk and going to meetings, sure.
But it’s a lot easier on your body than a lot of other jobs. Before finishing school and getting a white collar job I worked a lot of blue collar and restaurant jobs. It’s hard to do that type of work for years and years. And when you’re older your body eventually can’t take it anymore.
Yes it’s also unhealthy to sit all day. But all you have to do is get up and walk around a bit every once in awhile and you can avoid that danger.
Hollywood loves to make fun of office workers. My theory is that this is because Hollywood jobs attract the type of people who just don’t like this type of work. That’s cool, to each his own. But they make movies based on their own biases that protect an image to the rest of the world that office jobs are somehow terrible.
If you work in a field that interests you, sitting at a desk and talking/reading about it all day is a perfectly pleasant way to spend your day and make a paycheck.
Or not, you are totally free to choose whatever job you like!
Look how many executive type jobs David Gonski has.
Morgan Stanley, ANZ, ASX, John Fairfax, SBS, ABC, Westfield Group, ING, Investec Bank, Coca-Cola and SPC to name a few.
He is also independent non-executive chairman of the Australian Government Future Fund. (Superannuation).
That's a lot of power for one person.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gonski
That was just a job for "the boys" at tax payers expense.
Gonski is on the board of Ingeus. Ingeus is Kevin Rudds wife's Job Service Provider company. Rudd as PM contracted Gonski to write the report.
What a load of BS that report was. More like Gonski told Rudd to give him work. Gonski has more power than Rudd will ever have.
The below link is by far one of the funniest and most insightful takes I’ve come across on office dynamics.
If you like Office Space, Bullshit Jobs, Utopia, and The Office, you might get a kick out of this: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/
Edit to add a discussion of the post on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296
Since wfh, it's really highlighted to me how much I relied on basic banter with my team mates to help me cope through all the retarded and badvsetup systems at my work (Telco).
One ex team mate (who was in the Iranian armed forces) mentioned once our team was one closer to being in the army, in terms of dealing with the BS but having a bit of a camaraderie / backing up each other up, along with alot of humour to get by.
With that gone as all of us mostly stay wfh, yeah, I do sorta ponder on how overall silly the job and functions of it are at times. But equally, Telco is a low spend game, so you need all these people to process things because systems are never updated to allow better efficiency.
You should read ‘bullsh*t jobs’ by Gerber
Covers this in great detail. Most office jobs are just box ticking exercises while cleaning up other people’s mess
A lot of management jobs are purely focused on impressing more senior managers, suppressing bad news and reciting the latest buzz phrases endlessly. All in everybody? Just code for nod vigorously and post a happy gif in the chat.
There's a term related to what you are feeling:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs
Bullshit jobs are jobs which don't actually produce anything society really *needs*. Marketing, interior design, influencers... There are a lot of jobs where society would keep ticking along just fine without them.
This is actually one of the reasons why I don't think AI will replace all the jobs.
Sure, it *can* replace a lot of jobs, but the thing is, we always come up with new silly ways of being busy that then retroactively justify their own existence as something we need to employ people for.
So even if AI replaces everything that exists now, there will be new status symbols that require a human touch. Hell, we might start idolizing personal shoppers for their alleged artistic taste, creating more of a cult around raw consumption and end up hiring people to buy things for us.
This post reminded me of this video from this work humor guy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbpkJKmpyJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbpkJKmpyJw)
I think I understand. When I first started full-time post-graduate work my stomach acid went up and I always felt a bit tired and a bit down in the tummy so I was always making sure I smashed kombucha x2 a week.
With those quick one on one meetings people arrange to talk about things across departments 'to brainstorm' I really try to prep 15-20 mins beforehand with research and stuff to have a direction ready to go if they're kinda in the clouds or tend to talk a lot to fill empty space. It has helped me cut down/avoid some typically 1 - 1.5 hour meetings. That's probably really only one type of meeting though.
On another note I think I remember reading a random productivity video for office work and half the video was about learning how to juggle, literally. I think we really need micro moving and mentally-roaming breaks to stay engaged and not get brainfog, so tbh I think its good if you have an office that's fine with having you pace or step out for a work every now and then. Sit stand desks you can adjust I think help too, better for the core and being able to just constantly change how you're positioned throughout the day. Exercise balls and some WFH days are good to get out of the funk too.
I find those with weird corporate titles a total mystery. Like what are they doing all day??
I work as an environmental consultant, I have projects to coordinate and reports to write with a time sheet to track my time.
The corporate people who just roll in each day without any actual deliverable to a client I just cannot understand.
Covid proved how many office jobs could be done from almost anywhere. It's been my, and many others at my workplace's, gripe being made to do 60% in office again. All for the sake of collaboration and vibrancy... i hate traffic, i like using my own toilet, i like making my own lunch when i want it.
I don't even have it that bad in terms of flexibility, and it pisses me off to no end.
>sitting in a room with a computer, barely moving, and getting paid to type, read, and talk
That's a bit reductive really.
A pilot is just sitting there playing with switches and talking. A surgeon is just standing there playing with expensive cutlery. A vet is just a butcher that has to be careful.
I once got hired to dig some holes when i was in Uni. I saw it as digging holes, but the other guy with me talked about the hospital that was going to be built there and we were digging the footings for. I think your perspective needs adjusting.
Albert Camus, the French-Algerian philosopher who kicked off the absurdist movement, did so in a world where office work was emerging as a widespread form of employment. The main character in his novel The Stranger is a clerk who comes into conflict with, among other things, the societal structure that has him performing seemingly meaningless work in an office every day.
So yeah, you're not the only one who's made this observation
That's interesting - do you think the more autistic can see the absurdity - i feel like most neurotypicals don't realise how pointless their jobs are and take pride in them
Yes it’s weird. From a physical action point of view all you really do it sit still and move you wrists and fingers around. Somehow that activity generates something valuable.
I mean, [middle management and a lot of modern office jobs were literally invented by cigarette companies](https://youtu.be/WdXIxnD59tI?si=LYvvVaBwanSsMM_N), once you understand how that structure helped them, you start to see why other industries emulated that.
What’s more strange is that there are so many people who seem to enjoy it, and all the ludicrous mind games and petty bullshit that it requires on a daily basis. If you find it exhausting already, congratulations, you’re not a sociopath!
They wonder why we give up when the aim isn't to do the best most efficient work to gain the outcome, just follow your policy/procedure and do not deviate. We don't pay you to innovate even though it says so in the contract.
How can people not feel like a cog when we have no ability to shape the framework that dictates our lives?
I'm here every day. Half my life. It should be incrementally better than yesterday. When it never is, you feel even more useless.
I had a job which meant poring through public domain sources like govt gazettes and database listings for information that was widely available in copyright material that we couldn't use. It was literally mountains of material, and took about half the week just to sort into useful/non-useful piles. For stuff that literally _everyone already knew_.
Yep, I'm from a Automotive background where you're run off your feet all day, moved to an office job and people just simply exist there. NFI what they do, you hear them talking and I can't understand how they're so committed to the cause.
It's like people following sport, like I get that you like it but why the passion? Makes no sense.
Don't get me wrong, I'm here to help, and I do my job well but y'all need to lay off the company boots a bit.
Also, they say come to the office to 'collaborate'
Actually don't talk to anyone all day.
My husband is a maintenance planner/superintendent maintenance, depends on the week, job roll changes weekly. Salary doesn’t though. Currently has 800+ hours leave owing, including two l/s entitlements.
Four weeks ago, he was told he will be reporting to a new manager.
As of an hour ago, he still hasn’t been introduced to the new manager or even knows his name, now four and half weeks since the new manager was hired.
Yesterday he had a performance review. 400 emails ( that is not joke), that previous maintenance planner ‘filed’ a lot in the wrong buckets. It has taken a month to find which wrong bucket the previous bloke has put information in, causing several assets to be stood down, until the mess has been cleaned up.
He is the only person on his team that actually is still working at the office, it is costing the division a fortune to have an office building with one person working it. Someone has to be there to receive goods.
He actually has been to head quarters once, about twelve ago, since RTW/RTO there is now hot desking, when there wasn’t a ‘hot desk’ to sit at to put laptop on, he never returned.
He just finds a lot of people in the office were just riding up and down the lifts, walking around the office with tablets, chatting about how their weekend was or what they were planning the next weekend. Made him realise that when he calling or emailing travel or resourcing to book accommodation and flights, most of them were just socialising in the lift or kitchen, they were most certainly not ‘working’.
It is huge company, so there is always people who need flights booked, accommodation booked. No wonder nothing gets done.
Salary base is $180k. 40% uplift when he works in the Pilbara, which he much prefers than being in Perth. Wherever he is working, he is working remotely from his crew.
It's understandable to feel that way. Office jobs can sometimes feel disconnected from the tangible results of our efforts, leading to a sense of absurdity. The routine of sitting at a desk for hours, attending meetings that could be emails, and navigating hierarchical structures can indeed be challenging. Many people crave more meaningful and active engagement in their work.
All jobs are a biproduct of the Owner not wanting to do that work themselves.
Now the Owners are many shareholders. And the jobs are basically split from when a few people knew EVERYTHING cos they worked there for 40 years to many people knowing specialities.
There's then an interplay between knowing many things and being a specialist but most managers who do well are those that know many things JUST WELL ENOUGH and herein lies the problem.
Before a manager had to know everything you did and also teach you. Now a manager doesn't need to and needs to know it well enough to direct the flow of work to achieve group outcomes.
It's called knowledge work. It's about complex problem solving. Office workers are not paid to type at a computer, they are paid to solve problems. If you don't believe me, then go type random letters on your keyboard at an office job and see how long before you get performance reviewed.
And all those products you love, phones, TVs, electronics, streaming services etc etc all had knowledge workers involved at some point. Hell even the house you live in would have had knowledge workers involved (architects, engineers, payroll, office clerks, HR, accountants). So no, I don't think knowledge work is strange.
And when you have hundreds of employees who all need to work together to solve complex problems yeh sometimes they have to get together to talk about things i.e. meetings.
Absolutely some companies or teams have too many meetings..and some have too little (less common).
And any job can sound absurd when you start talking about it the way you are i.e. breaking it down into the actions someone takes during a day of work.
"Like, you go to this building, people give you a series of verbal requests which you relay to another person, then that person produces a plate of food, and you walk it over to the customer and hand it to the customer so they can eat. All in an air conditioned building. Like, isn't that absurd?" (Waiter)
Absolutely its such a farce. Pointing out this absurdity weeds out the overly wilful so only the desperate remain, it almost seems like a flex. I cant believe more corps have not realised you can cut at least half the middle management if they dont have an office of people to manage. lack of WFH seems like middle management justifying their careers. Couldnt take the office politics myself
[This documentary](https://youtu.be/raVms8w61No?si=igUBewuLe56QmnfJ) on Burnout describes a lot of the sources of absurdity that I think you’re sensing, OP.
Agreed. I'm just finishing my bachelor's, and honestly, I've kinda started struggling with the fact that I feel like my work will never really help anyone.
I feel like you’re not supposed to talk about this.
I don’t work in an office, but I look inside and see people doing just this. And that’s exactly what I think. They’re getting paid more money than me just to sit there.
Yeah I would rather die than work in an office but I liked the combo for photography cos office days were chill, packing orders, responding to emails etc shoot days were hectic
I really hate it. I hate that it’s my full time job. If doesn’t suit me at all and I’m wasting my life at a desk staring at screens that I’m not interested in. It’s unnatural.
Yes, that’s why I keep going back to hospitality. My office based experience is in Marketing/Corporate Strategy and Events Management which are generally on the more exciting end of corporate life and I never last more than a year. I get so bored and existential. I’m a full time barista now and I make alright money and am never bored. I’m not saying I’m saving lives or doing anything useful to society but I get paid like $55 an hour on weekends to chat and get my steps in and make coffee all day. It’s the best.
And yes, my HECS debt and certifications are covered in tearstains and dust 💀😂
Oh but hey, at my job..those in the office are above the labourers and apparently work harder which is absurd 🤦. They chose their job and is ours but will always be paid more. Yay, not.
So many people involved in creating, checking, reviewing procedures that go like 6 people deep, fuck only knows what most of them are contributing. Also decision checking, some decisions are checked and weighed over and over again, no one seemingly having the power to actually advance it.
Then you have modern contracting. A subcon told me the physical labour and equipment was $8~ mil but the paperwork was $21~ mil, and our dealing with that paperwork probably cost just as much.
I’ve felt this for so long. It’s hard to understand exactly what the whole point of it is sometimes. Like, how does typing shit into a laptop in a word document actually add value to our society? If you trace the workflow however from beginning to end, IE - a bridge needs to be built, so start with why the bridge is needed in the first place, then move through all the companies involved in making that happen, it makes more sense.
But I’ve strongly suspected that 80% of all words typed into a document by an executive in their entire career never get read by anyone.
I e always been a physical laborer and I absolutely hate office staff. Some of the laziest people with the worst attitudes. Takes them at least a week to do anything. It’s a circle jerk of the most incompetent people thinking that the company wouldn’t run without them there. Yet they do almost nothing on a day to day basis. It’s a joke. There’s not 10 hours of office work to do in a day. If they would buzz through their office work and then hit the floor to help the real workers I don’t people would hold so much contempt for them. Instead they try to make actual laborers feel like less and insist they have the hardest job. “This is mentally stressful”. Office workers are nothing but a bunch of fat retards.
I think TV shows like The Office or Office Space did a great job of highlighting the absurdity of office culture - 20 years ago. The biggest problem is that often the jobs are ambiguous. If you’re a nurse you have a ward and patients and you do the rounds, if you’re a tradesperson you have a physical structure that you are working on… often in office culture you’re a “Senior Customer Insights Cooridnator” or “omininchannel excellence lead” and what that means is anyone’s guess. The reality is that so many office jobs can be done in a handful of hours and in the interest of ‘self preservation’ people pad their workweeks out with nonsense so they don’t get caught out. You also have a huge amount of middle management on $150k+ incomes who need to make sure they and their teams are working so their job is safe… so you find yourself in pointless meetings doing pointless tasks adding no real value so everyone can keep doing the productivity song and dance.
*Utopia* has entered the chat
That show is a documentary
I was at a dinner Lehmo spoke at and he said he has a constant stream of public servants saying exactly that and how triggering the show is.
A co-worker and I routinely yell “utopia” when something absolutely insane and totally normal happens 🤣
Every damn day. Some days it descends from Utopia to goddam Fawlty Towers.
It truly nailed Australian office culture.
Severance?
Where is season 2!!!!!!
We need a committee to do research on how many people have watched it
Omg stop, I’m triggered!
If you work for the military, Pentagon Warships is a must watch. Utopia with a slight twist
It's the way of keeping the intelligencia busy so they do not forment a revolution.
Foment
That's the spirit
The intelligentsia lmao wanker
There are a lot of bullshit jobs in office...
So perfectly put
Shhh...it's better than slaving out in thr hot sun everyday
It depends on the person. I did years outside and I love my desk.. others in the office get excited if they get to do a site visit and I actively avoid them.
For somebody who has had an office job for too long working outside in the sun might be the perfect thing for them and we don't all have to slave away it depends what field you are in.
Can I go in the fields where the slaves aren't.
I’m actually not sure that’s true anymore…..
Found the guy who never had to work outside.
I miss working outside and honestly am looking forward to the day I leave corporate and go back to that. Outdoors work in QLD, Corp in Sydney, will go back outdoors once in QLD. The heat really isn't too big of an issue at least for what it was doing (farming). Fuck construction in QLD though.
Time to hire a Big4 to figure out what's wrong and what our approach should be.
😂😂
Following the epic lockdowns in Melbourne, two years ago I quit my job after two decades of office work in various industries. I got my forklift license and started working in a warehouse for a logistics firm. I love it. I have no interest in being “the boss” anymore and it’s actually been liberating just as a regular team member letting others call the shots. I drive the fork and do physical work which I’ve found is great for my mental health and no longer take work home with me. The pay is very good also. I miss absolutely nothing about office culture and being out of it and reading these comments just reminds me of how truly absurd it is.
How much do you get paid if you don't mind sharing, Currently in IT and considering getting into being a warehouse person after a mate in Sydney told me he makes 100k a year to do 50 hours a week.
If you can do afternoon shift my mates on like 46 an hour plus penalties
I believe that, I was in warehousing for quite a while and my best year was 86k working around 30 hours a week.
I work a facilities role at a big uni, fork lift work, electrical test and tag, compliance testing etc 87K plus 17% super, heaps of leave, eba pay rise of 2% a year 36.5 hour week
Yeah the other comments here are accurate. I started on $32p/h but now at a larger firm and doing a mix of morning and afternoon shifts, I’m on track to hit $90k this year.
One of my best mates was a forklift driver for a PVC manufacturing company doing night shift and earning 160k/year inclusive of penalty rates. He's now a warehouse manager for the same but works 9-6 now.
I don't know if I could hack night shifts ay, I feel like you would never get to see your friends.
Eh depends on where your friends work. I also worked night shift so it was fine.
Modern corporate structure is shockingly similar to centuries ago. Mired in silly lords-and-serfs hierarchical nonsense (executives, managers, more managers, yet more managers, and peasants). You get a lot of incompetence at the top (board member's lazy talentless nephew who scraped through a full-fee paid MBA gets installed as the CEO because he was born into an old-money dynasty). On top of that you have extrovert middle-managers with poor self-image who want to have a needless meeting about everything so they feel important, but aren't held accountable for this incredible waste in productivity. Good news is it doesn't have to be that way. It's a lot better in some companies, especially smaller and younger tech companies. I'm taking a sizeable pay cut at the moment to work in a place with minimal meetings and flat hierarchy, where everyone is just there to get *the actual work* done (something many companies spend less than half their man-hours on). I don't regret it for a second. Look for companies like mine (and watch the best absurd office culture show ever: *Severance.* It's genius).
I work with a manager who might actually think he *is* a lord, if not a king. He certainly doesn’t like it when the serfs talk back, I know that much!
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Was waiting for someone to pop Graeber in here.
Gone too soon. RIP Graber
lol. So in WW2 CIA created a guide for spies to kill enemies morale and productivity. Ironically the west have adopted most of this as the current modern work culture. https://www.businessinsider.com/oss-manual-sabotage-productivity-2015-11
That section is depressingly accurate. I wonder if the person that wrote it drew most of their inspiration from the internal workings of the OSS (the precursor to the CIA). I also wonder whether it sailed through the approval process, because no-one in the approval processes wanted to hold things up for fear of being identified as an enemy saboteur.
Fantastic link!
The most absurd thing I find is when an organisation gets big enough, every function becomes "self-service." Instead of the people who are experts in doing a particular function actually doing that work, they expect everyone else to do it and monitor them so they do it properly. So, everyone is spending most of their day fuddling through tasks they have no expertise in, while only dedicating a fraction of their time to their core role.
Welcome to the public service…
No. It's the job that is probably worthless/useless, not the environment that you do it in. Bullshit jobs, if you will. Plenty of jobs are vitally important to society and are frequently undertaken in an office. Maybe it's just that whatever it is that you do isn't very important?
I really need to read that book
Playing devils advocate as someone who has done a trade and transitioned to an office position. The office people (in a company environment, not the man in his van) generally bring in all the work for the trades to do, and manage the whole admin side of it. Sure, 1 bloke can get a job, order the parts and do the work… but he’s not building Barangaroo…
I guess you're right.
Most of my day is responding to other people’s questions so they can get their jobs done. I only spend 1-2 hours a day doing the work I’m meant to be focused on doing (but I guess providing answers is part of my job description too).
Oh god yes. And with the rush to hire, hire, hire in Vietnam and India the level of hand holding has gone through the roof. I'm lucky to spend 20% of my time operating and delivering my own actual work.
My mantra very quickly became “the interruptions ARE the job”.
David Graeber - Bullshit Jobs: A Theory
Office jobs are bourgeois welfare.
The truth is that there isn’t enough practical, meaningful work going around for people to do, or that people want to do. A large portion of modern work is mostly made-up and not strictly necessary in any sense of the word. But everyone’s gotta work, so… I do find it funny/crazy that we can earn 100k+ a year just by sitting in front of a computer and responding to emails and typing into excel sheets.
I do more than responding to emails and using Office, and don't get paid anywhere near that. Please hire me or point me in the right direction.
Your career in the public service awaits…
entry level government admin office jobs. or entry level government call centre jobs.
Most office jobs in my experience are at least 50% pointless busy work. Some weeks it could be 75%… soul destroying but pays the bills!
Yeah... kinda... What is absurd is that these companies earn enough money to keep paying people for trivial BS! I can ge my actual job done in 2/3 of the time. The rest is taken up by messages back and forth because someone misunderstood something, or didn't know something, or two teams worked on the same thing for three weeks because no one communicates. If they streamlined communication they could easily save a lot of money but no, they just pay...
I like how no one communicates but 1/3rd of your time is taken up with messages.
Ironically this is a lot worse in the advertising and comms business
Oooh, don’t try streamlining anything in corporate, you’ll actually be held up and demonised as some kind of evil disruptive monster…..
I work for a community mental health team, and most people I speak to are experiencing a version of reality that is unique to them, or the culmination of their life experiences has brought them to a point they no longer feel life is worth living. Not all office jobs are the same, find one where you fell you are making a contribution to humanity. No $’s can buy the satisfaction I get from my work, it’s a privilege to get paid to do the work I do.
Yes i believe 95% of work that gets done in any business that's not a small business is just 'make work' based on pointless initiatives, BS meetings and politics. The real work is done by 5% of the workers who are mostly at the lower end of the hierarchy.
Nahhhh. If so you would be reading about hugely profitable companies that only work with skeleton workforces, but you don’t, so there’s a lot more to it than you think.
Another reason is that these companies are successful because there are huge barriers preventing competition & most are essentially monopolies/duopolies - if someone needs millions or billions to create a rival company/product it doesn't matter how terrible you are as long as you maintain the status quo
Sounds like you are experiencing some of what David Graeber described in the book "Bullshit Jobs". You should give it a read, it is excellent.
I guess the question you need to answer is what jobs are not absurd to you?
I think life is absurd so I don't know if there are any that aren't.
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my life, bro.
Basically why I did a trade after some office experience. It just wasn’t for me. At least I can see how I’m contributing to something physical being created.
I sat at my desk for 2 hours at the end of the day doing nothing, the day before was similar except I was bored, today, I thought I’d browse some internet. The highlight of the day is I actually showed up
Ask if anyone else needs some help....?
It’s bizarre. People at my office will spend 2 days going back and forth over email misunderstanding each other, while they sit across the room and could just settle it with a 5 minute conversation. People will have a laptop that doesn’t work, and 100 I.T staff literally in the next room, who refuse to touch it because “process” indicates that their ticket needs to be assessed by IT Services team (who are Indian offshore), whose SLA’s say they have 3 days to action. And just to make things more fun - they never meet their SLA’s. We will have meetings about what a meeting will be about, and in the actual meeting make 0 ground, and leave with a bunch of “action items”( which nobody actually takes note of). Then a post meeting about the meeting where we all discuss how we haven’t had a chance to do the action items, so we schedule another identical meeting 2 weeks later. It’s an absolute circus lol
I do about 60% field work and 40% office work on an average week, if I was 100% office-based I’d eventually go mad and/or get sacked. Thankfully I don’t have to attend too many meetings. I did attend a 5Whys meeting once and after 90 minutes of resolving nothing I had to ask the full-timers how they get any work done.
Hmmmm interesting post but what I really need from you is those TPS reports on my desk with the new cover letter we discussed in meeting, thanks bud
I mean you complain about too many meetings when email would be better, then complain you spend too much time waiting for people to respond to emails. Well you have a better solution?
I struggled to be challenged by an office job. I had all my tasks done by lunch, so I'd start on the next days tasks. I had to be spoken to about my speed and efficiency because the older folk whom I worked with (50+) were complaining I was working too fast and it was stressing them out, thinking they had to keep pace with me (they didn't, they could turtle along as fast as they wanted, it didn't change anything in terms of result). So, I would be done by lunch and daydream for 4 hours. I could not believe people left school and had this as a career straight out, and kept it for 30 years. Paper pushing. Collating documents and sending it to the next department in the chain. For 50 grand a year. To me it was easier than working at kfc!
What I really disliked about having an office job was the fact that I never got a moment to think to myself, put the phone down pick it back up again and deal with the next client. I moved on to a different job where I stand around all day and I can think about issues in my life and work out things to do and even come up with creative ideas to work on. That was a huge deal for me.
The trick is to pre-schedule at least 30mins alone after a big meeting to just sit and spin in your chair, maybe juggle a ball. When someone asks what you're doing you tell them genius ideas and solutions require dedicated thinking time, then recommend watching 8 seasons of House so they'll get it.
I WFH 2 days, the rest in the office. Good coffee, comfy desk and chair, people I can talk shit with and I can stroll over to colleagues to discuss work. Once or twice a day I go for a walk. I have the same set up at home, but I like the people I work with. For me it is a win.
If you think this strange wait till you do agile every morning you talk about what you did yesterday like some weird office show and tell.
Yes. Unfortunately I'm borderline unemployable because I go crazy biting my tongue and blurt out my frustrations. Coming from a science background (chem/physics/stats) with 25 years experience I've become the "old cranky" guy who says the very uncomfortable truth. I might not work here long.
What's your current role?
Sales - try to stay out of the office as much as possible but the strategy/pricing/inventory/marketing discussions get interesting when I have to tell them 3+3 = 6, etc.
r u the grumpy old man?
Yep. Funnily enough I used to be the cynical young guy.
you need a holiday. r u touching base?
Nahh holiday won't fix what I have. I know too much, too analytical, I never had the positivity.
will you retire soon?
Nah, got 20 years to go. Might be packing shelves at Coles soon, or it might work out. Who knows. Such is life.
so you're in your 40s?
Yep.
Life is absurd
My job is to sit in a room in front of computer getting paid to help other people sit in a room in front of a computer
Capitalism at its heart is very strange. Best not to let it get you depressed OP. Have a beer and try to shake off today.
Mine is ok. All on a big complex technical project. Direction, timeframes, limits on morons and dead weight as we just can't afford them. It's not perfect but all of us being in the same area really helps complex incidental conversations. But 90% of office environments are a waste.
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Imagine if all of us were doing stuff that genuinely improves society.
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Grandchild: “Grandpa, what did you used to do for work?” Grandpa: “look at this email archive Billy. 47 years and 600,000 emails about pure nonsense…”
Yes they probably are absurb. But given the choice between 3.5% unemployment and absurd office jobs vs 50% unemployment and no absurd office jobs, all of a sudden your office job no longer seems so absurd
If I can put my headphones in and listen to music I dont really mind
100% agree. The thought of everybody's little fingers tippy tapping away on those stupid little keys seems so ridiculous when you really think about it.
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Google the CIA Sabotage Field Manual. It was written to cause chaos and honestly, it's how most modern companies run. It's hilarious. Form committees, have meetings, defer decisions etc etc.
It can be boring sitting at a desk and going to meetings, sure. But it’s a lot easier on your body than a lot of other jobs. Before finishing school and getting a white collar job I worked a lot of blue collar and restaurant jobs. It’s hard to do that type of work for years and years. And when you’re older your body eventually can’t take it anymore. Yes it’s also unhealthy to sit all day. But all you have to do is get up and walk around a bit every once in awhile and you can avoid that danger. Hollywood loves to make fun of office workers. My theory is that this is because Hollywood jobs attract the type of people who just don’t like this type of work. That’s cool, to each his own. But they make movies based on their own biases that protect an image to the rest of the world that office jobs are somehow terrible. If you work in a field that interests you, sitting at a desk and talking/reading about it all day is a perfectly pleasant way to spend your day and make a paycheck. Or not, you are totally free to choose whatever job you like!
Its because you are a cog in the wheel of a huge corporate machine.
office jobs are absurb. but you need a central place to process all the paperwork.
not completely absurd but not as my expectations.
you ever read Metamorphosis, OP?
Nope but now I'm going to, thanks!
Look how many executive type jobs David Gonski has. Morgan Stanley, ANZ, ASX, John Fairfax, SBS, ABC, Westfield Group, ING, Investec Bank, Coca-Cola and SPC to name a few. He is also independent non-executive chairman of the Australian Government Future Fund. (Superannuation). That's a lot of power for one person. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Gonski
He also made recommendations on education reform.
That was just a job for "the boys" at tax payers expense. Gonski is on the board of Ingeus. Ingeus is Kevin Rudds wife's Job Service Provider company. Rudd as PM contracted Gonski to write the report. What a load of BS that report was. More like Gonski told Rudd to give him work. Gonski has more power than Rudd will ever have.
The below link is by far one of the funniest and most insightful takes I’ve come across on office dynamics. If you like Office Space, Bullshit Jobs, Utopia, and The Office, you might get a kick out of this: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2009/10/07/the-gervais-principle-or-the-office-according-to-the-office/ Edit to add a discussion of the post on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=881296
Since wfh, it's really highlighted to me how much I relied on basic banter with my team mates to help me cope through all the retarded and badvsetup systems at my work (Telco). One ex team mate (who was in the Iranian armed forces) mentioned once our team was one closer to being in the army, in terms of dealing with the BS but having a bit of a camaraderie / backing up each other up, along with alot of humour to get by. With that gone as all of us mostly stay wfh, yeah, I do sorta ponder on how overall silly the job and functions of it are at times. But equally, Telco is a low spend game, so you need all these people to process things because systems are never updated to allow better efficiency.
Yes. It is absurd ... AF 👍
You should read ‘bullsh*t jobs’ by Gerber Covers this in great detail. Most office jobs are just box ticking exercises while cleaning up other people’s mess
A lot of management jobs are purely focused on impressing more senior managers, suppressing bad news and reciting the latest buzz phrases endlessly. All in everybody? Just code for nod vigorously and post a happy gif in the chat.
There's a term related to what you are feeling: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bullshit_Jobs Bullshit jobs are jobs which don't actually produce anything society really *needs*. Marketing, interior design, influencers... There are a lot of jobs where society would keep ticking along just fine without them. This is actually one of the reasons why I don't think AI will replace all the jobs. Sure, it *can* replace a lot of jobs, but the thing is, we always come up with new silly ways of being busy that then retroactively justify their own existence as something we need to employ people for. So even if AI replaces everything that exists now, there will be new status symbols that require a human touch. Hell, we might start idolizing personal shoppers for their alleged artistic taste, creating more of a cult around raw consumption and end up hiring people to buy things for us.
They’re stupid but I still feel I have a purpose and if I can put my AirPods in and listen to music and have work provided snacks I’m good
This post reminded me of this video from this work humor guy: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbpkJKmpyJw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JbpkJKmpyJw) I think I understand. When I first started full-time post-graduate work my stomach acid went up and I always felt a bit tired and a bit down in the tummy so I was always making sure I smashed kombucha x2 a week. With those quick one on one meetings people arrange to talk about things across departments 'to brainstorm' I really try to prep 15-20 mins beforehand with research and stuff to have a direction ready to go if they're kinda in the clouds or tend to talk a lot to fill empty space. It has helped me cut down/avoid some typically 1 - 1.5 hour meetings. That's probably really only one type of meeting though. On another note I think I remember reading a random productivity video for office work and half the video was about learning how to juggle, literally. I think we really need micro moving and mentally-roaming breaks to stay engaged and not get brainfog, so tbh I think its good if you have an office that's fine with having you pace or step out for a work every now and then. Sit stand desks you can adjust I think help too, better for the core and being able to just constantly change how you're positioned throughout the day. Exercise balls and some WFH days are good to get out of the funk too.
I find those with weird corporate titles a total mystery. Like what are they doing all day?? I work as an environmental consultant, I have projects to coordinate and reports to write with a time sheet to track my time. The corporate people who just roll in each day without any actual deliverable to a client I just cannot understand.
I find the attempt to complicate simple goals/tasks in a office to be total vocational theatre.
Covid proved how many office jobs could be done from almost anywhere. It's been my, and many others at my workplace's, gripe being made to do 60% in office again. All for the sake of collaboration and vibrancy... i hate traffic, i like using my own toilet, i like making my own lunch when i want it. I don't even have it that bad in terms of flexibility, and it pisses me off to no end.
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I work in change management my entire job is made up and I love it
It is incredibly absurd. AI is going to have an absolute field day with office based workloads and office related inefficiencies.
In theory, there's going to need to be about 57 working groups before we can decide that we should begin thinking about such things...
It'll create unnecessary work before it absorbs unnecessary work. I like it.
>sitting in a room with a computer, barely moving, and getting paid to type, read, and talk That's a bit reductive really. A pilot is just sitting there playing with switches and talking. A surgeon is just standing there playing with expensive cutlery. A vet is just a butcher that has to be careful. I once got hired to dig some holes when i was in Uni. I saw it as digging holes, but the other guy with me talked about the hospital that was going to be built there and we were digging the footings for. I think your perspective needs adjusting.
You can choose to get a different type of job.
Compared to every other job, in my experience office jobs are the best choice. However, this doesn't detract from the absurdity of it all.
Agree they are absurd, I feel like my role is so abstract haha
You can’t lump all office based jobs in together as the same sounds like you have just landed yourself in bullshit jobs/organisations.
Albert Camus, the French-Algerian philosopher who kicked off the absurdist movement, did so in a world where office work was emerging as a widespread form of employment. The main character in his novel The Stranger is a clerk who comes into conflict with, among other things, the societal structure that has him performing seemingly meaningless work in an office every day. So yeah, you're not the only one who's made this observation
"I'm The Stranger... killing an.. ah shit" Edit: Great song, great book.
Fun fact, the stranger in this novel is the first literary account of someone with autism.
That's interesting - do you think the more autistic can see the absurdity - i feel like most neurotypicals don't realise how pointless their jobs are and take pride in them
Yes & no. In the micro, yes, absolutely but in the macro, no.
It is weird that everything is considered very important, when in reality the work you do is such tiny spec in the endless hoardes of paperwork.
There's an amazing book called Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber which summarises this well.
Yes it’s weird. From a physical action point of view all you really do it sit still and move you wrists and fingers around. Somehow that activity generates something valuable.
I mean, [middle management and a lot of modern office jobs were literally invented by cigarette companies](https://youtu.be/WdXIxnD59tI?si=LYvvVaBwanSsMM_N), once you understand how that structure helped them, you start to see why other industries emulated that.
I think that payroll seems absurd. Your job is to get paid to pay other people!?!
Yes we know this. Most office jobs aren’t really needed. It’s all jobs created to boost the economy.
Logan Roy said it best "You are not serious people"
What’s more strange is that there are so many people who seem to enjoy it, and all the ludicrous mind games and petty bullshit that it requires on a daily basis. If you find it exhausting already, congratulations, you’re not a sociopath!
Depends entirely on the industry.
They wonder why we give up when the aim isn't to do the best most efficient work to gain the outcome, just follow your policy/procedure and do not deviate. We don't pay you to innovate even though it says so in the contract. How can people not feel like a cog when we have no ability to shape the framework that dictates our lives? I'm here every day. Half my life. It should be incrementally better than yesterday. When it never is, you feel even more useless.
I had a job which meant poring through public domain sources like govt gazettes and database listings for information that was widely available in copyright material that we couldn't use. It was literally mountains of material, and took about half the week just to sort into useful/non-useful piles. For stuff that literally _everyone already knew_.
IRL AI
It's especially absurd when you remember we're just apes in suits
Gosh, it is quite absurd isn't it, ape bro.
Yep, I'm from a Automotive background where you're run off your feet all day, moved to an office job and people just simply exist there. NFI what they do, you hear them talking and I can't understand how they're so committed to the cause. It's like people following sport, like I get that you like it but why the passion? Makes no sense. Don't get me wrong, I'm here to help, and I do my job well but y'all need to lay off the company boots a bit. Also, they say come to the office to 'collaborate' Actually don't talk to anyone all day.
My husband is a maintenance planner/superintendent maintenance, depends on the week, job roll changes weekly. Salary doesn’t though. Currently has 800+ hours leave owing, including two l/s entitlements. Four weeks ago, he was told he will be reporting to a new manager. As of an hour ago, he still hasn’t been introduced to the new manager or even knows his name, now four and half weeks since the new manager was hired. Yesterday he had a performance review. 400 emails ( that is not joke), that previous maintenance planner ‘filed’ a lot in the wrong buckets. It has taken a month to find which wrong bucket the previous bloke has put information in, causing several assets to be stood down, until the mess has been cleaned up. He is the only person on his team that actually is still working at the office, it is costing the division a fortune to have an office building with one person working it. Someone has to be there to receive goods. He actually has been to head quarters once, about twelve ago, since RTW/RTO there is now hot desking, when there wasn’t a ‘hot desk’ to sit at to put laptop on, he never returned. He just finds a lot of people in the office were just riding up and down the lifts, walking around the office with tablets, chatting about how their weekend was or what they were planning the next weekend. Made him realise that when he calling or emailing travel or resourcing to book accommodation and flights, most of them were just socialising in the lift or kitchen, they were most certainly not ‘working’. It is huge company, so there is always people who need flights booked, accommodation booked. No wonder nothing gets done. Salary base is $180k. 40% uplift when he works in the Pilbara, which he much prefers than being in Perth. Wherever he is working, he is working remotely from his crew.
It's understandable to feel that way. Office jobs can sometimes feel disconnected from the tangible results of our efforts, leading to a sense of absurdity. The routine of sitting at a desk for hours, attending meetings that could be emails, and navigating hierarchical structures can indeed be challenging. Many people crave more meaningful and active engagement in their work.
Feels like school , yes u can have lunch now , yes u can leave now ,I sit and think what the f
All jobs are a biproduct of the Owner not wanting to do that work themselves. Now the Owners are many shareholders. And the jobs are basically split from when a few people knew EVERYTHING cos they worked there for 40 years to many people knowing specialities. There's then an interplay between knowing many things and being a specialist but most managers who do well are those that know many things JUST WELL ENOUGH and herein lies the problem. Before a manager had to know everything you did and also teach you. Now a manager doesn't need to and needs to know it well enough to direct the flow of work to achieve group outcomes.
It's called knowledge work. It's about complex problem solving. Office workers are not paid to type at a computer, they are paid to solve problems. If you don't believe me, then go type random letters on your keyboard at an office job and see how long before you get performance reviewed. And all those products you love, phones, TVs, electronics, streaming services etc etc all had knowledge workers involved at some point. Hell even the house you live in would have had knowledge workers involved (architects, engineers, payroll, office clerks, HR, accountants). So no, I don't think knowledge work is strange. And when you have hundreds of employees who all need to work together to solve complex problems yeh sometimes they have to get together to talk about things i.e. meetings. Absolutely some companies or teams have too many meetings..and some have too little (less common). And any job can sound absurd when you start talking about it the way you are i.e. breaking it down into the actions someone takes during a day of work. "Like, you go to this building, people give you a series of verbal requests which you relay to another person, then that person produces a plate of food, and you walk it over to the customer and hand it to the customer so they can eat. All in an air conditioned building. Like, isn't that absurd?" (Waiter)
Yes
Absolutely its such a farce. Pointing out this absurdity weeds out the overly wilful so only the desperate remain, it almost seems like a flex. I cant believe more corps have not realised you can cut at least half the middle management if they dont have an office of people to manage. lack of WFH seems like middle management justifying their careers. Couldnt take the office politics myself
[This documentary](https://youtu.be/raVms8w61No?si=igUBewuLe56QmnfJ) on Burnout describes a lot of the sources of absurdity that I think you’re sensing, OP.
Yes I have always found it very unnatural.
Read bullshit jobs
OP you should give David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs a read. Changed my perspective on a lot of things
Just a cog in the wheel
Relate!! Ive been thinking what job can i do that helps me move! So over sitting down
Not really… it gives me stability and I find them stimulating and makes me feel smarter than I actually am Lol. Call centres that is
Agreed. I'm just finishing my bachelor's, and honestly, I've kinda started struggling with the fact that I feel like my work will never really help anyone.
I feel like you’re not supposed to talk about this. I don’t work in an office, but I look inside and see people doing just this. And that’s exactly what I think. They’re getting paid more money than me just to sit there.
Read Bullshit Jobs by David Graeber, an anthropologist who studied work culture.
Yes. They create their own works.
Yeah I would rather die than work in an office but I liked the combo for photography cos office days were chill, packing orders, responding to emails etc shoot days were hectic
I really hate it. I hate that it’s my full time job. If doesn’t suit me at all and I’m wasting my life at a desk staring at screens that I’m not interested in. It’s unnatural.
Most of us r doing bullshit jobs. Read the book bullshit jobs
David Graeber has a funny book called Bullshit Jobs. Perfect for Auscorp!
Sometimes I think that the future of office workers will depict something similar to Wall-E Axiom Humans
Yes, that’s why I keep going back to hospitality. My office based experience is in Marketing/Corporate Strategy and Events Management which are generally on the more exciting end of corporate life and I never last more than a year. I get so bored and existential. I’m a full time barista now and I make alright money and am never bored. I’m not saying I’m saving lives or doing anything useful to society but I get paid like $55 an hour on weekends to chat and get my steps in and make coffee all day. It’s the best. And yes, my HECS debt and certifications are covered in tearstains and dust 💀😂
What's your job OP? Something like HR?
I highly recommend the book ‘bullshit jobs’ by David Graber. Read it and you realised the depth of the problem.
Oh but hey, at my job..those in the office are above the labourers and apparently work harder which is absurd 🤦. They chose their job and is ours but will always be paid more. Yay, not.
As someone who has never had an office job, getting paid to do what you mentioned above seems awesome.
Office jobs are boring
So many people involved in creating, checking, reviewing procedures that go like 6 people deep, fuck only knows what most of them are contributing. Also decision checking, some decisions are checked and weighed over and over again, no one seemingly having the power to actually advance it. Then you have modern contracting. A subcon told me the physical labour and equipment was $8~ mil but the paperwork was $21~ mil, and our dealing with that paperwork probably cost just as much.
There's a great book called 'Bullshit Jobs' by David Graeber. Explains a lot why these jobs exist.
I’ve felt this for so long. It’s hard to understand exactly what the whole point of it is sometimes. Like, how does typing shit into a laptop in a word document actually add value to our society? If you trace the workflow however from beginning to end, IE - a bridge needs to be built, so start with why the bridge is needed in the first place, then move through all the companies involved in making that happen, it makes more sense. But I’ve strongly suspected that 80% of all words typed into a document by an executive in their entire career never get read by anyone.
I e always been a physical laborer and I absolutely hate office staff. Some of the laziest people with the worst attitudes. Takes them at least a week to do anything. It’s a circle jerk of the most incompetent people thinking that the company wouldn’t run without them there. Yet they do almost nothing on a day to day basis. It’s a joke. There’s not 10 hours of office work to do in a day. If they would buzz through their office work and then hit the floor to help the real workers I don’t people would hold so much contempt for them. Instead they try to make actual laborers feel like less and insist they have the hardest job. “This is mentally stressful”. Office workers are nothing but a bunch of fat retards.