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Weird shower thought: as a guy who’s nearly 30 now, I remember there just being A LOT of “office work sucks” media being on the TV. And it lead to a lot of my peers all being like “oh that must be why our parents are so miserable, working in an office, I never want to do that” so we all like went to trade school or graphic design college to try and become some freelancer laborer, and 15 years later a lot of us are exhausted and underpaid. I know a lot of people who today are like “yah know maybe majoring in accounting and getting a job where I sit in an air conditioned room and spend most of my time playing flash games while pretending to work wasn’t so bad, maybe my parents generation was blaming office work on their misery when it was actually something else.”

But I’ve never worked in an office so maybe it does actually suck that much. Idk.

I have the dumbest office job. I go in, walk upstairs to my office, sit in my room alone all day, leave and go home. I only ever see anyone when I need to go to the kitchen, or when I go to make a copy.

and yet it's imperative that I go in. My boss doesn't even work in my building. So most of the time I don't even go in, and I never tell him. Barely even talk to him unless it's an emergency.

I like that i don't have to deal with anyone, but it's so dumb that they really want people in the space...

cubicle walls aren't that high anymore. the bosses like "open" floor plans, so they can more easily see what is one everyone's screens. so, more panopticon style.

I got an office job a couple months ago, after years working in some pretty intense homeless shelters. Now I get paid more and 90% of my job is sitting alone in my office with zero supervision, reading and playing games on my phone. I just had a check-in with my boss where she kept telling me how amazing I'm doing at this. I tell her that I I'm spending most of my time just sitting on my ass, and she tells me that's normal and okay with this company.

It pays the bills but I really feel like I'm defrauding someone and I was definitely doing more meaningful work before. My bf says I should stop worrying and keep the easy job but it also gives me anxiety. My internalized work ethic sucks sometimes.

Office jobs want you for some specific part of your brain, which they'll work until it stops working correctly. Then some hyper specific, unnamed, hard to define part of your psyche is missing all the time, and you're still expected to be able to socially function despite this, so you cobble together a backup personality that works around it, and become someone who laughs at Borat references.

So yeah, it's pretty accurate.

A big part of why office work is so soul-sucking is because of the internal sacrifice you have to make to your individual personality.

Basically, you have to compromise who you are as a person to fit the benign, false-friendly unoffensive neutrality of the company's branding.

Since clearly the company's "personality" is just carefully curated marketing optics, it comes off as disingenuous and inauthentic. Then people sort of have to fit in those unnatural molds in exchange for the stability of working there.

pretty much. at least, pre-covid. only differences are that 1) commuting and sitting in traffic actually sucks 2) it does get old pretty fast and 3) you do live in constant fear of your boss.

But yeah, it's definitely bullshit that office workers make more than restaurant workers.