My ex asked me why I never take a vacation and I had to explain to her that the more vacations I take the more likely I am to quit my job and just run into the woods and never come back.
If you say or think stuff like this. You have made a wrong choice. Doesn’t mean working in general is a bad thing. It can give purpose. If work is your problem you probably don’t have a job that suits you.
Wanting to live a free and creative life is not how this planet works, sadly, and it won’t ever be like that. So you can either blame everything around you for being shit or take what you can get and make the best of it.
Life sucks, but complaining will not get you anywhere. The fact that you complain, after a holiday, means you have a privilege that many many people don’t even enjoy. Not saying your troubles aren’t true or invalid, but you can definitely improve if you want to.
When the slave claims his chains
So what should one do then? I mean surely you have an answer.
Unionize. It’s the only proven way to improve working conditions.
Finally someone actually saying something.
But really just do something. Join a union, point out corruption. It’s great to see so many people disagreeing with my comment just to upvote something absolutely empty but cool sounding like “a slave claims his chains”. There is no slave here, don’t make me look like a victim of a system I’m not a part of.
I truly feel like people here just want to whine about “the system” but don’t dare speak up or do something about it. You have the power to change it. If you don’t make that choice, then start accepting it. At least then you don’t have to spend so much time on the internet whining about how hard it is to work after a holiday.
To be honest, I upvoted that too but can understand you’re looking for something more concrete. They’re referring to wage slavery, but awareness and unionization are each just one step towards abolishing it.
I think it’s fair to vent and complain. Not everybody who identifies a problem needs to have an answer.
Just because you dont like what you see, doesn’t mean you should try to find rational justifications to it. There are not.
What is to be done, indeed
TBH this seems like a great motivation to make changes in your life. Somebody who is in a position to take vacations probably has that option more than the people at the absolute bottom layer of the capitalism heap.
I think it’s natural to want to want to work and be active. It is a behavior that has been reinforced by evolution since we were hunter/gatherers. But, there are certain tasks that have definitely frustrated me.
It’s natural in a survival or creative context where we use our own agency to decide what to work on.
It’s unnatural when we have no agency on the daily and our reward has been abstracted to numbers in a bank account.
Context is irrelevant in my opinion, in the same way that hunger and survival are irrelevant to a dog expressing its prey drive on a plush toy. I also believe we have more agency now than ever; we live in a time when food is abundant, and taking a day or two off might leave you with a smaller paycheck rather than at risk of starving to death. When a job needed to be done thousands of years ago, it was often imperative to the survival of yourself or your community, and not necessarily a matter of choice. Those communities likely also had harsh means of enforcing labor contribution of the able-bodied, consequences exceeding the typical outcome of homelessness that we’re familiar with today, which contributed to this evolution. Those who found work itself to be rewarding were much more likely to survive and reproduce, as opposed to those who only found reward in the outcome of work (food, now money).
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I worked in the retail mines for years because I was good at it.
Look for a job in a municipality in customer service. City jobs pay better than retail, have WAY better benefits and hours, and you are contributing to your community society instead of shareholder value.
I got an entry-level permit tech job, and 6 late4 I was promoted. A year later I was approached by another city for a higher-paying position.
Within 2 years of starting city life, I made 4 times what I did in retail, had all medical premiums covered by the city (and even any out-of pocket expenses such as copays after the first $500/year), had a pension contribution double-matched by the city, 17 paid holidays, a month of vacation, a month of sick leave, comp time, and the contributions I make to the city will last for a century or more.
I even get a $300/month stipend for gas and $80/month for a second cell phone for checking emails without making my main phone discoverable in Open Records. I’m not required to use the second phone after hours, so it’s easy to just turn it off over the weekend and ignore work.
All while getting to provide customer service to people who aren’t just trying to buy stuff.
Living the good life. Very jealous.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=municipal+job+listings
this is one of the top results: https://www.governmentjobs.com/
good luck, i hope you find one that suits you!
I was one of like 3 applicants for the first city job I got.
But even the guys mowing the parks make decent money and have all the same benefits.
because when you’re at work you’re just a cog in the machine. it’s because capitalism is shit also humans didn’t evolve to wake up so early to go to work either
Reminder for everyone that feels like this; you can at least try to change things for yourself. You can try to get a different job, you can try finding a new place to live, you can try a new hobby, try something at least (maybe not drugs though, that’s a start for a rough life). Maybe you don’t succeed now, but by not trying you will definitely be stuck where you are.
Make some plans, dream about stuff, don’t just lie down and let the orphan crushing machine grind you to pieces. Unless you want to, that is
This kind of advice is incredibly infantilizing. Do you think people aren’t trying? Have you considered that people don’t have the opportunity to make those changes due to the material circumstances they are being forced into due to systemic forces beyond their immediate control?
Blaming the individual for being crushed under the weight of systemic violence is such a reductive position to argue from.
The reality is that even if you are stuck and there’s nothing you can do, the only thing keeping you alive might just be the belief that things can still change. To survive in this shitty world one sometimes needs to hear they can infact at least try to affect the world around them, or what else? That there’s no hope and it’s better to just suffer? I’m not saying anyone is at fault for not having the strenght to fight it, or responsible for their troubles because they can’t solve them - maybe they can’t, like I personally can’t. Giving up just changes nothing at all
Depending on your boss, telling your boss could be a good idea. That advice is only good if you trust and like your boss. Otherwise it’s the quickest way to the unemployment line.
I’m still haunted by the coincidence that I was fired days after I finally admitting to my mentor that I was feeling burned out after months.
I say “coincidence” because other stuff was happening at the same time and my mentor wasn’t in the same office as me or my supervisor. But I remember, at the end of one week, he told me to reach out to my supervisor and talk to them about maybe getting some extra time off to reset, and, the start of the next week, I got called into the office and let go.
One nice thing about my job is my boss gets it. He can’t do anything about it and is in basically the same boat but he understands how I’m overloaded and going to miss deadlines because I don’t have enough bandwidth to do everything that we’re asked for. As long as I keep him updated on the status of things and prioritize them properly we’re good.
Wonder what it’ll be like coming back from mental health leave.
I worked in a career that I was good at but utterly hated, for 15 years, had a breakdown and then went off to work for a charity. It’s been 8 years in and the difference in fulfilment is night and day. It is possible to go and do a job that makes a difference, that feeds the homeless, or helps sick children. Fuck corporates and the bullshit rat race - there is so much more out there!
I usually come back from vacation exhausted and ready to resume my regular routine. Maybe because "must see all the sights and do all the things, " but it is still true.
Every Monday and possibly Tuesday I’m basically a vegetable because I refuse to give up my normal days off to only prep for work. Regular chores get done but we add about a days worth of fun into the weekend where it doesn’t fit. Fuck work expecting so much of our lives.
The good news is that, with the rise of robotics and AI. We will all have to work in politics.
F7u12
I just took two days off leading into last weekend. It was great having the time off, but it pales in comparison to how much time off I have now.
I got fired from my job on monday morning as my first meeting of the day.
Maybe my next job will involve fire.
Am I the only one who likes his job? I was working for 10+ years in media creation without a proper education in that field. With 37 I changed everything and did an 3 year apprenticeship. 3 days working and 2 days school (with others around half my age). And now I work as a Web developer in the same small company (9 people) and couldn’t be happier. We do only WebDev and no design or marketing. Ok, maybe a tiny amount of design and marketing. Many of our clients like that we are more technical than the regular webdesign agency. I have at least 30 days vacation, nice office in the middle of the city and a rather medium pay but if there is no emergency or time critical project, I can go to my boss and say: “I’m bored. I take the afternoon off.” I won’t get rich working there, but the fact that I look forward for my work and know work drama only by stories of others, is worth it for me. And that it’s just 10min by foot from apartment to office is nice too. I’m so grateful that I am so lucky to find the right job and company.
I love my job. Its challenging, and at time stressful, but I love it.
I believe in the company I work for and the products we make.
It’s a large company, and yet all the employees are just wonderful people, my team and department in particular.
It took me a lot of hard work and many years to reach this point, but it was worth it.
Don’t have any degrees, but I have “or equivalent experience” across multiple disciplines which add up to a pretty unique position I basically designed for myself.
Yes. I’m equally happy with my life work balance but I also understand this is the exception and not the rule so am always willing to lend an ear to anyone that wants to complain about their situation.
Same with any struggles one might have, socioeconomic conditions are not something any fellow worker controls.
I do draw the line at self inflected drama from anyone stuck in denial. Those people need to finish their spiral first.
I hope I didn’t came off as if I had no empathy. Of course I had shitty jobs in the past and can relate to the soul draining effects. Only because I am in a good place now, doesn’t mean that I forget how fucked up work (or life in general) can be. And I hope I didn’t came of as self centered ass with main character syndrome. I’m more the opposite of that. It’s quite rare that I voice my opinion or just write/post something online. I even feel bad about this and the last comment. Sorry if I came over to harsh or self centered.
Nope, you’re good.
I just came back from a movie festival where I volunteered and my work there was more fulfilling and meaningful than my everyday job
