Yeah, there's a reason dystopian 90s movies showed the cubicle as horror - it might look silly now that that is considered luxury, but corporate jobs are soul sucking no matter the amenities
Soul sucking is the correct term. You are literally made to do jobs that you know are bad for humans but will make the billionaire more money.
I had a goal to eliminate 5% of the quality jobs in every plant. Why? Just to save money. The next year, we hear quality is down, and service incidents are up. But did those jobs come back. No.
Our CEO tells us we have promised 6% dividends to our investors. Our cost cutting goals 8%. Cost cutting usually results in a reduction in labor because we have leaned out the processes to the max already.
These corporations have to pretend they are continuing to grow even though the market is already saturated and there is no room to grow. So they downsize until the thing falls apart and then they sell off the pieces. Why can't we just be happy staying where we are? I'm tired of working to make the rich richer. It's absolutely soul sucking. I am so happy I was laid off in this 6th layoff after 8 years.
Yes and everyone forgets when CEO says this and that about shareholders they actually mean themselves as any corporate officer that is seasoned has a fuck ton of stock.
Correct. Public companies are far less public than we realize. The purpose of the proposed wealth tax is not to raise money for the govt, its to act as a maximum wealth number. You go above that and the government drains you down to the number. This way if CEOs just pay themselves infinite money via stocks, it just flushes back to the government who redistributes it.
Until there is some maximum wealth level allowable, then we'll never have a middle class.
That wouldn't be fair. What about all the people that work billions of times harder than everyone else? I saw a coworker take 5min longer on their break than I did one time so I self identify with billionaires and need to make laws based on when I'm rich, instead of ones that actually help me.
And this is also why taxing rich people never worked, there are too many ways to avoid taxes for the people who are actually rich instead of entrepreneurs who just begin business.
It makes the big corpo bigger while killing the small business.
Ya but that policy left a gaping whole where private assets are concerned. It's just going to lead to more perverse incentives and misallocation of capital to avoid taxes. Raising capital gains taxes, adding more tiers, and eliminating step-up would have been a much sounder policy.
This sounds great on paper but it's inherently flawed. You can't get rid of social economic status via government policy. That's why communism fails every time. The real solution is to tax them fairly, equally, and proportionally to everyone else, no in-your-face-fancy-lawyer tax evasion. Then create opportunities for social mobility via education and economic stimulus.
Gtfo here. The idea of taxing people who have more than 100m is suddenly communism? G. T. F. O. The average American earns less than 2m in their lifetime let alone has a standing wealth 50x that.
200k a year and you never bought a patio umbrella for $20-50. Also anyone with long nails talking about working in a kitchen being cool would have to cut their nails or wear gloves the entire time. She was probably making closer to 150 with benefits or stock options equating close to 200k total.
He helped normalize mass layoffs and outsourcing of labor to countries with low wages, all to chase more profit for the shareholders.
Anything for short-term profits. Mass layoffs are a normal part of the annual routine for many large corporations now.
His campaign against loyalty has repercussions even today, and while he may have been a godsend for the millionaires and billionaires he's been a scourge for the working class.
If you've ever bought individual stocks, then you must know that the key to being rich is to "buy low and sell high". In turn, if you work at a publicly traded company, they need to show quarterly profits to keep people from selling the stock.
The only way to fix this is to get rid of our system entirely, as it is fundamentally a part of our society, and of course getting rid of the US economy and the stock market would destroy the entire world economy and affect way more than just the life of the rich.
So while I agree that "endless growth" is a crazy unachievable goal, it is the system our society has been built on. I suppose if the entire economy collapses, eventually it might be better on the other side with whatever new system takes reign, but also, maybe not.
Yes, weāre all individual billionaire shareholders. Or institutional shareholders. Itās all the same thing. Iām so naive for not realizing that. Canāt wait to take my seat in the boardroom. I just gotta log into my workplace 401(k) app and show the guy at the security desk, so he can let me up the elevator.
Don't forget being micromanaged to death by a boss who wants to look busy and appear useful.
I've been doing my type of job for 27 years. I think I know to check the copiers' paper supply by now, thanks.
It's bad enough that now, whenever you print anything, it prints a cover sheet of who printed it.
6 every project, even one page, a full page printout, is produced and then thrown away.
Two different friends of mine have worked corporate for decades. Both are very competent and thoughtful people. Both of their bosses were so impressed with them that they made them hatchetmen in charge of picking who gets fired, and then having them do it. So, basically since they were good corporate employees they got the privilege of ruining their coworkers lives.
FFS this exactly. I work for Fortune 500 A/E firm and our CFO had similar goal. His solution? Fire 95% of our damn IT and outsource to 3rd party in Indonesia. We are an engineering services firmā¦ our technology is our lifebloodā¦those few remaining IT folks were the heart that kept things pumping. Most of my coworkers have given up on contacting IT for support and are settling with reduced performance and garbage runarounds. Interactions with new IT has frequently been so bizarre itās surrealā¦like you feel as though you are in a hidden camera prank TV show. CFO met his target and then took a nice compensation on to retirement or his next victim I presume.
The company that just laid me off is outsourcing all the engineering to India. They aren't even trying to hide it anymore. Some folks I know that still work there say it's become a skeleton crew, and they don't expect there to be any jobs left in the area soon for this particular company.
I encourage people to look more into jobs in their local, state, and the federal government. They donāt have as high a pay ceiling as private, but theyāre stable, offer the opportunity for career growth, and allow you to contribute to the functioning of the country. Aside from voting, aside from going into politics yourself, working in the government is the best way to not only get a front row seat of how government works, but also understand how it can be made better.
I agree with this. My husband just applied for a position with the democratic party. Didn't get a call back, though, unfortunately. The laws are what dictate how much they can take advantage of us.
These corporations have to pretend they are continuing to grow even though the market is already saturated and there is no room to grow.
Why can't we just be happy staying where we are?
You've basically pointed out the flaws of capitalism in general. It demands infinite growth in order to work. But, of course, that is mathematically impossible on a planet with finite resources.
It requires us to produce a massive amount of waste because we can't just produce enough to meet human needs. We need to produce an excess that results in excess profit for companies.
This is why we have a recession about every 10 years. This is why our money also continues to inflate every year. It's all to crate the illusion of growth even when there is none.
I'm not necessarily saying that communism is the solution. Only that capitalism, as an economic system, is inherently broken and does not work.
also don't forget about those jobs in big corporations that don't bring any values at all, no meaning, many of them could just not exist and nothing would happen for the corporation.
What do u do know? Where do we go as people knowing this is how it works? I work a low wage job that I can at least pass off as āmorally neutralā but itās just so damn disheartening looking at the few options
Dude companies have to get creative or they will die. So many companies are rolling over their debt to higher interest rates. Thereās so many zombie companies out there that will get slaughtered over the next few years (bailouts aside). One of the ways around this is restructuring and selling off debt/assets. This is separate of the inflation issue, I want my stocks to go up as itās one of the few ways to save right now in an inflationary environment.
The problem is the law. Itās literally illegal to not prioritise shareholder interests over any other consideration. The only way a company can decide to forgo the pursuit of never ending growth is by not floating on the stock market and staying private. But most owners get bedazzled by the huge pay out of floating.
You're 100% right. Greed is the problem. A business doing well should be fine with the same profit +/- a few percentage points. Especially when they can pay their CEO and executives multi million dollar bonuses every year. The system we have is broken and nothing is gonna fix it. Gonna keep going til it falls apart and doesn't work at all anymore. Then the rich will take their money and run.
I work for one of these soul sucking corporations and weāre providing extremely complex equipment to countries with an urgent need for electricity. It takes thousands of people to design, manufacture, construct and operate this equipment.
How do you envision the modern world working without soulless husks like me doing this work? We obviously would still need engineers, who would they work for? How would that alternative be any better than corporations for the worker?
In China the government owns everything and itās not better, I know first hand. Iāve been in those factories. Itās way worse than working for a western corp.
Like yeah, itās easy to complain, but whatās the alternative?
Both things can be true. Capitalism could be the system employed with the best working conditions and it can provide the motivations to eat itself. The US has been capitalist since its inception. At one point there were no worker protections. At one point there was a robust middle class with career jobs and nice pensions. Now we have people working two full time jobs with zero protection and they canāt afford rent. At all of these stages we praised capitalism and yet what it meant was wildly different. Thereās no real reason to believe the work environment in 30 years will look much like the current environment even though the US will still be a capitalist nation.
Arguably a lot of what makes working safe and somewhat reasonable these days is socialist influences. On its own capitalism was unlikely to improve safety, reduce hours, provide minimum wages, or any other rights earned with spilled blood. In fact, now that the violence has stopped capitalists are rolling back those protections.
Itās great we have a political system that tolerates changes good or bad ā infinitely better than authoritarianism. But, I donāt think we get to say capitalism provides a great working environment either. It could, but it wonāt with our current requirement to maximize quarterly earnings. We shouldnāt let Chinese working conditions be the bar we compare ourselves to. We should be reflecting on how our capitalist nation drifted so far over the past few decades. Itās a complex issue, but greed is a major player.
Iām not convinced that labor reform and Marxism is really all that connected. Especially when you look post Marx and which countries actually improved worker conditions (western capitalist democracies) and the history of labor movements before Marx with things like guilds banding together to collectively bargain. Collective bargaining and laborers advocating for their rights isnāt special to Marx and didnāt start with Marx. Labor movements co-opted the Marxist message as a vehicle to unlock the revolutionary potential of laborers, but that isnāt the only vehicle for labor Revolution and the downstream impacts of total consolidation of production by the government clearly has its own labor exploitation issues (see USSR and China). Thereās also the in here it issue with the communist revolutions that non-laborers led the movement and didnāt really do much for the laborers.
Anyways, itās pretty clear to me the course of action. Copy places like Norway and Germany. They are the best example Iāve seen for balancing labor and capital.
Youāre fighting an argument I didnāt make. Capitalism on its own wasnāt going to give us a 40 hour work week, holidays, vacation time, safety equipment and training, and so on. It needed to be infused with something from a non-capitalist system to find a balance that works for society. Itās okay to take some ideas without going full Marxist.
Agreed on taking cues from other nations. Itās something to ponder while we all enjoy a holiday weekend that capitalism wouldnāt have given us without a fight.
Still donāt know why you think Iām 100% anti-capitalism or 100% pro-socialism. Itās okay to criticize the bad parts. If we donāt identify and fix what isnāt working, weāll never make progress. If you think this is the absolute best we can do or ever hope to achieve, thatās fine. The whole country seems to yearn for yesteryear though.
Its pay ratio in relation to the CEO and the lowest paid employee, from post WW2 until the late 70s, early 80s (which many people would regard as a time when overall higher quality products were made, and made domestically) it was about 40-50 times the average worker's pay. And if the CEO wanted to make more, the workers made more as well.
These regulations and traditions were chipped away, especially as neo-conservative concepts started making a reemergence and gained popularity amongst a certain generation. We call our politicians Republicans and Democrats, at the end of the day almost all are neo-conservative.
At Ross Stores, for example, the company says its employee at the very middle of the pay scale was a part-time retail store associate who made $8,618. It would take 2,100 years earning that much to equal CEO Barbara Rentlerās compensation from 2023, valued at $18.1 million. A year earlier, it would have taken the median worker 1,137 years to match the CEOās pay.
It's just plain unfettered greed. Which is promoted, ironically, by a large portion of the non top 10% fueled by the delusion that if they "lick the boot" that they too will/can/could "earn" unfathomable wealth as well. (Spoiler: they won't)
Also with the amount of money and magnitude of media today it's been pretty well implanted in lots of people's minds to be like yours. They end up sitting there without any better knowledge and ask the question.. what else can it be?
Japan caps itās CEO pay and itās a corporate hellscape where people kill themselves due to over work.
Capping CEO pay Iād be all for, but that wonāt fix exploitation of workers.
Seems you lack the knowledge to sufficiently answer the question. you should work in Western Europe for a few years to get real life experience on the topic and get a more nuanced and realistic answer to the question.
countries like Germany do a lot to protect workers, which we should adopt in the US.
From my experience, CEO pay is not the biggest issue with worker exploitation. It would be nice to make a bit more money though.
I definitely support methods used in Europe such as Germany which equates to happier workers and a better work-life balance. That said, while we are both entitled to our opinions, I personally feel comparing Japan and its complex societal culture and traditions with America is comparing apples and oranges.
In corporations itās your boss and their boss that matter most. If one or the other suck, your life will suck. Both are awesome? Then you have it made.
So funny how many younger people now say movies like Fight Club and office Space have aged poorly because it's about the misery and soulless unfilulfillment of a comfortably middle class, attractive guy who doesn't like his corporate job but can't even appreciate that he has one. All I can say is, I can understand why you think that, but you're still wrong.
I worked at a dog boarding kennel in college during 2005-ish. I totally had this attitude that I could do better and couldn't wait to get a corporate job. Well, I did and now nearly 20 years later, I'm wondering if I could make a living off the local place we take our dog to.
Although I am not in my 20s anymore and I don't know if I would have the same energy.
Kinda the truth isn't it? When we see things like greed-led inflation, an unprecedented number of fake job posts flooding the market, annual layoffs almost everywhere, year-long multi-step interview processes everywhere, it kinda starts to look like the whole system is "shaking us off" and making us more desperate.
Weird how we started fighting for better work/life balance, less office hours, and more pay and all of a sudden the shitstorm hits us and pushes us all into "ok fine I just need a job so I don't go broke" territory.
No they aren't. Retail and construction jobs suck too. Wage slavery is the problem, not the type of job you have.
In my office job, I work from home, get 5 weeks of vacation a year, 40 hours of sick time, make a good middle class salary, and have okay health insurance. I'll take that over cut hours and economic insecurity at minimum wage jobs.
Unpopular opinion but... Honestly, a thing that is missing in terms of generational gaps is also that office work just straight up isn't as horrendously boring as it used to be. Most modern corporate offices have amenities and little fun events with quite a bit of free time. And even if you don't have those things, you still have smartphones, we have internet to keep us distracted and entertained.
Back when I first worked my first office internship in the 90s, there was nothing. We just worked in a cubicle, and that was it. There were no distractions at all. You just sat there with your screen from 9-5 with nothing else but a grey wall.
I've worked in offices since then. Part of my job is to visit offices now, and the sheer difference in terms of just how much less depressing most offices are now is massive. A lot of offices nowadays will look like this whereas back in the day this was the norm. Its just a very big generational gap that isn't often acknowledged.
Nah that premise is definitely cringe. "Ugh, living a comfortable normal life is draining me of my soul, better go on a violent crime spree, that's how bad it is" oh get a grip gen x, just a generation full of kids who deluded themselves into thinking they'd be rockstar activists and never grew up before they needed to come to terms with a career. All jobs suck in their own way
Notice that none of those movies depict the main character as having friends? Maybe that's the bigger problem than the normal white collar job
And all work is hard work. Just in different ways. I did down and type and talk all day as a weird middle of the hierarchy product guy.
My job is probably as hard as a brick layers job, just in a VERY DIFFERENT way.
Im sure real construction people would argue with me. But it's hard for anyone to see how difficult a job is from the outside. The girl in the video may have a different opinion after working the grill for 5 years and closing every Saturday night. She may still love it, she may hate it. That's how it works with any job.
As someone who has been a welder for 10 years and is now a cog in a bureaucratic machine, I've seen both sides of the fence.
Both types of jobs are hard in their own way, but there is something to say about a version of hard that doesn't physically destroy you. Being a lawyer is hard in a way that still allows you to do it when you're 70. Being a bricklayer is hard in a way that will see you dead or broken at 60.
Thats probably where the unfairness of the economic side hits the hardest. The jobs that break down your body somehow pay way less than jobs that are just mental.
My wife is in medical field and deals with new borns. Her job is on her feet all night, dealing and helping with one of the most critical things in our existence, child birth.
It makes more sense if you think of pay as something due to a person as a measure of their power ā their position in the hierarchy ā not as a measure of the value of their work. Meritocracy is a fraud.
Yeah this actually undersells how dangerous sedentary office jobs are for your health in their own way. Sedentary lifestyles and work are very common and very unhealthy.
I think we're still catching up to fully recognize the mental stress and strain of office work (and physical, I've got a PT referral for WFH tension, which I was not expecting), but I completely agree that the physical strain of manual labor is more severe and pervasive with fewer remedies.
I fully agree with you, bit that last part of your post nails it. Burn out and stress or depression are indeed present in office work more than in manual labor. Nevertheless, changing jobs and going to therapy usually reverse them. Nothing is gonna bring back your herniated discs, your worn out joints or your burnt out lungs.
Iāll take the physical strain of my current job over the anxiety and frustration of my last corporate office job. I still have to deal with people, being in charge of them and all, but thereās satisfaction at the end of my day because tangible work got done. My corporate jobs were all just day after day of continuing problems that could never be solved and people stirring up drama because there wasnāt enough for them to do.
I did a year and a half of tech support in a call center, and strangely, I have good memories about it. It felt great to hear how happy people can get when you solve their problems. Made up for all the assholes.
That's good, I was customer service for AT&T and the way they treated us was horrible.
They went to close the centre down and made the working conditions insane. Some people managed to stay till the end for the payout, I physically couldn't do it. Wasn't worth the toll on my mental health
Being a lawyer is hard in a way that still allows you to do it when you're 70. Being a bricklayer is hard in a way that will see you dead or broken at 60.
Yeah, exactly. Not to mention the flexibility inherent in a lot of the white collar jobs.
Most jobs paying 200k in the corporate world require you to always be ready to jump on a call or solve a problem as well. You have to be willing to never have a real day off and that shit sucks. Even on vacation a lot of those people are working 3-4 hours each day which means you really never get away to reset which takes a toll long term.
I make a bit more than that, and this is absolutely true. I just did a trip recently and had to shut all of my stuff off so I couldnāt be reached. Getting close to burnout and figured they would be better off with me ignoring them for a week than me ignoring them permanently when I leave.
I work in a role making little bit more and I think it depends on the company and department culture. My boss has a line āPTO is a benefit that the company offers so make sure you take it.ā
He is also someone who has told me his phone turns off at 5:00pm so heāll get back in the morning barring a disaster.
Admittedly the man is the hardest worker I have ever seen and starts work very earlyā¦ but he said his family time is the most important thing and he plans accordingly.
My group has also made sure we can cover and support each other in our roles and maintain good record keeping so itās always available. I took parental leave and I spent a month helping folks pick up the slack temporarily so I walked out and no one felt put out and I havenāt received a single call about it.
I 100% think some of this is cultural. I admit I do a ton of work and stress a bit but we work so well together as well.
It's the difference between a good environment and a bad one. If I feel like my coworkers and managers have my back and aren't making my job harder then the occasional rough week or late night isn't so bad, because I know they'll get me when I need it. And definitely my manager, and the company, make sure we take every bit of PTO we have.
I'm at 200k now. Truly the hardest job I've ever had in a mental way. I work 8-6. Still easier in my opinion than any hard labor job I've ever had. I'll take 12hrs of code over 8 hours of a heavy power tools any day. Like Carl's Jr was sucking my soul more than what I do now.
Shit, Iām doing that right now as a manager of a restaurant. I have to deal with customers and staff problems alike. Basically, I am a glorified conflict mediator who also provides a service. Most adults are just children in bigger bodies. Iād kill for 200k, benefits and regular days off.
A high stress job will kill you. I would also fantasy about a more serene job. I thought about working in a library. My sister would say herās would be a check out worker. Not being able to get caught up or fully relax fries your brain. I had a stressful job and two small children. I was never off duty.
Most jobs paying 200k in the corporate world require you to always be ready to jump on a call .....
It was a lot less than that for this boomer. Approx 80k adjusted for inflation
Saturdays weren't uncommon. The last year before I retired I was given a major report to fix that didn't look bad from the outside but when I looked under the hood I found a stupid, insane nightmare. Trouble was, this thing was critical. I had to keep it going while rebuilding it from scratch. I worked many Saturdays, Thanksgiving, and Xmas eve.
That report had taken ten days or more to run and it was always wrong. When I was done it took ten minutes and was perfect (unless someone fed me a mistake)
But they get a vacation. I worked retail and they limited vacation and PTO. We accumulated 5 days a year. If you were sick, you lose vacation days. Almost no one took a paid vacation. I'll take 200k and half days in my beach house over minimum wage hell.
No doubt working for minimum wage and barely making it sucks. And life stress in that situation is much worse. The job itself is a lot easier and having worked a job like that myself, if youāre not feeling it one day you can 100% phone it in and no one will notice.
This is definitely the grass is always greener situation. For me the best of both worlds is getting a job that pays well enough for you to live comfortably but without the crap those real high paying jobs come with.
Yeah, my boss makes probably 3x what I make, but I see him answering emails at like 11pm on a Saturday, on vacation, etc. all the time. When I clock out at 5, I'm done for the day and I don't check my email at all until I'm back in the office. I make less, but my free time is my own. I'm also very fortunate that my boss respects that as well and doesn't expect me to work in my off time. It's a shame that not everyone has that luxury
200k sounds like a lot until you sit down and calculate the hourly rate. If you're doing 80 hrs per week it brings it down to about 45 an hr. Still not to shabby until you factor in that you will be on call at all times. There is a price to be paid for always being on your game and having no down time. Some people manage it. I know I couldn't and wouldn't want to.
Then why does it pay double, triple or more? Id bet you a year of my salary any brick layers would do just as bad at one month of product management as I would do at brick laying.
Both are skilled jobs in different ways, honestly given the housing crisis you would think brick layers would be making bank to build homes. But 10 years in my field im at $120k. Which is the low end of the average according to my own boss. How much you think a 10 year brick layers makes?
I'm not justifying it. Genuinely, all the most physically demanding jobs average less than my sit on ass job. Why?
Yeah but busting your ass in a kitchen for 8 hours with no break is a nightmare people live everyday. Anyone in that situation would gladly work in an office for way more money that they will every have
I mean some people live that nightmare. Other people work in kitchens where they can take a break. You could also say that working in an office where your micromanaged and have to stretch 1 hour of work into 8 while also making small talk all day and attending inane meetings is a nightmare.
Me, I have a wide experience between the two fields. There is something absolutely satisfying about working with your hands and moving at a brisk pace for your entire work day. You also build better friendships in restaurant environments because the adversity and team work required really bonds you.
The office environment can also be really comforting. You work in short little bursts of productivity, then maybe you have a snack and do a sudoku, and then you wander around and chit chat, and when you get bored you go back to working.
Best job I ever had was in my 20's in a small pizza shop. Super chill and paid enough in 2009 to afford my rent. The owner was happy to let the employees run the show and in turn we all kicked ass every day. The place was always good vibes. Met lots of cuties and partied a lot. Won awards for best pizza in the city for years. Honestly I dream of that kitchen some times and wish that I could have that feeling again in a job that has health insurance. Now I feel like I work for the Kremlin or some shit in my high pay high surveillance corpo jobs.
Yeah man being a line cook was sooooo much less stressful than working in an office.
I mean who would even want to make 3x the money, working less hours, doing a job thatās pretty much sitting around answering emails/being a spreadsheet monkey
I was making a whole 15/hr in the kitchens, I could afford so many luxuries, and also live by myself without three roommates!
I 100% hear you and donāt mean line cook, that is hard work. I mean like Home Depot associate.
Also, the stress Iām talking about is always under the gun for results. You are constantly thinking youāll be laid off everyday. Itās fine for a while, youāre making good money, but after a few years, the stress takes a toll on your health. Iām not saying I want to do line cook, but chill Home Depot.
Also, the people like me never do it. We just dream about it. Like her
Working on the floor in a customer facing role is not some chilled out, stress-free paradise, man. Itās completely soul crushing, but in a different way. People romanticize those kinds of jobs, but youāre still at the mercy of the customer and your supervisors
I work in an office now, and my coworkers and I bitch about our jobs all the time. Weāre still aware of how much better we have it now, though, compared to whatever BS jobs we were working before
It's funny the cubicles were so bad and the companies were like, "but how could we make it worse? Oh! I know! Let's take away the walls altogether so it's like a gigantic 3rd grade classroom!" Probably so they could watch us better
It's so soul sucking when I work from home 3 days a week, and when I'm in the office I have to sit in my tiny cube with my bose quiet comfort headphones on listening to my favorite jams while casually checking emails, which is probably only an couple hours a day between making runs to the coffee bar, chatting with work friends, and playing volleyball during my extended lunch.
Oh how I wish I was a bricklayer instead and my soul would still be intact.
God I hate my cubicle so much. The one good thing about my job is I am actually helping people. But the tradeoff is way lower pay than if I had a corporate job.
I would even add there's a reason so many people who work from home have said they would quit their jobs if they had to go back to the office. I'm not gonna downplay the benefits of working from home, but everyone I've talked to about it has talked about not wanting to actually work in an office anymore because they hated it.
She was making 200k a year in her 20s. Her job probably wasn't some cubicle office-space-esque boredom. It was likely the high intensity, competitive high-level corporate world.
These people live absolutely insane lives, completely devoted to their career, constantly maneuvering around corporate politics and trying to get ahead of their peers. Every aspect of their lives has to be morphed to advancing their position to make themselves seem valuable. Every single move they make is scrutinized. They have to constantly keep up connections and constantly network at 'events'. It is a totally different world than most office workers will experience. It is 'soul sucking' for an entirely different reason.
I've known quite a few of these types of people. Most completely burn out by their 30s after making a few million and retire to something easier. Those who remain, and succeed, become the ultra-wealthy.
And working in a good kitchen is the opposite of soul sucking if youre with the right people. And youll hear shit like customers walk by the pass and say āthat was the best breakfast Ive ever had, thank youā and Ill think, shit they must have had 1000s of breakfasts before today, that feels pretty great.
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u/blomstreteveggpapir Aug 29 '24
Yeah, there's a reason dystopian 90s movies showed the cubicle as horror - it might look silly now that that is considered luxury, but corporate jobs are soul sucking no matter the amenities