As someone who is going to have to get a job in 2-3 years, I’m dreading the day. Going to the same place 5 days a week coming home with no time and energy left for anything you actually like and doing this for FOURTY years or even more if you were unlucky, sounds HORRIBLE!! How could anyone actually like working?
I don’t understand people who do NOT want to work! Sure, it’s nice being home having nothing to do for a few days, but then what? I start feeling bored and useless and I want to contribute and feel useful again.
When people do retire, something like this usually happens. Either they solve it by joining into so many activities and hobbies they’re actually busier than before, they end up finding another job for the hell of it, or they decline into misery.
Doing nothing is like a covid lockdown that never ends, basically.
Okay, you do you.
There’s ways the do all that without working a job?
And who said No Work = No Thing?
Volunteering, Arts, Hobbies, Crafts, Socialisation
And Jesus, you’re going to be depressed when you’re forced to retire, with no friends outside of work and no hobbies
Wow, that escalated quickly 🤣
Yeah I think I went a bit too hard on it
Yeah, avocation and vocation can both fill that hole. It is a hole that most people need filled, though.
Don’t let the fake world of earning money fuck you up. People want to move and dance and do great things naturally. Most need money to eat and stay warm though and those two things are rarely aligned. If you were a multi-trillionaire would you just want to lay on the beach all day doing nothing?
People don’t want to work. They want to live and pay for shit. Work is the only way for people that weren’t born rich to get money. Well, either that or crimes, but some crimes can be seen as illegal work.
Most people don’t want to feel useless, so if you cut their access to cheap dopamine (phones with internet, social media) they might seek out some work out of boredom.
What really sucks is that society expects us to be “specialists” in one thing for the rest of our lives, as if we are fucking ant drones or gears in a complex machine. It’s great for economists and the rich and awful for our individual wellbeing, though some people do enjoy doing the same thing over and over for very long periods of time.
well, it’s about work life balance, which in most places do not exist unfortunately. but being in home all day and just playing games or doom scrolling or reading occasionally gets horrible after a month or two (i’m speaking from personal experience this is a very subjective thing).
for me the perfect balance would be a hybrid model, where i work from home 2-3 days a week and go to the office 2-3 days a week. but yeah most people, including me, work for a living, if we didn’t work we wouldn’t have a monthly income, which means we couldn’t get food, which means basically homelessness or in some cases death.
there is no freedom to not work lol, if you aren’t working and your parents are still providing for you after you turn like 23 or even 25 then you are incredibly fortunate.
in an ideal world we would still have to work to survive and keep the society going, the difference would be that we, the workers would have 100x more benefits and we wouldn’t be overworked. and idk i do genuinely enjoy some work, because sitting around all day not doing anything is terrible and it invites depression.
TLDR most people work to survive not because they enjoy working in that shitty macdonald’s.
Due to an inheritance of barely-enough money, I got to retire at age 55. I might need to go back to work in a few years, I don’t know yet. But, I’ve very much enjoyed doing practically nothing even though I’d like to have enough to travel, etc. which I don’t. I do miss the collaboration on solving problems, but I don’t miss the raft of other bullshit “office politics” that goes along with that. The one does not make up for the other, not even close. Neither do I miss putting aside my occasional moral misgivings about a project in exchange for money. Nor do I miss watching the boss/owner make obviously stupid decisions and then watching the fallout, after not listening to me or anyone else.
Finding a perfect job is not going to happen for the vast majority of us. We make do with what we can get, and often that causes long-term stress that is unhealthy.
What desire I have to “be useful” or “contribute” and the pleasure I sometimes got from a job well done pales in comparison to the daily stress of working. Even low-level long-term stress takes a big toll over time. And, none of us are compensated nearly enough in money or time off to mitigate that.
People want to work, and want to contribute and collaborate, and feel useful. But, the work society we’ve allowed to be set up for us is not for that. It’s for wringing every last second of useful to-the-rich effort out of us, while compensating us at the minimum level we’ll accept without chopping their heads off, with the rest going to them. Generation after generation for the past 80 years, they’ve been compensating us less and demanding more. Now we’re close to being virtually enslaved, owning nothing and working to barely survive, assuming we’re healthy enough to do so, otherwise being discarded.
Good workplaces are like the after-school extracurricular classes, you go because you’re interested, it’s fun to problem-solve with people.
I have to be regularly told to go home at the end of the day.
Finally a positive answer! I completely agree, I enjoy working with competent people, solve issues, and improve myself. Extend my knowledge and experience, try out new stuff and help other people get better.
How long have you worked there?
How long have they been in business?
Is the business stable and well-ran? Do you even know?
IDK, I’ve been here a few years, the company has existed for another few.
If it starts getting uncomfy, I’ll start looking for a better one. It worked out so far.
If your really worried about working do your best to find a work place that is fun rather than a workplace that maximizes your income. Assuming you have interests try and find a job that plays to those interests and it helps to feel like your actually helping people rather than being another cog in the machine.
The unicorn job.
Problem is there’s a ton of interests with jobs that just don’t exist really anymore or those jobs pay the absolute bare minimum. Like my main interest/hobby is film and writing my thoughts about every single one I watch (along with videogames, but film is easier for me cause it requires a lot less from me). I don’t have any interest in making a movie and becoming a paid critic nowadays is near impossible with how flooded the market is with hundreds of thousands of people doing it for free in their spare time. I could work in a movie theater or something similar, but then I’m back to making state minimum wage instead the almost double that I’m currently making.
FWIW maybe an office job isn’t for everyone. Some people need different challenges and changes of scenery. Some of those jobs may be a bit more blue collar. Things like survey teams, equipment operators, trades, etc. Probably union gigs, too. I couldn’t handle office politics or being trapped either.
When you ask a question like this in a place like this, understand that you’re going to be getting replies from people who have jobs where you can sit around and be bored on the internet
Or sad, unemployed people.
I can only speak for myself, but I enjoy having a regular supply of interesting problems to solve, and the daily routine keeps me grounded.
This is human nature. The “antiwork” crowd isn’t actually against work, but against the exploitative system of how work is executed under capitalism. We all like solving problems and knowing what tomorrow holds for us. If you woke up tomorrow and had absurd “fuck you” money, you’d retire from your job, but you’d still work on things.
Over the years, I’ve learned the sense of accomplishment and pride that comes from fixing a thing, replacing a broken/old/inferior thing, installing a thing, etc. I was never particularly handy. I don’t much enjoy the process itself, but the visible and quantifiable and tangible product of my labor and time are so much more fulfilling to me than the fraction of a fraction of an impact to a billionaire’s bottom line, given in exchange for being allowed to have shelter and food.
And really, some jobs are fairly enjoyable too. My wife truly enjoys her job most days, and a lot of that enjoyment comes from her job being less serious. She clocks in, performs tasks in a way that meets expectations while joking with co-workers for a few hours, and clocks out. It’s not all soul crushing, but it’s easier to stomach when it’s <30 hours per week.
Eh, a significant portion of the anti work crowd does seem to think communism is when no ditch digging. This is why communism really requires specific material conditions, because as long as tedious, dangerous jobs exist, there will always be degrees of worker alienation, no matter how much effort the state puts into propaganda which attempts to convince them otherwise.
Place and purpose baby! Working for someone/being exploited sucks shit, sure, but doing stuff is awesome. What else are you gonna do?
This, and working with a team, and working towards the public good. Building successful teams, improving processes, implementing efficient and sustainable systems - all good fun to achieve.
That said these take weeks and months to accomplish where I work. I’d love to be a chef where the results of my labour was more … immediate.
Important distinction between “working” and “having a job”. You do a job for someone else. You should always be working for yourself. Labor for ones own ends in enjoyable. Labor for someone else is a means to an end. Recognize it is something to balance and balance it the best you can for the life you want to have.
This should be higher up.
I think a lot of younger people today struggle to figure out what is important for them to balance and this creates a problem where they just jump from one short term gain to another until they die and if they recognize this pattern without knowing what’s happening they just feel hopeless and don’t want to change it or themselves and then struggle to be a functioning adult.
Hey look at that it did eventually get higher up haha
It’s the money, generally. Life is expensive.
Yep.
I want to provide for my wife and kids. Its my purpose and I find it fulfilling.
I grew up on a subsistence farm. Everyone always worked. Every single day of the year. Some days were very long, some were short depending on what needed to be done. To survive. Of course we had fun and time off as well. It’s about balance. Most people don’t have to do back to the land subsistence living anymore because they substituted living in cities and taking paying jobs to buy what they need. No matter the path, you still have to do some sort of work to live. You can choose which path to some extent. There are small farms looking for people to come work for them in exchange for room and board.
He who does not work, neither shall he eat
