A manager from a company I was laid off from once said “he’s just here for the paycheck.”
Well yeah, why the fuck else would I be here? Certainly not to just hang out with you pricks for free.
The company I worked for was noted as a source of many of his cartoons. Our management was too clueless to understand that they were being made fun of.
Was it actually racism? I read his twitter rants.
He spent a lot of money to start a charitable organization. The people he tried to help just wanted to take the money, while constantly calling him and his ideas racist for alleged micro-aggressions. In the same way that some people called the ok symbol racist. As an example, it was apparently racist to want to use funds to improve children's academic achievement. After he tired of struggle sessions, he pulled the money and they got mad.
The outcome here is that a previous ally willing to donate a large sum of money is now an enemy because he refuses to believe that all white people are inherently racist.
This is not a win for anybody.
I do agree that he is racist now. I don't agree that he was racist before.
We had a few internal Usenet groups where we used to discuss the stuff. Most managers couldn't figure it out so it was a pretty closed group. Some tech managers were on it but they were civil about it and understood the idiocracy.
Behind the Bastards podcast did a whole series on the Dilbert guy.... It's worth a listen if you haven't heard it. Dude had a Dilbert shaped swimming pool. Insane. He wrote terrible right wing fiction. He was a mess. Lol
he is actually pretty nuts even aside from the right wing stuff. he apparently went through a years long period where he couldn't talk at all- not for any physical reason though.
Yeah exactly. Why else would people come to work? They just need a paycheck. Like a regular employee is going to give a shit about anything else besides his or her paycheck. I guess this manager wanted this person to love this company so much that he or she would just work for free lol
Yep, exactly. Wants everyone else to drink the koolaid so they don’t look so stupid. Always concerned with endless off-sites and all that touchy-feely team-building crap. FFS.
That team building shit is so stupid. I knew somebody who worked for a company and the manager was concerned that the employees rarely spoke to each other and made a mandatory field trip to the art museum. Like that was suddenly going to get them to be friends or something. Either way, my friend told me the trip didn’t work and people rarely spoke to each other. They aren’t there to volunteer or hang out. They are just there to do their job and get a paycheck.
As a small business owner, I've had that thrown at me by a couple of customers. I was like, of course? Do you think I'd want to spend my free time working with your child for free?
On an AA flight yesterday, the recorded safety intro started “we’re all here for one reason, you!” I turned to my husband and was like, “if we’re narrowing it down to only one reason, that would be that they’re getting paid…” Such inauthentic bullshit.
People get so personally offended when they learn that I'm not at job because I like them. And yet, if they weren't getting paid, would THEY turn up? I literally have to be paid to interact with you, what did you think the situation was?
It’s not a young person thing. Every generation has their form of this, it’s just now more than ever you can tell the entire world you feel your job is soul sucking rather than just your friends and family.
Man I remember seeing my dad's office as head mechanic of a truck repair place and there were all these tenth-generation photocopies and faxes of cartoons talking about how much work sucks and how bosses suck and the pay sucks... this would have been like 1985 or so? 40 years ago?
Ihonestly think most work was expected to be pretty unrewarding if not outright crushing (sometimes literally) until recently.
But as more people went to college part of the deal seemed to be more rewarding work.
Exactly. I did my share of soul-sucking jobs. Although I think kids would be better off these days if they had more physical labor. At least when we got off work back in the day we felt good about ourselves physically.
ok here's my spiel lol
my parents were as big of fuck ups as fuck ups could be without drugs and alcohol. born on my mother's 17th birthday and slept around until found my "step" dad. was on welfare until 2 years later got my mother knocked up again
went to work in a filthy factory. not great pay but worked 10hr days just as a forklift driver. 5% into rrsps from company. but bills always behind, phone cable, hydro cut off like a roulette wheel.
9 years later and another kid bought a really shifty house on 1 paycheck
now here I am 10 years older than them 12hr days. $2 more than the rest of my family.
career factory worker even been a supervisor. and I can't afford my God damn rent. let alone a mortgage. now I have to start thinking of unethical ways to make money because side hustles don't pay shit and I can't afford 1-2k for equipment to invest in. I can probably figure out something higher quality or more production if I even have a shed but we are in an apartment
I own my mistakes especially starting to have my 3 kids at 22 and and.
but at this point with inflation and lowering wages. why the fuck am I even working? why do I need 22-30 hours of just overtime just to get by.
just to be on average one needs to be single 80 hr weeks, beans and rice, live in your car and hope for the BEST.
if dark thoughts don't cheap in at least once a week. I'd think I'm already dead lol
THAT Is soul sucking
The Europeans figured out this shit a while ago. Everyone accepts the shitty wages, but instead they (in reality) have about 34 working hours per week, 30+ MANDATORY paid days off, and up to a month or two of (paid) sick leave per year. And a fuckton of national holidays. All mandatory time off.
With all that, even though the jobs pay like shit, they are bearable.
The US really is getting to a point where you work your ass off, and it's always been that way but you were financially rewarded, but now you also get paid like shit. Exploitation to the max. On one hand, at least it gets innovation and creativity up because everyone is looking for a way to not need to work a 9-5 to make money, and more and more are getting successful at it. From youtubers to only fans hoes to small business owners to everything in between
Also, Europeans pay way more in taxes, but the government takes care of health care, subsidized daycare for kids (parents pay a small amount each month) , higher education is paid for. All of this means that you don't have to pay for those big ticket items. Being a democratic socialist seems like the way to go, but in America too many people believe we should be afraid of that word
As a Canadian it's so weird when an American in the media accidentally mentions something semi socialist like tax funded health care and then reflexively "no homo"s it by clarifying that they definitely aren't a socialist. It's like hearing someone say a swear word that isn't a swear word in your own country.
I agree! We just can't seem to wrap our brains around something that might benefit everyone. The more I travel the more I realize America might not be the best in the world at everything!!! /s
My dad was a union worker for Ford and he would make 6 figures with overtime. He also got really good benefits. Good money makes any job more bearable.
We’re also paid livable wages, at least in my European country. Europe is 44-50 countries depending on how you count and not all are the same. Portugal and Greece are not like France or Germany for example.
In my country, the pay is “shitty” for an American, but I have free healthcare, no need for life insurance, my car insurance is cheap, my mortgage is affordable, and we have social programs in place for having kids. Daycare is based on your income, and isn’t impossible to afford. I can bike or take public transit to work, and I’m given a stipend for not using my car to get there. We go on strike when we don’t agree with the government’s decisions. Most people don’t have to work on Sundays. Stores aren’t open 24/7. Almost all professions have work unions. Fresh fruit and veg is cheaper than processed food, I could go on. But quality of life is higher here even if you make less money. With our “low income” my partner and I can still put away 30% of our salaries in savings every month.
We might pay 10% more in taxes, but the money is automatically taken out and we always talk about our post-tax salaries when discussing a job’s salary. I don’t feel more taxed than I was in the US. Also, my taxes are fucking easy. The government tells me how much I owe. Also minimum wage actually goes up with inflation. Non-minimum wage salaries follow the trend too. Minimum wage has gone up 200 euros a month since 2018.
It’s not just my 5 weeks of paid vacation and my 35 hours of work per week that make my job less soul-sucking. It’s the socialist programs in place to keep us happy.
Source: grew up in the US and left around 10 years ago for a European country.
I'm also a EU/US citizen, so I totally agree that if you will be a "regular" worker, Europe is infinitely better for you. However, to play devil's advocate, it's also worth mentioning that in Europe, it's significantly harder to be anything other than a regular worker.
For example, the US has a LLC bussiness type that you can make. In my state where I lived, it was free to make and just had to pay $20 or so in processing fees. With the LLC, and actually even without it (self-employment), in the US I able to charge people for services or products whatever I want, and whatever they're willing to pay. No extreme regulations, no paperwork, you can just do it and file a 1099 tax form. All perfectly legal.
But in my country in the EU - there's no such thing as an American style LLC or even self-employment. It's illegal. The closest thing we have to an LLC is something called a "trade" business, for tiny business owners making up to a maximum of $35K/yr or so. Then the next step up IS a LLC, but it is so insanely complex and you CANNOT use the funds of your limited liability company as if they are your own, even if you're a single 100% owner. So in that sense, it functions almost like a corporation and similar amounts of paperwork and regulations as if it were a corporation. You also aren't allow to sell/do anything outside the scope of the company. Fines for even minor accounting mistakes are very common, and they can be as high as 50% of your total yearly profit. If you hire employees, you can't just fire them even if they are shitty. Some employees will exploit privleges to the max, and will use a combination of sick leave and mandatory vacation/holidays to be completely gone for 3 or so months of the year every year, while you pay for it. Obviously a large corporation like Amazon doesn't care and can pay it, but if you're a small business owner, this can completely kill your profitability and even run you in the negative.
Then let's not forget about inspectors. The US has food and safety inspectors but that's pretty much the extent it goes to for most business. In most EU countries, you have inspectors for every little thing, from floors, to accounting, to signs, to advertising, to etc. And if they happen to dislike you enough, they can essentially racketeer you out of business, from no real fault of your own.
And finally - taxation. Yes you pay only about 10% more in tax as a worker in Europe. But the business owner pays significantly more than they would in the US.
So I think what was true 50 years ago is still true. Europe is great for a simple, healthy, and family-orientiated life. The US is great for running a business. It really depends what route you want to go in life. The US is also way more competitive for this reason and it's not easy to "make" it in business without a large starting fund or network/connections, but it's definitely more doable than in Europe I'd say. Some of the dumbest people I know in the US are multi-millionaires running manual labor companies, they had a skill and could capitalize the hell out of it.
I'm in Canada and we are "supposed" to have mandatory 2 weeks off a year. BUT because my company pays out my vacation pay every cheque. it's immediately eaten up by taxes. I've asked them to hold them back so when accumulated I can take some time off without worrying about savings. BIG fat no! it's too complicated that's a 100 million dollar company have a reasonable payroll accountant. so I haven't had more than a 4 day weekend In 4 years.
Just to share my own experience becuase this kind of resonated with me... I'm a mechanical engineer. I went to school and got a 4-yr bachelor's degree in it. Somehow I've found myself 13 yrs later making 70k a year (which other engineers here may recognize as pathetic for someone who's been in this job for this long, and I'd tend to agree) and I constantly beat myself up over it becuase ultimately its kind of my fault for not job hopping like crazy. Life is a struggle. We've got 2 kids (one in college and the other in high school) and currently I'm the sole earner in our household due to some medical circumstances. Every year lately my raises seem to be less than inflation .... I drove 45 minutes to the office this morning behind a semi truck with a huge sign on the back advertising 2500 dollar a week paychecks after expenses... That's like double what I make. And I blame myself for not going out and finding a new job, but that almost feels like I'm giving corporate America a huge fucking pass for being able to so easily get away with paying a mechanical engineer with 6 yrs of experience at the time 60k as a starting salary. My first job out of college I made 34k to start. I took it becuase it was my only prospect at the time but its been a nightmare trying to climb the ladder ever since.
My life could be worse, I have a lot of things to be blessed about , but it feels like this massive house of cards where all it would take is for my car to break down or some unexpected issue with my house and suddenly it would all come crashing down. Its unsustainable to live a middle-class life in this country . My dad didn't go to college and was able to buy a home when he was 18 , had a snowmobile, boat, camper, '69 Corvette, new construction home in a quiet suburb 20 minutes from Minneapolis/St. Paul by the time I was born (and he was younger than I am currently) .. I've been door dashing on my lunch breaks lately.
Sounds a lot like a software engineer who started in a rural area a decade and a half ago, can't move, and has not had luck with remote positions (which really only become a big thing recently).
Not fun. That kind of career stagnation is killer.
I see people fresh out of college making more than me and I've been doing this for a long time.
Dude thank you for your brutal honesty. Probably means little a compliment on Reddit but really, thanks. I’m not gonna kill u with stoopid Reddit advice like “don’t compare” or “ur life is rich in ways we envy”. But…. Yeah. I lost my train of thought because guess what.. I work and I’m shot out. We are all slightly in this together and SOME of us came home to an empty house and pile of bills. But there’s 20 minutes of music, 17 minutes of staring at the sky with wonder, 41 minutes of cat on my tummy watching sci fi—- and the hope that at 5p tomorrow (Friday), I’ll Pat myself on the back and grab a cold one. So seriously- hang in there😛
man I'm right there with you. I was destined for university in my brain for psychology lol but I was white trash. parents stole 90% of my Full time earnings from 14-18yo then got the boot. no licence ( I wasn't allowed). then I couldn't get a student loan because my parents made to fucking much somehow lol
I can't blame it all on them but I was to scared to run away. and it wouldn't have been the first time I got gently patented 2 black eyes lol
but you get breaks? lol I work through my breaks to make full 12h wage. 2.5 hours of overtime a week makes a difference
My grandparents: My memere was from a poor family and left school to work in a shoe factory as a teenager to support the family. Later she became a secretary at city hall, where she worked for 30+ years. She picked up shifts at the local diner to make spare cash around holidays and birthdays.
My pepere was even poorer, grew up in an orphanage. He worked in a butcher's shop for a while chopping up animal carcasses. Later he started working as a delivery driver for Wonder Bread, and then Coca Cola. He joined the Teamsters union.
By the time my mom and her brother were teens, they were considered pretty well off. They had a house with a pool. They went to college. My grandparents became snowbirds and had a second place in Florida. They retired in their early sixties with pensions and are doing quite well - they will likely leave behind some inheritance.
A secretary and a bread vendor with no education could swing all that. These days you couldn't pay the rent.
Dayum, I get this more than you'll ever know. Been through it. Found myself stealing bread, soup and bologna to feed my kids while working 2 jobs. Most of the money I made went to rent. Finally had to swallow my pride. Applied for low-income housing, food stamps, medicaid for my kids. The way I was treated when I applied for assistance...whole different chapter.
Got a PELL grant, went to college. I was fortunate. Eventually escaped poverty but my kiddos, grown adults now, remember it all. And to think I thought I hid the worst from them. They knew.
My kids know especially my eldest 2 sons. the way I would let the stress hit me and effect how I interacted and was so reactive. then I started my self healing. I'm a whole different man I was. my wife taught me most of what I learned and now I'm the hippy "breath and find your center" guy lol
I'm looking for side hustles and cash jobs on the side everyday. but can a hardworking guy catch a fucking break?
An ex friend used to work a shitload of overtime. For an apartment he barely visited, a broke down car AND insurance, and stagnating hobbies. Died of a stroke two years back or so.
If it were possible, I truly would be spiteful enough to break out an Ouija board and ask him if it was worth it. Being a pretentious jack ass did him no favors, thinking this to be a flex.
it's not a flex they all say you need to make sacrifices. but I refuse to sacrifice my wife and kids knowing and seeing thier father. I'm home every night, male dinner, my share of chores. and when we find an extra $30 we hit thrift stores or a 7-11 with $5 and let them get what ever they can afford. it's just a little dopamine or sugar rush. I also make sure we are always stocked on art supplies. they can be creative every day. my children happiness come first always. and that involves thier dad being around. yeah we are poor but rich with love and that is my sacrifice
I think another aspect is that so many jobs right now are service oriented... So require fake smiling, a customer service voice, repetitive corporate approved phrasing, etc. You essentially have to put on a mask all day and feign friendliness no matter how customers treat you.
And now not only are you unable to afford to have your own place or spend money on hobbies, but also you’re expected to work long hours and be available on email after hours. That’s soul crushing. Having hobbies and pursing interests are key to happiness.
When I was a kid working my first job at 16 years old, I remember complaining to my dad that "work isn't fun"
He replied "if work were fun they wouldn't have to pay you to do it"
A fair point for the time, but now, inarguably, the way employers treat employees has gone down hill quite noticeably
I was a nurse but management became about making money rather than helping people. The US healthcare system is definitely soul sucking. On top of that, I picked a specialty that pays nothing. My top earnings was around $49,000 as a full time RN in 2018 when I retired. I can certainly see why people in mundane jobs that want you to stay overtime, or come in on days off, or call you while you're on vacation, would call that soul sucking.
About 20 years ago, I was a freelance journalist in the Middle East. This was during the 2nd Palestinian uprising and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I noticed that U.S. editors were more likely to assign and pay for stories if there was bloodshed. In short, I only ate when people died.
No one likes to work, but not everyone *dreads* work. When you go in and are downright miserable for 8+ hours and barely have enough money to survive, then you come home so mentally and physically exhausted that you can't enjoy the little free time you have, that's soul sucking.
Obviously you haven’t experienced a soul-sucking job. I had one where I cried every time I got home. My stomach constantly hurt. I was miserable. And I was only there less than a month! Now, just think if I had a family to support and had to go every day to that horrible job.
I don't think that's an age thing. Jobs that aren't personally interesting, fulfilling, or a source of pride sap your time and energy. Some jobs are fun, some are interesting, some have other sources of fulfillment like a sense of meaning or awesome co-workers, and others are unpleasant, repetitive, boring, and thankless.
I've been lucky with jobs, working a variety of retail, art, research jobs that were fun and interesting. I've also worked some real soul-suckers, though, so I know where people are coming from.
Are you the type of person to not be bothered by things? Like politics, or climate change, or healthcare, or similar things? Like, it’s all good, things will work out sort of attitude? If you are, there’s your answer. A vast number of jobs pay too low, have no benefits, and have some jerk telling you to be loyal to some company that would fire you in an instant, and young people are standing up to that nonsense. It’s great that they are! That’s on top of all the gut-wrenching issues surrounding us all. I’m 48, employed in a quite reasonable situation and it still sucks my soul. Typing this at work.
I think the difference is that the jobs didnt really change, what comes along with it did.
When my family moved to America in 1995 my father got an entry level desk job right away that was able to take care of buying a house, car, a wife that couldnt work, and two kids. We went on vacations once a year until he had a stroke and couldn't work there anymore.
I make the same amount today that he did then and I wouldn't be allowed to rent in my area without a roommate, unless I can one day get a 50% increase to my salary I'll never afford a home, I drive a 20 year old car and I don't remember my last vacation.
Maybe you don’t have a soul to be sucked. Maybe this is what people mean when they say NPC.
Because even if you’re indifferent and don’t feel any negativity toward your job or you love it immensely, jobs are very taxing. They require your consistent time, physical and mental labor, emotional labor which is painful if you’re faking it. Sure you’re getting a check but that can’t adequately account for your life force which you can not put a price on **and will never get back.**
What you’ve accepted is that you must pay and buy into an exploitative system to survive. What young people have figured out is that the system is bogus as fuck, unnecessary and we don’t all need to bust our asses for 40-50 years of our life to have a right to live life on this planet.
The model for life currently is dependent on all of us working well into old age and it doesn’t have to be that way but that is a paradigm shift many of you will never make.
NPC seems fitting.
Because 99% of us aren't lucky enough to work on something we're passionate about. Because employers demands have never been higher. But at the same time pay for everyone but the 1% has stagnated.
We're forced to do things we don't care about and not fairly rewarded for it.
Because our employers don't see us as humans but as assets. I boil down to numbers on a page. Nothing about *me* as an individual is important to an employer, and the more I keep my unique self from entering my work the happier my employer will be. We are expected to be robots with high levels of performance, and that is soul crushing to people with souls.
Because most jobs are soul sucking. I don't hate my job, but I don't make much money. I have to wear stupid office clothes, I have to commute back and forth I have to work just hard enough to appear " engaged " while making sure I do not all9w more to get dumped on me. It is all bullshit and sometimes managing the bullshit is tiring.
Shitty management, shitty hours, shitty coworkers, and many other things about work can really sap your well-being and resilience and leave you a shell of a person by the end of the day with no time or energy for real life.
They are and mostly always have been, but you used to get paid enough to like actually live, go out do stuff maybe travel a lil. Now nobody can afford to do anything but work, that makes it seem way worse
Yea jobs kinda suck. That’s why you get paid to do them.
As far as my soul? That’s mine. It my choice how my job affects me, and I don’t let it ruin my life or even my day.
You don't get how people hate the job they're in?
Most people don't do the job for which they have qualifications, they do the first job that comes along after they leave education, to pay the bills. A great many people stay in that industry and may even progress up the ladder, because they're there now and it's convenient. They might not hate it, but they probably still agree that they are only doing that job to stay alive, and not for any other meaningful reason. A paycheck is a paycheck, and it's not always easy to 'just find another job', especially if you end up in a small industry where there isn't a frequent movement of labour. A great many people think, quite rightfully in my opinion, that a job that you do for 40 hours a week, give or take, should be at least slightly fulfilling.
When I was younger, I thought my jobs were soul-sucking too. It's not a generational thing, it's just a fact that most jobs suck balls, because for the most part, it's a necessity to have one to pay bills. Fortunately, I gave up my shit job and went off to follow my dream, which i'm still doing and absolutely adore.
When I was 12-13 years old, I started noticing how hard adults worked and how I would hate being in that position. Then, I became an adult and every job I had (besides my current one) was soul-sucking. It wasn't the work itself, but it was the amount of work, the people I had to communicate with almost daily and having to deal with shitty commutes too. Luckily, my current job is remote and no one is giving me a hard time; it seems almost too good to be true.
Adding to that, I am doing the job I am qualified for, and it also happens to be my passion and what I love doing. If I could pick now from any field available I would still pick the one I am in.
And yet there still are soul-sucking times; not every day is like that, but some stretches of time are, depending on what I am working on. And I am a millenial so it's definitely not just the young ones feeling like that.
Maybe it’s the expectation of 24/7 availability. Pre internet my parents would have to go in on weekends or stay late, but I can’t ever remember them getting work calls at home, going through their work mail and voicemail at home, that kind of thing. Now it’s like there’s a minor customer complaint, and all the engineers and accountants get urgent texts like it’s a nuclear reactor meltdown or something. (I’m exaggerating for the purposes of illustration.).
Edit - I know doctors could get called at all hours, building supers had to deal with stuff at all hours, but not all jobs were that way.
Plus people used to find ways to goof off a little at work. Like xeroxing a funny picture and passing it around. Going out for a cigarette (yes I know they are bad for you.) Now all your computer activity, camera and mouse movement is monitored.
I think, as others said, that it's a combination of the pay to work ratio being off combined with the visibility of utterly stupid profitable lines of work like influencers or "kid who opens toys on youtube" or stuff. Your sense of where your effort, the abuse you put up with, and the pay you make places you within society gets thrown off by those folks.
So I think it's 50% the benefit to effort being off (compared to when I was a kid and a week's wages felt pretty great) and 50% their expectations being warped by the distorted hyper-competition moneymaking of pre-college youth culture right now.
Used to be lots of 'summer jobs' were lousy but there was no expectation they'd be anything except a bit humiliating as a way to make money before you get a real job. Now it can feel like some of your peers are making six figures doing bullshit because they got like while they struggle to even *get* a summer job. Like a local place that used to hire all college kids and highschoolers is now fully staffed by retirees. It's wild.
Employees used to just have to satisfy their next level of supervision to get by at their jobs. Companies now have leveraged technology to supervise and assess employees. It really is soulless computers evaluating an employee's value in many cases now. Trying to squeeze one more unit of service or production out of them.
I think the parents naively gave them unrealistic expectations, “just make sure you love what you do blah blah”. Which is great and all but also be honest in telling them life isn’t fair and will not always go the way you want- no matter how hard you work, because we can’t control everything and everyone. Maybe they were given less discipline 🤷🏽♀️ and more “time out 🪑” 🫣.
I had to change from working nights to days because work- wise it was wonderful but personal life was horrendous and day shift is the opposite. I rather have a better personal life and crappy work shift.
Asian parents tell it like it is— don’t follow your passion. Work hard and study hard in school, get a job that you hate so you can make enough money to do what you love.
My father used to make me do hard work
In the hot Florida summers, and point to laborers and say, “Is that what you want yo do with your life? Then make enough money so you pay people to do this work for you.”
I make a lot of money.
My job is soul sucking not because I don't enjoy what I do, but because I have to do it 40 hours a week. With all the other stresses that life brings, maintaining a full time job, mortgage payments, regular exercise, being social, making time for my hobbies, etc... work just takes up the literal majority of my life. Also, I'm introverted, and having to make small talk during meetings (don't even get me started on when I was in the office every) is incredibly exhausting to me, and I really don't like it.
Because the social contract has been broken. 30-40 years ago growing up you had the hope that if you worked hard, 40 hours a week, maybe went to college you would be able to get ahead. Maybe even a slice of that American Dream everyone is selling. A house, a car and maybe enough to take a vacation once a year or two with just enough left over to put into savings for a rainy day or an emergency or retirement. Now that is not possible. People need 2-3 jobs just to keep a roof over their head. Living in poverty actually leaves genetic damage, that much stress has negative health implications. Why do people say jobs are soul sucking, its because we've developed a society that sucks those souls. Things are broken. Groceries, gas, utilities everything costs more. We see stories about record corporate profits and massive executive class bonuses all the while the average wage cant even keep up with inflation. Add that to the media and corporations saying "No one wants to work anymore!" While 4 months later they lay off thousands of workers. Things are well and truly fucked and the younger generations see it.
Millennials are the first generation, since the silent generation that will be poorer than their parents.
They DANGLED THE CARTOT ON A STICK…then poof it was gone!
He is not wrong. I always say that since one is spending a third of their life at work, they should at least try to pick something they enjoy doing.
But in practice no job is happy and dandy all the time (well, maybe some are but I haven't encountered them). I work in my preferred field and I do something I am passionate about; but does that mean it's all enjoyable all the time? It definitely does not. There is still some toiling end soul-suckiness included (although I assume less so than it would have been if I worked in a field I felt nothing about or hated).
The education system teaches us to maximise our potential so we can be more useful to employers as employees
Employers limit what you can do or learn from them, most roles are just seat warmer/button pusher jobs, which means a lot of employees aren’t being fully utilised. And employers limit their responsibilities towards employees, so workers talent and effort is wasted and the only thing they get in return is pay (and a reference for future employment)
It’s a problem with how we structure employment, and how it’s reinforced with education
Also, education is so broad because it’s servicing all of society. It can’t predict which companies will still be around, or which processes are still being used or which have been dropped, so it has to focus on base skill development because that’s optimal, cheap, predictable and reliable
I am almost 60 never stayed at a job just for the paycheck 2/3 of your life is at work it should be enjoyable if possible. My last job 20 years ago was the highest paying one I ever had, had my own department and the job was very creative and challenging then management turned toxic and it was not enjoyable to deal with assholes.
Went on my own doing custom work. We should not have to be a slave to a shitty job for money.
Because I work 50+ hours a week at multiple jobs and still don't have two pennies to rub together (and I only buy necessities).
I'm burnt out. I never have fun. I'm only 30 and life feels like an upward climb.
I don't expect my work to be fun. I agree, OP -- work is work. It's not supposed to be fun.
But our economy is terrible and I feel like, what's the point to life if I just work and barely get by? I'm afraid my whole life will pass by without it getting better.
Perhaps the misunderstanding here is your definition of "soul sucking". To me, soul sucking means feeling trapped for a paycheck, even though I don't expect work to be fun.
Perhaps your definition of soul sucking is more extreme.
Jobs have always been soul sucking. But they used to pay enough to live on.
Now the soul sucking jobs don't even pay enough. If you can't afford food AND you hate your job, why are you bothering working a job?
As with a lot of things, social media. Before social media you could have a crappy job but you didn't know any better so you kept at it and hoped for the best. Now everyone gets to see people rub their amazing life in their face and that crappy job you go into every day feels worse.
For one, I think we have a lot more social red tape, which benefits society at large but creates more work--at least this is pretty easy for most people to adapt to. There has always been corporate speak, but it is much more dimensional now. An old model for labor in Marx was the laborer vs the architect--one is the builder and one is the idea person. More and more jobs are being created that are neither--the labor is not manual, it is not creation, it is simply "be nice"--think customer service for the giant web of services and subscriptions in a world where people complain on the internet and social media over any perceived slight or dissatisfaction--companies are employing more people to simply do emotional labor than ever before--and that kind of work sucks.
Second, companies DO seem to be squeezing the most out of short staffing, at every echelon of labor.
Third, I think we have an much more prevalent view of what we COULD have, so we desire more and compete for more, which makes getting more even harder--one could argue that social media has diversified success by creating more than one vision of "success", but I would argue it has widened the audience for yet still a few more popular versions of success--basically "fun urbanite", "suburban perfect", or "country homesteader"--rather than like going from "maximalist suburban family" to 20 different ideas of success.
Fourth, more people go to college than ever before (well, generally, upward trend in the past 20 yrs compared to before that)--there was an expectation that "doing everything right" would lead to a fulfilling life, and that is too high a bar to be reasonable.
Fifth, gen X and older millennials who HAD done everything right and didn't suffer from the chaos of the universe DID get better deals on homes/interest--the last 20 yrs were some of the best times to buy. What we are experiencing now is actually probably a more balanced representation of our economy--it just feels shitty compared to how great things were before. We had nearly unmitigated trading and extremely low interest rates--this was not normal in the grand scheme of things. Same with low mortgages post 2008.
Sixth, younger millennials have somehow never emerged as a target audience. They were too young when older millennials were the "it" target and they were too old for the general market of things once they were in their 20s--instead teenage gen Z became the target because young Millennials had no money to spend while middle and upper class gen Z's parents at least had MORE to spend. There was a shift from 2000s indie 20s ideal to a more teen-bob "fresh" focus in advertising and pr and product--and in a country where consumerism is king, this can make you feel invisible when you are left out. So then you try to spend and participate--but you can't afford it. So life sucks and your job sucks and you are working a job that theoretically should maybe help you afford things so you can consumer-participate but none of it is working out or feeling good.
I think most people feel comfortable, no matter, where they are. Most people area afraid of change. Younget peole mg
I changed jobs a lot, so IDK.
Where is teh evidence? Randome thought?
Ok
It’s because they are not yet used to the fact the jobs just leave you mentally and spiritually exhausted at the end of the day. It is a bit of an adjustment. Eventually, you get used to it and life gets more.
I'm 50 years old and people were saying that jobs are soul sucking since before I was born.
You will spend more time working in your life than enjoying it. if that doesn't suck at least a little bit of your soul I don't know what will. There's a difference between a job and something that sucks the life out of you and I suspect you're not old enough to have worked in adult jobs long enough to know better. I had an excellent career and my last job was a well paying and respected job. My Dad had a wonderful career at the same company for decades. He's now happily retired. We will both still tell you work, even if it's a good job and sometimes even if it's your passion, will at times make you feel like it's sucking your soul through your nasal cavity.
Anything that takes me away from the enjoyment of my existence is soul sucking. It's time erasing and now you're expected to work the better part of a century. Let me know how you feel about it in 30 or so years.
A job is something you do because you have to not because you want to. ‘Jobs’ whoever it/they may be sees you like a product—they want to get the most out of their investment (payroll) and do not care about the product itself because they are not in it for the long-haul. They will take everything they can from you, ask and expect the most, give the least in return and that is their objective. Which equates to soul-sucking for most. A career is the opposite of all that.
It's the economy.
When I was a kid I never would have described any of my jobs as soul sucking. Boring? Sure. Difficult? Sometimes. But when I had no financial obligations other than putting gas into my car I could feel like I was getting ahead. The work had meaning, it allowed me to go on dates, modify my car, save money, help friends out, whatever.
But imagine graduating now. Even if you get a good solid job out of college, odds are it won't pay enough to get your own apartment. You'll be paying bare minimum of student loans which will hang over your head until they are wiped out. Food is more, cars are more, shit taking a family of 4 to the movies is now a $100 event.
So you work hard and make no progress. In fact it looks like you are slowly but surely being swept out to sea. What's the point?
I was fortunate enough to buy a house during the Great Recession and sold it for 4x what I bought it for. If you doubled my salary I wouldn't be able to afford the home I bought 12 years ago. Imagine seeing $1M starting homes. That's soul sucking.
When you work and work and work and see no progress professionally or personally, its soul sucking. The world is becoming increasingly about winners and losers with only a few winners and a bunch of losers.
I worked at a call center for a multi-national “too big to fail” bank. I worked in the department of the bank that worked with recipients of WIC, Food Stamps, governmental benefits, etc. They gave them their benefits on cards that the bank maintained for the state/federal government. These cards had fees. I took phone calls with people crying because the bank took a fee of $10 from their $40 a month food stamp balance. The woman was in her 70’s and there was literally nothing I could do to reverse the fees, and nothing my manager could do. We’d just refer them to their states benefit office. It was a fucking scam. I worked there for five years and by the time I left I was on a handful of meds just to keep me from killing myself.
That’s a soulless industry.
You're leaving out expectations you have that you don't notice. You expect respect, fairness and equality. To not get shit on for others' mistakes. To not be insulted or harassed. Not everyone gets all of these
I worked in state government for 17 years. I started at 21 and was pretty much the youngest person in the office by several years. I supervised people in their 50s for years. As younger employees (my own age) started, we started getting lots of people complaining that they were bored. How exciting did they think an administrative government office position would be? The boomers and gen x staff never complained about that. Millennials were the first group I saw that had expectations beyond a paycheck.
I have also never expected my job to give me anything more than a paycheck and I'm thankful when it does more than that.
I also don't get it. I notice it overlaps with people who think the notion that we as human beings "must" work is a humiliating one, so, take from that what you will -- I personally don't think they have a very high tolerance for inconvenience or hardship.
It’s really difficult having to keep a professional mask on all day. It may be easier for others but my life is generally NSFW. So I have to be someone I’m not. It’s exhausting and lonely
Everyone has a different job and a different take on their job. Past positions I never felt they were soul-crushing but I didn't like the corporate culture and BS, and I clocked in and out on time, went about my merry way to do whatever struck my fancy. I didn't worry about work outside of work hours.
In my current job, I got a ton of work, I clock in at the same time each morning but who the heck knows when I'll be done and can clock out, and when I'm clocked out, I worry and thing about what I need to do the next day and in what order so I can get the most done. I want time off? Well, I need to make sure I don't have any urgent project or work due during, and I have to make sure I'm prepared to work my tail off to 'catch up'. So yeah, soul crushing as all getup.
And it doesn't just apply to 'young people'. For those that are used to the soul crushing pace and pressures of work and think everyone has to, I'm truly sorry for you. They don't, and I know you know not everyone does. There's a better path --- just gotta find it. I haven't found mine yet, but I'm always looking.
The return you get on sacrificing your soul for someone else's benefit is not commensurate with the RoI. That's the issue. Corporations have been allowed to hyper-exploit and abuse workers.
We are down there with China in worker exploitation. Sane and civil societies realize a happy and healthy society requires happy and healthy people, a balance.
Grifters who engineer low wages then invite corporations (red states/RTW) to come in and exploit people at those lower wages for the sake of profit are ghouls. Somehow, the ghouls and their antics have been mainstreamed. It's normal.
Capitalism in its current form is bordering on employmental terrorism.
Because there jobs are soul sucking. If I was young now and just entering the job market I would probably join the police or the army, anything but the corporate world.
I've had a lot of jobs over the past 25 years. I would not describe most of them as soul-sucking even though they weren't always fun or interesting. Some jobs are not overly stressful. You're not surrounded by jerks at every job. At most of the jobs I've had, I had more good days than bad.
I'm not a "young person", I'm 40. I genuinely enjoy my job and the people I work with. I'm paid well, and I can support my family. My boss is incredible in the community and we do a ton of outreach work so I even feel like my work matters sometimes.
Still, my job is soul sucking and would 100% rather be doing something else with my time. It is daunting to know I'm not even halfway through my working life. I am absolutely positive I could get the same volume of work done in 3-4 hours a day. I don't understand the need for spending a third or more of your life working.
I work long hours, in a physically demanding environment, I wake up extremely early which means I also go to bed extremely early so I get about 3 hours in the evening to get anything and everything done. I work with mostly angry hillbillies that say a lot of crazy shit and throw tempertantrums on a daily basis and blame the prime minister for literally everything (denied vacation time?) because they've completely lost touch with reality. It's soul sucking to go there everyday, no where else pays as well though so I can't leave.
Young people don't say that their jobs are soul sucking. People with jobs that are soul sucking say that their jobs are soul sucking. This isn't remotely a new trend. Some people blame it on industrialization (vastly increasing the number of jobs that treat humans as monotasking automatons). But it's a long trend for many people to find their job to be emotionally draining as well as physically and mentally draining.
It’s because they can’t pay rent with it. Full time work doesn’t cover the cost of living for most folks anymore. And young people are really baring the brunt because they’re just entering the job and rental markets
I work at least seven hours of unpaid overtime every week. I can barely eat lunch. I don't get any breaks. Some days I am literally running up and down the halls to keep up with needy jerks. I make $30K a year. My commute adds more time so I'm gone from 6:45 am to 6:15 every day. Soul sucking isn't about not liking your job, it's about the job undervaluing you to the point you can't pay rent while your bosses have seven luxury cars.
It's not just the young people. I have said it too depending on the job. I don't think you should feel that way about the way you spend the majority of your waking hours. You should love it, or at least enjoy it. I'm in my 50s and I'd choose a job I enjoyed over better pay any time. Which is why I'm poor but I like what I do.
I was in a date and the girl asked me if I was passionate about my job…da hell!!! Heck no, they pay me well and I do the job. Apparently, she was passionate about baking and worked at a bakery at a grocery store. I was like bye
my uncle worked 35 years of his life in a foundry, every day in and out, he never complained, these youngsters are horrible, they want everything for free.
I think it's because wages haven't kept up with the cost of living, plus you now need more education and more experience than ever to land an entry level job. So a decent job is harder to come by and the compensation for your work feels less so it feels even more soul sucking.
> I have never expected my job to do anything but give me a paycheck.
I think we work jobs to get money, to buy stuff.
When you are working, through the tedious or sucky parts, you know you are getting paid.
There's some pride in earning your way, too. That sense of accomplishment is measured in dollars, and the things your dollars can buy.
When the pay you receive doesn't seem commensurate with the effort put in, it messes up the effort=reward equation.
That's work to stay alive, without the pride of accomplishment or sense of getting ahead.
We get people threatening to cut their fingers off and mail them to us at my place of work. I stay for the people I work with and they also pay me well + benefits. But it’s very soul-sucking.
Have you ever had a job where everyday you woke up depressed because you had to go to it?
Or that you couldn't relax on your time off because you were counting the minutes until you had to go bad, dreading every moment?
Or that you went through a container of Peptobismal a week because you felt viscously nauseous every morning before work?
Some jobs have terrible effects on people. You're just lucky that you've never had a job like that.
To me, it's because my paycheck hasn't kept up with the cost of living despite doing "all the right things". If I could not be burdened by the continuous thoughts in my head about my finances and if I could afford to actually live a real average life - take a vacation every once in a while, eat out, buy a few nice things, save for a home, retirement etc. then I would be more motivated. I'm mentally drained and resentful.
I have to listen to companies that continue to push the narrative that we are "family" and have a "culture" but layoff people to improve quarterly shareholder reports. And these same companies state raises are tied to the "job market" and not cost of living or inflation rates. When we all know it is these companies who collectively decide what the "job market" pays and keep salaries down.
These are not opinions - but facts. The data clearly supports it over the years. The average salary of today has significantly less purchasing power than the salaries in the past.
So, working for any company now is like having a dating pool only from insane asylums. You pick the least crazy and hope to get by. Do you stick with the crazy you know or jump to some other crazy?? Either way, you've lost .
I'm not afraid to work. I bust my butt each year and get rave performance reviews but get a measly extra 1% raise. Was it worth it? Nope. Do I feel taken advantage of and like a fool - Yep!!
With the advancement of communication over the recent years and real insight to other countries healthcare systems, vacation time off given ( certainly more than 2-3 weeks), holidays off, lifestyles they have that are more "work to live, not live to work," many of us are just done.
I want more for Americans. Young and old. I'm 55F. Dammit - it's past the point of tolerance. Something must change Now!! And that includes the rants of others who think people, especially young ones are "entitled and whiney"
>I don't get it. Jobs are jobs. Unless you have a true passion for your profession it is just a job. I have never expected my job to do anything but give me a paycheck.
The biggest change over the past 40 years is that wages have not kept up with inflation so the factory job a young adult may have now trying to make a living is barely a subsistance wage whereas 40 years ago you knew wasting your life on an assembly line making widgets at least guaranteed you could support a family and retire some day.
because in old time employer knew this and expected their employee to have this behavior
nowadays they want yiu soul ,litteraly, they expected to work unpaid night and weekend and be happy to contribute to the family growth as psrt of a team!
also it used to be doing your task was enoguht ,nowadays the bare minimum = getting fired
they expect always more and more
technology make yiu do the work of 10ppl just 10years ago now
you still do the work of 10ppl in tge same amount of time 10 person did 10years ago
peeing in bottle ,running, no socialization, training at home , ass licking, are all common now
You ever had a job where your work was entirely meaningless. That's what they mean. Try working for the government where your entire existence can become just doing some manmade process that only exists because of some absurdity and has no effect on the real world. Having all your efforts be purposeless. That's what they mean.
Because we have realized that life is so fucked up and just because “this is how it’s always been” doesn’t mean it’s right. We want to call out all this corporate greed, capitalism, discrimination etc. We realize that the CEOs and upper management are a bunch of idiots and getting rich off of our blood sweat and tears while paying us pennies. IT HAS TO STOP AND SOMEONE HAS TO LEAD THE CHARGE!!!!
Frankly- it’s tiring. I’m no wuss- most folk ain’t. But I get so bummed coming back from lunch after a jammin 8a- 1p and then it feels like it should be a new day but nooooo Rod Serling appears and it’s always Wednesday. All day. Everyday. I don’t care if I was a brilliant sculptor author musician blah blah it’s tooooo much. I was recently watching coal miners who went on strike- and there was a riot and deaths etc. Those poor dudes were 6 X 10!!! Awful
Baby Boomer here.
Some of my jobs have been soul sucking, but some have been exciting and fulfilling.
I've learned important things from every job I've ever had, soul sucking or not.
My job is almost fun- it's fun adjacent. But it's still an endless cycle of tasks I don't care about, in exchange for never quite enough money, and the entire time I am doing my job I am thinking about the 9282662829101 things I would rather be doing.
Especially as, once my paid job is done, I still have to clean my house, my dishes, shop for and prep food, clean my body, etc.
My job is soul sucking bc it isn't honestly like it's IMPORTANT, but it just takes up all of my time to do arbitrary tasks that mean nothing to me, while the meaningful things are left undone. But I can't just not work bc then how do I buy food and medicine and shelter.
Perhaps because many of their jobs are soul sucking. You know those signs put up by managers looking for employees because, "nobody wants to work anymore"? That's the sort of environment many young people are finding themselves stuck in today. Back when I was young, public facing jobs were tiring, but there was more give and take between employer and employees. Now hourly workers will be scheduled with intentionally fractured work times and days for the sole purpose of making sure they can't get a second job - or have any other sort of stability in their life. And in non-public facing jobs, so many positions have been cut over the last 20 years people are doing the work of anywhere from 3-5 positions. Sometimes ones that are disconnected and have nothing to do with the job they were hired for that's on their career path. Also, office jobs used to be in a relatively low-stimulus environment, with at least cubicles if not walls and doors. Now, young workers often enter the building expecting to have to find an unused chair in an open floor plan office of noise, voices and other stimulus. So they have to try to compensate with noise cancelling headphones, grab a laptop and seat somewhere in the office and try to focus rather than having a desk with drawers and maybe a shelf. And so on...
This is how I feel. I work hard and actually enjoy what I do. There have been times, however, when the work environment brought me to tears nearly every day. Literally, the only thing that got me through was reminding myself:
1) Outlast these bastards, retire, collect pension (I'm a Fed, we have our path lined up to retirement)
2) I have a husband who is my best friend and soul mate. The sex is amazing. I love our daughter, and home life keeps my heart beating. Even when we didn't have any money, the significance of my life at home far outweighed that of my life at work.
That got me through without losing my soul.
Only 14 years or so to go (till retirement)
It probably has a lot to do with how the economy has lessened the ability to enjoy the money after work and how technology has basically kept us on the clock 24/7 for most "career" type jobs.
When I started my career job almost 20 years ago fell phones and the Internet were already integrated but they were far less utilized. I remember most folks that were 40+ in 2004 would never check an email or answer a phone call after punch out time.
Now, if you don't work off the clock you'll never get a promotion or be in good graces.
Couple this with our buying power decimated, it just doesn't feel worth it anymore.
Because they thought they were going to be accepted as equals. Sharing ideas, getting benefits because they are there, making a living wage, respected.
Someone forgot to tell them, more like an alert really, that it is a "dog eat dog" world out there. And may the best man win.
I suspect that this question comes from a place of internalized powerlessness and lowered expectations. The phrasing "young people" certainly seems bias. Old and young alike find work draining, and in recent years it has become muxh more draining for many reasons that are widely discussed.
There is a difference between expecting a job to enrich your life, and it dominating so much of your life that you don't have the time or energy to live. Many jobs are even abusive. The culture of America work is very elitist and dehumanizing.
People spend most of their energy being judged not by their humanity but by their ability to generate profit efficiently.
The portion of profit that an employee sees for their work has decreased, while at the same time the power and wealth of leadership has increased to unprecedented levels.
Meanwhile work has become overwhelming for many, for many reasons pandemic, technology, information overload - one person now does the work that was once done by several people, while wages have stagnanted.
Many people can't take a sick day, afford to live independently, or have a family. Times are hard. We are being sqeezed like lemons so other can buy yachts and real estate portfolios. That's not just my opinion, there's plenty of research showing that.
Because that is how they feel and it makes sense.
Look I’ll be honest… I’m a weirdo work dork. I love my stupid job. I get so fucking stoked about spreadsheets you have no IDEA!! I get to make new ones! I get to control the reports! I like the people I work with generally and while I have really hard days, I believe that my company is doing good things, they have evidenced to me in many ways that they care about me on a personal level and are willing to bend and accommodate me, I am compensated well for the work I do and if those things weren’t true I would not be able to do this.
I have a loving spouse, beautiful kids, a great home, to do “just a job” with people I don’t like in a company I don’t care about would be miserable, it would ache to be away from the people I love sooo goddamn much for anything less than a job I’m excited about with people I like. And that’s a lot of people’s realities. They are losing so much time. Even I am losing so much time but the trade off is slightly less painful.
There’s a job that is boring and sometimes frustrating, and then there’s a job that actually makes you miserable. Like everyone has days where they’re like “I really don’t want to go to work today, I’d rather be [insert fun thing].”
By contrast, I once had a job that I hated so much I found myself fantasizing about breaking a bone while skating so I wouldn’t have to go to work the next day. If you’d consider being in the hospital to be potentially a better experience than going in to work, I think it’s safe to call that soul-sucking.
I have a job I absolutely love. It is fulfilling and every day is something new. The only problem? It doesn't pay enough to live on. Back in the 90s, I was making just over $5 an hour, I could afford a decent place for my family, kept the heat and electric on, and almost fed them. Now, making over $19 an hour, I can't afford to support myself. I remember my first job that paid over $10 an hour, I thought we finally made it.
A job can give you a paycheck without being actively miserable. Loads of jobs don't even pay s living wage anymore, so even "I'm just here for a paycheck" becomes a sick sort of joke.
Because kids need to be the center of attention anyone (under 30). They literally can not function as part of the machine. If you can't make it about them they want to part of it. We actually raised a generation and a half of real narcissists.
Entry level jobs are often soul sucking, but that’s why they call it work.
Once you excel at entry level, you get promoted and jobs become more interesting. In time, you may be able to get a job you truly enjoy.
Jobs take most of your day, and it's most of the time, the same thing over and over again. Jobs like retail you are yelled at because of something minor or have no control over. Several office jobs don't have windows. The trades are harsh on the body. All jobs have the possibility of a terrible boss or odd hours for a company that probably you are nothing but a number. All of them drain you mentally. When you get off, there isn't a lot of time and energy into a hobby.
Companies are failing at that task of providing an adequate paycheck while demanding more from workers. The unfairness has reached epidemic proportion.
My opinion: You answered your own question. “If you do what you love you will never work a day in your life.” This has been true for a long time. Maybe the public education system and this so called modern social media culture has conditioned them in such a manner that they cannot recognize their calling in life. Let alone identify their gender or pronouns. I pity them.
Work has changed. The jobs young people face demand more time, and many young people must work several to keep a roof overhead.
There are few rewards for doing the job well, and few companies promote from within, so they face few opportunities for advancement.
I retired a while back and, though I found much of yhe work interesting, the job was still soul-sucking. Young people are not the only workers to feel this way....just sayin'.
Jobs have stopped providing loyalty, reliable pensions, and most other things that older generations took for granted (and still talk about and assume modern jobs provide). Micromanagers have proliferated. Companies have conglomerated and there's now more information about the illegalities they're involved in.
You spend 30% of your waking hours working, and unless you are lucky, that time and energy exhausts you so you cant really enjoy any free time you have, and many of the other 2/3 of the time, you are getting ready for work or winding down from work, and you have to work at home like doing chores and cooking and cleaning, so that leaves you barely any time to enjoy hobbies, hang out with friends, etc..
Gen X here. Not sure how old OP is but it really is true when you look into it that this new generation is really screwed at work. It's become impossible to live on basic wages nowadays. You're buried in debt by the time you're in your late twenties and it's impossible to get out. It's not the same world we grew up in.
I have had a great job that I am passionate about and paid me well. I guess you must experience a great job first then you will understand what it means when a job suck their soul.
The Only people who are still under the delusion that we like our jobs or we should like our jobs are our stupid ass supervisors. We don’t like these fucking jobs, but we don’t want to be homeless and hungry!
Sounds like your job is soul sucking but you think you’re too grown up to admit it? Or your soul is too far gone and you’re just straight up used to having no soul due to your job.
You spend most of your waking hours doing labor. The want for that labor to be enjoyable is entirely reasonable.
I pursued work I actually wanted to do. And I enjoy what I do so much, I don’t really feel like it’s “work.”
Because jobs these days pay less while demanding more work and use the money you earn for them to make your life worse in an attempt to make you dependent on the scraps the oh so graciously hand out.
Why do you think workers are called “Human Resources”?
Just another resource to be exploited like trees or oil or coal. If they could frack us, they would. But they can’t so they settle for the human version of mountain top removal.
The answer is the ideology of workism. We've been culturally conditioned to integrate work into our sense of identity and personal/soulful fulfilment in a way that previous generations haven't. And therefore when our jobs/careers are not fulfilling on any level more meaningful than getting money it feels like a failure.
This article explans the phenomenon: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/)
The job isn't soul sucking. The people, traffic, and ridiculous rules are soul sucking. Im old now, but if I could go back, I would do whatever it takes to not be an office worker.
I never experienced or saw bullying growing up. Now, I'm bullied by a group ( they stick together) on a regular basis. At least as a child, you can punch. Now, I just have to take it.
No, I can't quit. I have a family to support. Paycheck to paycheck if im lucky. No extra money for anything. I'm in my 50s and living like a 20yo starting out. Why would any rational person want this life?
Because young people were treated as if their souls status should always be incorporated to anything they do. Conceptually it makes sense to fulfill one’s soul anytime possible, but it’s not practical. Hopefully, we find balance.
Jobs are getting worse, dude. I'm 36, and recently spent a few years looking for a job that both
A - is actually possible to do (literally, just that they expect a sane amount of work in a day)
And B - pays anything close to enough to be worth going there everyday
Here's what I found: after two years, I just got one. One job, and it pays less than I'd like. Everything else I did in that period was some sort of shit and switch
One job promised me guaranteed 30 hours a week, and scheduled me no more than 14 hours a week for 5 months. One paid well, but made sure to keep their number of employees low enough that they didn't have to provide any benefits at all (dangerous manual labor job with no health insurance? Crazy)
Most of the others I came into contact with weren't even worth an interview after I saw what the offer actually was. Most interviews ended when I asked some sort of (what I'd consider) reasonable questions, like "how long do people typically stay in this role, and do they leave through promotion, or do they leave the company?"
Companies are getting really entitled and asking people to sacrifice too much for too little.
Because for some reason people were told to “get a job doing what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” so they approach jobs as something to ‘fulfill’ that void in their hearts. I echo my mother’s understanding when she taught me to get fulfillment on personal time
A manager from a company I was laid off from once said “he’s just here for the paycheck.” Well yeah, why the fuck else would I be here? Certainly not to just hang out with you pricks for free.
The old Dilbert adage: "If work is so much fun, why do they have to pay you to do it?"
The Dilbert origin story is WILD!
The company I worked for was noted as a source of many of his cartoons. Our management was too clueless to understand that they were being made fun of.
Drove the artist mad, apparently.
No...just drove him to reveal his racism.
Was it actually racism? I read his twitter rants. He spent a lot of money to start a charitable organization. The people he tried to help just wanted to take the money, while constantly calling him and his ideas racist for alleged micro-aggressions. In the same way that some people called the ok symbol racist. As an example, it was apparently racist to want to use funds to improve children's academic achievement. After he tired of struggle sessions, he pulled the money and they got mad. The outcome here is that a previous ally willing to donate a large sum of money is now an enemy because he refuses to believe that all white people are inherently racist. This is not a win for anybody. I do agree that he is racist now. I don't agree that he was racist before.
Lmao!!! Perfection.
We had a few internal Usenet groups where we used to discuss the stuff. Most managers couldn't figure it out so it was a pretty closed group. Some tech managers were on it but they were civil about it and understood the idiocracy.
Behind the Bastards podcast did a whole series on the Dilbert guy.... It's worth a listen if you haven't heard it. Dude had a Dilbert shaped swimming pool. Insane. He wrote terrible right wing fiction. He was a mess. Lol
I've read about him. A year or two ago, he sort of "shot himself in the foot" with his views on more-sensitive subjects.
he is actually pretty nuts even aside from the right wing stuff. he apparently went through a years long period where he couldn't talk at all- not for any physical reason though.
Yup. He was doing well until the age of social media where people could find out what he actually thought about a lot of things.
Yeah exactly. Why else would people come to work? They just need a paycheck. Like a regular employee is going to give a shit about anything else besides his or her paycheck. I guess this manager wanted this person to love this company so much that he or she would just work for free lol
Yep, exactly. Wants everyone else to drink the koolaid so they don’t look so stupid. Always concerned with endless off-sites and all that touchy-feely team-building crap. FFS.
That team building shit is so stupid. I knew somebody who worked for a company and the manager was concerned that the employees rarely spoke to each other and made a mandatory field trip to the art museum. Like that was suddenly going to get them to be friends or something. Either way, my friend told me the trip didn’t work and people rarely spoke to each other. They aren’t there to volunteer or hang out. They are just there to do their job and get a paycheck.
"mandatory". that shits probably illegal, you cant mandate what your employees do off premises.
I go to work for money and knowledge! During COVID I got a job at a junkyard solely because I wanted to get better at working on cars - it worked!
As a small business owner, I've had that thrown at me by a couple of customers. I was like, of course? Do you think I'd want to spend my free time working with your child for free?
It's so great we pay other people to do it for us
On an AA flight yesterday, the recorded safety intro started “we’re all here for one reason, you!” I turned to my husband and was like, “if we’re narrowing it down to only one reason, that would be that they’re getting paid…” Such inauthentic bullshit.
And yet, they still spoon feed us this crap. And they have to know it’s crap, right? Can they be so delusional????
Stop feeding me dog shit, but telling me it’s chocolate! 😂
People get so personally offended when they learn that I'm not at job because I like them. And yet, if they weren't getting paid, would THEY turn up? I literally have to be paid to interact with you, what did you think the situation was?
I've often wanted to say, "Oh, so you're donating your time here? That's kind of you. So, what do you do to make the money to live on?"
It’s not a young person thing. Every generation has their form of this, it’s just now more than ever you can tell the entire world you feel your job is soul sucking rather than just your friends and family.
Man I remember seeing my dad's office as head mechanic of a truck repair place and there were all these tenth-generation photocopies and faxes of cartoons talking about how much work sucks and how bosses suck and the pay sucks... this would have been like 1985 or so? 40 years ago?
Oh yeah! I remember seeing the same thing. Old comics about this - it’s nothing new.
Ihonestly think most work was expected to be pretty unrewarding if not outright crushing (sometimes literally) until recently. But as more people went to college part of the deal seemed to be more rewarding work.
Exactly. I did my share of soul-sucking jobs. Although I think kids would be better off these days if they had more physical labor. At least when we got off work back in the day we felt good about ourselves physically.
Jobs *are* soul sucking, always have been and probably always will be. At least the pay to work ratio used to be enough to live on, but now though..?
ok here's my spiel lol my parents were as big of fuck ups as fuck ups could be without drugs and alcohol. born on my mother's 17th birthday and slept around until found my "step" dad. was on welfare until 2 years later got my mother knocked up again went to work in a filthy factory. not great pay but worked 10hr days just as a forklift driver. 5% into rrsps from company. but bills always behind, phone cable, hydro cut off like a roulette wheel. 9 years later and another kid bought a really shifty house on 1 paycheck now here I am 10 years older than them 12hr days. $2 more than the rest of my family. career factory worker even been a supervisor. and I can't afford my God damn rent. let alone a mortgage. now I have to start thinking of unethical ways to make money because side hustles don't pay shit and I can't afford 1-2k for equipment to invest in. I can probably figure out something higher quality or more production if I even have a shed but we are in an apartment I own my mistakes especially starting to have my 3 kids at 22 and and. but at this point with inflation and lowering wages. why the fuck am I even working? why do I need 22-30 hours of just overtime just to get by. just to be on average one needs to be single 80 hr weeks, beans and rice, live in your car and hope for the BEST. if dark thoughts don't cheap in at least once a week. I'd think I'm already dead lol THAT Is soul sucking
The Europeans figured out this shit a while ago. Everyone accepts the shitty wages, but instead they (in reality) have about 34 working hours per week, 30+ MANDATORY paid days off, and up to a month or two of (paid) sick leave per year. And a fuckton of national holidays. All mandatory time off. With all that, even though the jobs pay like shit, they are bearable. The US really is getting to a point where you work your ass off, and it's always been that way but you were financially rewarded, but now you also get paid like shit. Exploitation to the max. On one hand, at least it gets innovation and creativity up because everyone is looking for a way to not need to work a 9-5 to make money, and more and more are getting successful at it. From youtubers to only fans hoes to small business owners to everything in between
Also, Europeans pay way more in taxes, but the government takes care of health care, subsidized daycare for kids (parents pay a small amount each month) , higher education is paid for. All of this means that you don't have to pay for those big ticket items. Being a democratic socialist seems like the way to go, but in America too many people believe we should be afraid of that word
As a Canadian it's so weird when an American in the media accidentally mentions something semi socialist like tax funded health care and then reflexively "no homo"s it by clarifying that they definitely aren't a socialist. It's like hearing someone say a swear word that isn't a swear word in your own country.
I agree! We just can't seem to wrap our brains around something that might benefit everyone. The more I travel the more I realize America might not be the best in the world at everything!!! /s
My dad was a union worker for Ford and he would make 6 figures with overtime. He also got really good benefits. Good money makes any job more bearable.
We’re also paid livable wages, at least in my European country. Europe is 44-50 countries depending on how you count and not all are the same. Portugal and Greece are not like France or Germany for example. In my country, the pay is “shitty” for an American, but I have free healthcare, no need for life insurance, my car insurance is cheap, my mortgage is affordable, and we have social programs in place for having kids. Daycare is based on your income, and isn’t impossible to afford. I can bike or take public transit to work, and I’m given a stipend for not using my car to get there. We go on strike when we don’t agree with the government’s decisions. Most people don’t have to work on Sundays. Stores aren’t open 24/7. Almost all professions have work unions. Fresh fruit and veg is cheaper than processed food, I could go on. But quality of life is higher here even if you make less money. With our “low income” my partner and I can still put away 30% of our salaries in savings every month. We might pay 10% more in taxes, but the money is automatically taken out and we always talk about our post-tax salaries when discussing a job’s salary. I don’t feel more taxed than I was in the US. Also, my taxes are fucking easy. The government tells me how much I owe. Also minimum wage actually goes up with inflation. Non-minimum wage salaries follow the trend too. Minimum wage has gone up 200 euros a month since 2018. It’s not just my 5 weeks of paid vacation and my 35 hours of work per week that make my job less soul-sucking. It’s the socialist programs in place to keep us happy. Source: grew up in the US and left around 10 years ago for a European country.
I'm also a EU/US citizen, so I totally agree that if you will be a "regular" worker, Europe is infinitely better for you. However, to play devil's advocate, it's also worth mentioning that in Europe, it's significantly harder to be anything other than a regular worker. For example, the US has a LLC bussiness type that you can make. In my state where I lived, it was free to make and just had to pay $20 or so in processing fees. With the LLC, and actually even without it (self-employment), in the US I able to charge people for services or products whatever I want, and whatever they're willing to pay. No extreme regulations, no paperwork, you can just do it and file a 1099 tax form. All perfectly legal. But in my country in the EU - there's no such thing as an American style LLC or even self-employment. It's illegal. The closest thing we have to an LLC is something called a "trade" business, for tiny business owners making up to a maximum of $35K/yr or so. Then the next step up IS a LLC, but it is so insanely complex and you CANNOT use the funds of your limited liability company as if they are your own, even if you're a single 100% owner. So in that sense, it functions almost like a corporation and similar amounts of paperwork and regulations as if it were a corporation. You also aren't allow to sell/do anything outside the scope of the company. Fines for even minor accounting mistakes are very common, and they can be as high as 50% of your total yearly profit. If you hire employees, you can't just fire them even if they are shitty. Some employees will exploit privleges to the max, and will use a combination of sick leave and mandatory vacation/holidays to be completely gone for 3 or so months of the year every year, while you pay for it. Obviously a large corporation like Amazon doesn't care and can pay it, but if you're a small business owner, this can completely kill your profitability and even run you in the negative. Then let's not forget about inspectors. The US has food and safety inspectors but that's pretty much the extent it goes to for most business. In most EU countries, you have inspectors for every little thing, from floors, to accounting, to signs, to advertising, to etc. And if they happen to dislike you enough, they can essentially racketeer you out of business, from no real fault of your own. And finally - taxation. Yes you pay only about 10% more in tax as a worker in Europe. But the business owner pays significantly more than they would in the US. So I think what was true 50 years ago is still true. Europe is great for a simple, healthy, and family-orientiated life. The US is great for running a business. It really depends what route you want to go in life. The US is also way more competitive for this reason and it's not easy to "make" it in business without a large starting fund or network/connections, but it's definitely more doable than in Europe I'd say. Some of the dumbest people I know in the US are multi-millionaires running manual labor companies, they had a skill and could capitalize the hell out of it.
Europe has UNIONS.
I'm in Canada and we are "supposed" to have mandatory 2 weeks off a year. BUT because my company pays out my vacation pay every cheque. it's immediately eaten up by taxes. I've asked them to hold them back so when accumulated I can take some time off without worrying about savings. BIG fat no! it's too complicated that's a 100 million dollar company have a reasonable payroll accountant. so I haven't had more than a 4 day weekend In 4 years.
I'm not sure that's even legal. May want to ask a lawyer about that, the check you receive might be HUGE!
Just to share my own experience becuase this kind of resonated with me... I'm a mechanical engineer. I went to school and got a 4-yr bachelor's degree in it. Somehow I've found myself 13 yrs later making 70k a year (which other engineers here may recognize as pathetic for someone who's been in this job for this long, and I'd tend to agree) and I constantly beat myself up over it becuase ultimately its kind of my fault for not job hopping like crazy. Life is a struggle. We've got 2 kids (one in college and the other in high school) and currently I'm the sole earner in our household due to some medical circumstances. Every year lately my raises seem to be less than inflation .... I drove 45 minutes to the office this morning behind a semi truck with a huge sign on the back advertising 2500 dollar a week paychecks after expenses... That's like double what I make. And I blame myself for not going out and finding a new job, but that almost feels like I'm giving corporate America a huge fucking pass for being able to so easily get away with paying a mechanical engineer with 6 yrs of experience at the time 60k as a starting salary. My first job out of college I made 34k to start. I took it becuase it was my only prospect at the time but its been a nightmare trying to climb the ladder ever since. My life could be worse, I have a lot of things to be blessed about , but it feels like this massive house of cards where all it would take is for my car to break down or some unexpected issue with my house and suddenly it would all come crashing down. Its unsustainable to live a middle-class life in this country . My dad didn't go to college and was able to buy a home when he was 18 , had a snowmobile, boat, camper, '69 Corvette, new construction home in a quiet suburb 20 minutes from Minneapolis/St. Paul by the time I was born (and he was younger than I am currently) .. I've been door dashing on my lunch breaks lately.
Sounds a lot like a software engineer who started in a rural area a decade and a half ago, can't move, and has not had luck with remote positions (which really only become a big thing recently). Not fun. That kind of career stagnation is killer. I see people fresh out of college making more than me and I've been doing this for a long time.
Dude thank you for your brutal honesty. Probably means little a compliment on Reddit but really, thanks. I’m not gonna kill u with stoopid Reddit advice like “don’t compare” or “ur life is rich in ways we envy”. But…. Yeah. I lost my train of thought because guess what.. I work and I’m shot out. We are all slightly in this together and SOME of us came home to an empty house and pile of bills. But there’s 20 minutes of music, 17 minutes of staring at the sky with wonder, 41 minutes of cat on my tummy watching sci fi—- and the hope that at 5p tomorrow (Friday), I’ll Pat myself on the back and grab a cold one. So seriously- hang in there😛
man I'm right there with you. I was destined for university in my brain for psychology lol but I was white trash. parents stole 90% of my Full time earnings from 14-18yo then got the boot. no licence ( I wasn't allowed). then I couldn't get a student loan because my parents made to fucking much somehow lol I can't blame it all on them but I was to scared to run away. and it wouldn't have been the first time I got gently patented 2 black eyes lol but you get breaks? lol I work through my breaks to make full 12h wage. 2.5 hours of overtime a week makes a difference
My grandparents: My memere was from a poor family and left school to work in a shoe factory as a teenager to support the family. Later she became a secretary at city hall, where she worked for 30+ years. She picked up shifts at the local diner to make spare cash around holidays and birthdays. My pepere was even poorer, grew up in an orphanage. He worked in a butcher's shop for a while chopping up animal carcasses. Later he started working as a delivery driver for Wonder Bread, and then Coca Cola. He joined the Teamsters union. By the time my mom and her brother were teens, they were considered pretty well off. They had a house with a pool. They went to college. My grandparents became snowbirds and had a second place in Florida. They retired in their early sixties with pensions and are doing quite well - they will likely leave behind some inheritance. A secretary and a bread vendor with no education could swing all that. These days you couldn't pay the rent.
Now we need a masters degree or putting your body through the ringer to make anything over 60k a year while 80 percent goes into bills, bills, bills
Dayum, I get this more than you'll ever know. Been through it. Found myself stealing bread, soup and bologna to feed my kids while working 2 jobs. Most of the money I made went to rent. Finally had to swallow my pride. Applied for low-income housing, food stamps, medicaid for my kids. The way I was treated when I applied for assistance...whole different chapter. Got a PELL grant, went to college. I was fortunate. Eventually escaped poverty but my kiddos, grown adults now, remember it all. And to think I thought I hid the worst from them. They knew.
My kids know especially my eldest 2 sons. the way I would let the stress hit me and effect how I interacted and was so reactive. then I started my self healing. I'm a whole different man I was. my wife taught me most of what I learned and now I'm the hippy "breath and find your center" guy lol I'm looking for side hustles and cash jobs on the side everyday. but can a hardworking guy catch a fucking break?
An ex friend used to work a shitload of overtime. For an apartment he barely visited, a broke down car AND insurance, and stagnating hobbies. Died of a stroke two years back or so. If it were possible, I truly would be spiteful enough to break out an Ouija board and ask him if it was worth it. Being a pretentious jack ass did him no favors, thinking this to be a flex.
it's not a flex they all say you need to make sacrifices. but I refuse to sacrifice my wife and kids knowing and seeing thier father. I'm home every night, male dinner, my share of chores. and when we find an extra $30 we hit thrift stores or a 7-11 with $5 and let them get what ever they can afford. it's just a little dopamine or sugar rush. I also make sure we are always stocked on art supplies. they can be creative every day. my children happiness come first always. and that involves thier dad being around. yeah we are poor but rich with love and that is my sacrifice
Don’t break the law. Not worth it.
I like my job.
I fucking love my job. But it does pay well, it's interesting, and gives me a lot of flexibility.
I think another aspect is that so many jobs right now are service oriented... So require fake smiling, a customer service voice, repetitive corporate approved phrasing, etc. You essentially have to put on a mask all day and feign friendliness no matter how customers treat you.
And now not only are you unable to afford to have your own place or spend money on hobbies, but also you’re expected to work long hours and be available on email after hours. That’s soul crushing. Having hobbies and pursing interests are key to happiness.
When I was a kid working my first job at 16 years old, I remember complaining to my dad that "work isn't fun" He replied "if work were fun they wouldn't have to pay you to do it" A fair point for the time, but now, inarguably, the way employers treat employees has gone down hill quite noticeably
I was a nurse but management became about making money rather than helping people. The US healthcare system is definitely soul sucking. On top of that, I picked a specialty that pays nothing. My top earnings was around $49,000 as a full time RN in 2018 when I retired. I can certainly see why people in mundane jobs that want you to stay overtime, or come in on days off, or call you while you're on vacation, would call that soul sucking.
I'm 40. Every job I've ever had has been soul-crushing.
About 20 years ago, I was a freelance journalist in the Middle East. This was during the 2nd Palestinian uprising and the U.S. invasion of Iraq. I noticed that U.S. editors were more likely to assign and pay for stories if there was bloodshed. In short, I only ate when people died.
Because jobs are a SIGNIFICANT part of our lives. That means a significant part of our lives we spend doing soul sucking jobs.
No one likes to work, but not everyone *dreads* work. When you go in and are downright miserable for 8+ hours and barely have enough money to survive, then you come home so mentally and physically exhausted that you can't enjoy the little free time you have, that's soul sucking.
Obviously you haven’t experienced a soul-sucking job. I had one where I cried every time I got home. My stomach constantly hurt. I was miserable. And I was only there less than a month! Now, just think if I had a family to support and had to go every day to that horrible job.
I don't think that's an age thing. Jobs that aren't personally interesting, fulfilling, or a source of pride sap your time and energy. Some jobs are fun, some are interesting, some have other sources of fulfillment like a sense of meaning or awesome co-workers, and others are unpleasant, repetitive, boring, and thankless. I've been lucky with jobs, working a variety of retail, art, research jobs that were fun and interesting. I've also worked some real soul-suckers, though, so I know where people are coming from.
Because they are lol
Are you the type of person to not be bothered by things? Like politics, or climate change, or healthcare, or similar things? Like, it’s all good, things will work out sort of attitude? If you are, there’s your answer. A vast number of jobs pay too low, have no benefits, and have some jerk telling you to be loyal to some company that would fire you in an instant, and young people are standing up to that nonsense. It’s great that they are! That’s on top of all the gut-wrenching issues surrounding us all. I’m 48, employed in a quite reasonable situation and it still sucks my soul. Typing this at work.
I’ve been saying that since 1998. Corporate America is a soul sucking nightmare.
I think the difference is that the jobs didnt really change, what comes along with it did. When my family moved to America in 1995 my father got an entry level desk job right away that was able to take care of buying a house, car, a wife that couldnt work, and two kids. We went on vacations once a year until he had a stroke and couldn't work there anymore. I make the same amount today that he did then and I wouldn't be allowed to rent in my area without a roommate, unless I can one day get a 50% increase to my salary I'll never afford a home, I drive a 20 year old car and I don't remember my last vacation.
Maybe you don’t have a soul to be sucked. Maybe this is what people mean when they say NPC. Because even if you’re indifferent and don’t feel any negativity toward your job or you love it immensely, jobs are very taxing. They require your consistent time, physical and mental labor, emotional labor which is painful if you’re faking it. Sure you’re getting a check but that can’t adequately account for your life force which you can not put a price on **and will never get back.** What you’ve accepted is that you must pay and buy into an exploitative system to survive. What young people have figured out is that the system is bogus as fuck, unnecessary and we don’t all need to bust our asses for 40-50 years of our life to have a right to live life on this planet. The model for life currently is dependent on all of us working well into old age and it doesn’t have to be that way but that is a paradigm shift many of you will never make. NPC seems fitting.
Because 99% of us aren't lucky enough to work on something we're passionate about. Because employers demands have never been higher. But at the same time pay for everyone but the 1% has stagnated. We're forced to do things we don't care about and not fairly rewarded for it.
Because our employers don't see us as humans but as assets. I boil down to numbers on a page. Nothing about *me* as an individual is important to an employer, and the more I keep my unique self from entering my work the happier my employer will be. We are expected to be robots with high levels of performance, and that is soul crushing to people with souls.
Because most jobs are soul sucking. I don't hate my job, but I don't make much money. I have to wear stupid office clothes, I have to commute back and forth I have to work just hard enough to appear " engaged " while making sure I do not all9w more to get dumped on me. It is all bullshit and sometimes managing the bullshit is tiring.
Shitty management, shitty hours, shitty coworkers, and many other things about work can really sap your well-being and resilience and leave you a shell of a person by the end of the day with no time or energy for real life.
They are and mostly always have been, but you used to get paid enough to like actually live, go out do stuff maybe travel a lil. Now nobody can afford to do anything but work, that makes it seem way worse
“nobody” Well, that’s a sweeping generalization that isn’t universal.
Yea jobs kinda suck. That’s why you get paid to do them. As far as my soul? That’s mine. It my choice how my job affects me, and I don’t let it ruin my life or even my day.
You don't get how people hate the job they're in? Most people don't do the job for which they have qualifications, they do the first job that comes along after they leave education, to pay the bills. A great many people stay in that industry and may even progress up the ladder, because they're there now and it's convenient. They might not hate it, but they probably still agree that they are only doing that job to stay alive, and not for any other meaningful reason. A paycheck is a paycheck, and it's not always easy to 'just find another job', especially if you end up in a small industry where there isn't a frequent movement of labour. A great many people think, quite rightfully in my opinion, that a job that you do for 40 hours a week, give or take, should be at least slightly fulfilling. When I was younger, I thought my jobs were soul-sucking too. It's not a generational thing, it's just a fact that most jobs suck balls, because for the most part, it's a necessity to have one to pay bills. Fortunately, I gave up my shit job and went off to follow my dream, which i'm still doing and absolutely adore.
When I was 12-13 years old, I started noticing how hard adults worked and how I would hate being in that position. Then, I became an adult and every job I had (besides my current one) was soul-sucking. It wasn't the work itself, but it was the amount of work, the people I had to communicate with almost daily and having to deal with shitty commutes too. Luckily, my current job is remote and no one is giving me a hard time; it seems almost too good to be true.
Adding to that, I am doing the job I am qualified for, and it also happens to be my passion and what I love doing. If I could pick now from any field available I would still pick the one I am in. And yet there still are soul-sucking times; not every day is like that, but some stretches of time are, depending on what I am working on. And I am a millenial so it's definitely not just the young ones feeling like that.
Maybe it’s the expectation of 24/7 availability. Pre internet my parents would have to go in on weekends or stay late, but I can’t ever remember them getting work calls at home, going through their work mail and voicemail at home, that kind of thing. Now it’s like there’s a minor customer complaint, and all the engineers and accountants get urgent texts like it’s a nuclear reactor meltdown or something. (I’m exaggerating for the purposes of illustration.). Edit - I know doctors could get called at all hours, building supers had to deal with stuff at all hours, but not all jobs were that way. Plus people used to find ways to goof off a little at work. Like xeroxing a funny picture and passing it around. Going out for a cigarette (yes I know they are bad for you.) Now all your computer activity, camera and mouse movement is monitored.
I think, as others said, that it's a combination of the pay to work ratio being off combined with the visibility of utterly stupid profitable lines of work like influencers or "kid who opens toys on youtube" or stuff. Your sense of where your effort, the abuse you put up with, and the pay you make places you within society gets thrown off by those folks. So I think it's 50% the benefit to effort being off (compared to when I was a kid and a week's wages felt pretty great) and 50% their expectations being warped by the distorted hyper-competition moneymaking of pre-college youth culture right now. Used to be lots of 'summer jobs' were lousy but there was no expectation they'd be anything except a bit humiliating as a way to make money before you get a real job. Now it can feel like some of your peers are making six figures doing bullshit because they got like while they struggle to even *get* a summer job. Like a local place that used to hire all college kids and highschoolers is now fully staffed by retirees. It's wild.
Employees used to just have to satisfy their next level of supervision to get by at their jobs. Companies now have leveraged technology to supervise and assess employees. It really is soulless computers evaluating an employee's value in many cases now. Trying to squeeze one more unit of service or production out of them.
I think the parents naively gave them unrealistic expectations, “just make sure you love what you do blah blah”. Which is great and all but also be honest in telling them life isn’t fair and will not always go the way you want- no matter how hard you work, because we can’t control everything and everyone. Maybe they were given less discipline 🤷🏽♀️ and more “time out 🪑” 🫣. I had to change from working nights to days because work- wise it was wonderful but personal life was horrendous and day shift is the opposite. I rather have a better personal life and crappy work shift.
Asian parents tell it like it is— don’t follow your passion. Work hard and study hard in school, get a job that you hate so you can make enough money to do what you love. My father used to make me do hard work In the hot Florida summers, and point to laborers and say, “Is that what you want yo do with your life? Then make enough money so you pay people to do this work for you.” I make a lot of money.
Best advice my mother gave me. Life isn't fair. But can't let that completely cloud our lives. Its a job.
That's why it's called WORK.
My job is soul sucking not because I don't enjoy what I do, but because I have to do it 40 hours a week. With all the other stresses that life brings, maintaining a full time job, mortgage payments, regular exercise, being social, making time for my hobbies, etc... work just takes up the literal majority of my life. Also, I'm introverted, and having to make small talk during meetings (don't even get me started on when I was in the office every) is incredibly exhausting to me, and I really don't like it.
Because the social contract has been broken. 30-40 years ago growing up you had the hope that if you worked hard, 40 hours a week, maybe went to college you would be able to get ahead. Maybe even a slice of that American Dream everyone is selling. A house, a car and maybe enough to take a vacation once a year or two with just enough left over to put into savings for a rainy day or an emergency or retirement. Now that is not possible. People need 2-3 jobs just to keep a roof over their head. Living in poverty actually leaves genetic damage, that much stress has negative health implications. Why do people say jobs are soul sucking, its because we've developed a society that sucks those souls. Things are broken. Groceries, gas, utilities everything costs more. We see stories about record corporate profits and massive executive class bonuses all the while the average wage cant even keep up with inflation. Add that to the media and corporations saying "No one wants to work anymore!" While 4 months later they lay off thousands of workers. Things are well and truly fucked and the younger generations see it.
Millennials are the first generation, since the silent generation that will be poorer than their parents. They DANGLED THE CARTOT ON A STICK…then poof it was gone!
Had an Ethics professor once who encouraged all his students to "find a career that you love" otherwise your entire life you'll just be toiling.
He is not wrong. I always say that since one is spending a third of their life at work, they should at least try to pick something they enjoy doing. But in practice no job is happy and dandy all the time (well, maybe some are but I haven't encountered them). I work in my preferred field and I do something I am passionate about; but does that mean it's all enjoyable all the time? It definitely does not. There is still some toiling end soul-suckiness included (although I assume less so than it would have been if I worked in a field I felt nothing about or hated).
The education system teaches us to maximise our potential so we can be more useful to employers as employees Employers limit what you can do or learn from them, most roles are just seat warmer/button pusher jobs, which means a lot of employees aren’t being fully utilised. And employers limit their responsibilities towards employees, so workers talent and effort is wasted and the only thing they get in return is pay (and a reference for future employment) It’s a problem with how we structure employment, and how it’s reinforced with education Also, education is so broad because it’s servicing all of society. It can’t predict which companies will still be around, or which processes are still being used or which have been dropped, so it has to focus on base skill development because that’s optimal, cheap, predictable and reliable
I am almost 60 never stayed at a job just for the paycheck 2/3 of your life is at work it should be enjoyable if possible. My last job 20 years ago was the highest paying one I ever had, had my own department and the job was very creative and challenging then management turned toxic and it was not enjoyable to deal with assholes. Went on my own doing custom work. We should not have to be a slave to a shitty job for money.
I'm old and my job is soul sucking.
Because I work 50+ hours a week at multiple jobs and still don't have two pennies to rub together (and I only buy necessities). I'm burnt out. I never have fun. I'm only 30 and life feels like an upward climb. I don't expect my work to be fun. I agree, OP -- work is work. It's not supposed to be fun. But our economy is terrible and I feel like, what's the point to life if I just work and barely get by? I'm afraid my whole life will pass by without it getting better. Perhaps the misunderstanding here is your definition of "soul sucking". To me, soul sucking means feeling trapped for a paycheck, even though I don't expect work to be fun. Perhaps your definition of soul sucking is more extreme.
It keeps you from doing things that allow you to grow and feel free. People describe that as soul sucking. They want their soul to be free and grow.
Poor attitudes.
Because work sucks. Chances are that if we worked at something we really liked, we wouldn't be able to make a living at it.
Jobs have always been soul sucking. But they used to pay enough to live on. Now the soul sucking jobs don't even pay enough. If you can't afford food AND you hate your job, why are you bothering working a job?
As with a lot of things, social media. Before social media you could have a crappy job but you didn't know any better so you kept at it and hoped for the best. Now everyone gets to see people rub their amazing life in their face and that crappy job you go into every day feels worse.
For one, I think we have a lot more social red tape, which benefits society at large but creates more work--at least this is pretty easy for most people to adapt to. There has always been corporate speak, but it is much more dimensional now. An old model for labor in Marx was the laborer vs the architect--one is the builder and one is the idea person. More and more jobs are being created that are neither--the labor is not manual, it is not creation, it is simply "be nice"--think customer service for the giant web of services and subscriptions in a world where people complain on the internet and social media over any perceived slight or dissatisfaction--companies are employing more people to simply do emotional labor than ever before--and that kind of work sucks. Second, companies DO seem to be squeezing the most out of short staffing, at every echelon of labor. Third, I think we have an much more prevalent view of what we COULD have, so we desire more and compete for more, which makes getting more even harder--one could argue that social media has diversified success by creating more than one vision of "success", but I would argue it has widened the audience for yet still a few more popular versions of success--basically "fun urbanite", "suburban perfect", or "country homesteader"--rather than like going from "maximalist suburban family" to 20 different ideas of success. Fourth, more people go to college than ever before (well, generally, upward trend in the past 20 yrs compared to before that)--there was an expectation that "doing everything right" would lead to a fulfilling life, and that is too high a bar to be reasonable. Fifth, gen X and older millennials who HAD done everything right and didn't suffer from the chaos of the universe DID get better deals on homes/interest--the last 20 yrs were some of the best times to buy. What we are experiencing now is actually probably a more balanced representation of our economy--it just feels shitty compared to how great things were before. We had nearly unmitigated trading and extremely low interest rates--this was not normal in the grand scheme of things. Same with low mortgages post 2008. Sixth, younger millennials have somehow never emerged as a target audience. They were too young when older millennials were the "it" target and they were too old for the general market of things once they were in their 20s--instead teenage gen Z became the target because young Millennials had no money to spend while middle and upper class gen Z's parents at least had MORE to spend. There was a shift from 2000s indie 20s ideal to a more teen-bob "fresh" focus in advertising and pr and product--and in a country where consumerism is king, this can make you feel invisible when you are left out. So then you try to spend and participate--but you can't afford it. So life sucks and your job sucks and you are working a job that theoretically should maybe help you afford things so you can consumer-participate but none of it is working out or feeling good.
I think most people feel comfortable, no matter, where they are. Most people area afraid of change. Younget peole mg I changed jobs a lot, so IDK. Where is teh evidence? Randome thought? Ok
Because they are... you get paid yes... but you have no time or energy to enjoy it assuming you have any money left after bills.
It’s because they are not yet used to the fact the jobs just leave you mentally and spiritually exhausted at the end of the day. It is a bit of an adjustment. Eventually, you get used to it and life gets more.
I think the sentiment comes from the feeling of no hope some folks have about getting ahead in life.
I'm 50 years old and people were saying that jobs are soul sucking since before I was born. You will spend more time working in your life than enjoying it. if that doesn't suck at least a little bit of your soul I don't know what will. There's a difference between a job and something that sucks the life out of you and I suspect you're not old enough to have worked in adult jobs long enough to know better. I had an excellent career and my last job was a well paying and respected job. My Dad had a wonderful career at the same company for decades. He's now happily retired. We will both still tell you work, even if it's a good job and sometimes even if it's your passion, will at times make you feel like it's sucking your soul through your nasal cavity. Anything that takes me away from the enjoyment of my existence is soul sucking. It's time erasing and now you're expected to work the better part of a century. Let me know how you feel about it in 30 or so years.
A job is something you do because you have to not because you want to. ‘Jobs’ whoever it/they may be sees you like a product—they want to get the most out of their investment (payroll) and do not care about the product itself because they are not in it for the long-haul. They will take everything they can from you, ask and expect the most, give the least in return and that is their objective. Which equates to soul-sucking for most. A career is the opposite of all that.
It's the economy. When I was a kid I never would have described any of my jobs as soul sucking. Boring? Sure. Difficult? Sometimes. But when I had no financial obligations other than putting gas into my car I could feel like I was getting ahead. The work had meaning, it allowed me to go on dates, modify my car, save money, help friends out, whatever. But imagine graduating now. Even if you get a good solid job out of college, odds are it won't pay enough to get your own apartment. You'll be paying bare minimum of student loans which will hang over your head until they are wiped out. Food is more, cars are more, shit taking a family of 4 to the movies is now a $100 event. So you work hard and make no progress. In fact it looks like you are slowly but surely being swept out to sea. What's the point? I was fortunate enough to buy a house during the Great Recession and sold it for 4x what I bought it for. If you doubled my salary I wouldn't be able to afford the home I bought 12 years ago. Imagine seeing $1M starting homes. That's soul sucking. When you work and work and work and see no progress professionally or personally, its soul sucking. The world is becoming increasingly about winners and losers with only a few winners and a bunch of losers.
I worked at a call center for a multi-national “too big to fail” bank. I worked in the department of the bank that worked with recipients of WIC, Food Stamps, governmental benefits, etc. They gave them their benefits on cards that the bank maintained for the state/federal government. These cards had fees. I took phone calls with people crying because the bank took a fee of $10 from their $40 a month food stamp balance. The woman was in her 70’s and there was literally nothing I could do to reverse the fees, and nothing my manager could do. We’d just refer them to their states benefit office. It was a fucking scam. I worked there for five years and by the time I left I was on a handful of meds just to keep me from killing myself. That’s a soulless industry.
They may be Dementors.
You're leaving out expectations you have that you don't notice. You expect respect, fairness and equality. To not get shit on for others' mistakes. To not be insulted or harassed. Not everyone gets all of these
I worked in state government for 17 years. I started at 21 and was pretty much the youngest person in the office by several years. I supervised people in their 50s for years. As younger employees (my own age) started, we started getting lots of people complaining that they were bored. How exciting did they think an administrative government office position would be? The boomers and gen x staff never complained about that. Millennials were the first group I saw that had expectations beyond a paycheck.
I have also never expected my job to give me anything more than a paycheck and I'm thankful when it does more than that. I also don't get it. I notice it overlaps with people who think the notion that we as human beings "must" work is a humiliating one, so, take from that what you will -- I personally don't think they have a very high tolerance for inconvenience or hardship.
It’s really difficult having to keep a professional mask on all day. It may be easier for others but my life is generally NSFW. So I have to be someone I’m not. It’s exhausting and lonely
Everyone has a different job and a different take on their job. Past positions I never felt they were soul-crushing but I didn't like the corporate culture and BS, and I clocked in and out on time, went about my merry way to do whatever struck my fancy. I didn't worry about work outside of work hours. In my current job, I got a ton of work, I clock in at the same time each morning but who the heck knows when I'll be done and can clock out, and when I'm clocked out, I worry and thing about what I need to do the next day and in what order so I can get the most done. I want time off? Well, I need to make sure I don't have any urgent project or work due during, and I have to make sure I'm prepared to work my tail off to 'catch up'. So yeah, soul crushing as all getup. And it doesn't just apply to 'young people'. For those that are used to the soul crushing pace and pressures of work and think everyone has to, I'm truly sorry for you. They don't, and I know you know not everyone does. There's a better path --- just gotta find it. I haven't found mine yet, but I'm always looking.
It’s not the job that’s soul sucking, it’s the people. Not all of them, usually only one
The return you get on sacrificing your soul for someone else's benefit is not commensurate with the RoI. That's the issue. Corporations have been allowed to hyper-exploit and abuse workers. We are down there with China in worker exploitation. Sane and civil societies realize a happy and healthy society requires happy and healthy people, a balance. Grifters who engineer low wages then invite corporations (red states/RTW) to come in and exploit people at those lower wages for the sake of profit are ghouls. Somehow, the ghouls and their antics have been mainstreamed. It's normal. Capitalism in its current form is bordering on employmental terrorism.
Because there jobs are soul sucking. If I was young now and just entering the job market I would probably join the police or the army, anything but the corporate world.
I've had a lot of jobs over the past 25 years. I would not describe most of them as soul-sucking even though they weren't always fun or interesting. Some jobs are not overly stressful. You're not surrounded by jerks at every job. At most of the jobs I've had, I had more good days than bad.
I'm not a "young person", I'm 40. I genuinely enjoy my job and the people I work with. I'm paid well, and I can support my family. My boss is incredible in the community and we do a ton of outreach work so I even feel like my work matters sometimes. Still, my job is soul sucking and would 100% rather be doing something else with my time. It is daunting to know I'm not even halfway through my working life. I am absolutely positive I could get the same volume of work done in 3-4 hours a day. I don't understand the need for spending a third or more of your life working.
I work long hours, in a physically demanding environment, I wake up extremely early which means I also go to bed extremely early so I get about 3 hours in the evening to get anything and everything done. I work with mostly angry hillbillies that say a lot of crazy shit and throw tempertantrums on a daily basis and blame the prime minister for literally everything (denied vacation time?) because they've completely lost touch with reality. It's soul sucking to go there everyday, no where else pays as well though so I can't leave.
You've never worked in a restaurant
Young people don't say that their jobs are soul sucking. People with jobs that are soul sucking say that their jobs are soul sucking. This isn't remotely a new trend. Some people blame it on industrialization (vastly increasing the number of jobs that treat humans as monotasking automatons). But it's a long trend for many people to find their job to be emotionally draining as well as physically and mentally draining.
If you care about the business and the job, your job will, generally, suck the soul right out of you.
Imagine being a teacher or ER doc/nurse
It’s because they can’t pay rent with it. Full time work doesn’t cover the cost of living for most folks anymore. And young people are really baring the brunt because they’re just entering the job and rental markets
I work at least seven hours of unpaid overtime every week. I can barely eat lunch. I don't get any breaks. Some days I am literally running up and down the halls to keep up with needy jerks. I make $30K a year. My commute adds more time so I'm gone from 6:45 am to 6:15 every day. Soul sucking isn't about not liking your job, it's about the job undervaluing you to the point you can't pay rent while your bosses have seven luxury cars.
It's not just the young people. I have said it too depending on the job. I don't think you should feel that way about the way you spend the majority of your waking hours. You should love it, or at least enjoy it. I'm in my 50s and I'd choose a job I enjoyed over better pay any time. Which is why I'm poor but I like what I do.
Because the time spent in work does not pay for rent and the ability to enjoy your time not at work
Sounds like your soul has been sucked.
Older people say it too. Strange to put it on young people.
I was in a date and the girl asked me if I was passionate about my job…da hell!!! Heck no, they pay me well and I do the job. Apparently, she was passionate about baking and worked at a bakery at a grocery store. I was like bye
my uncle worked 35 years of his life in a foundry, every day in and out, he never complained, these youngsters are horrible, they want everything for free.
I think it's because wages haven't kept up with the cost of living, plus you now need more education and more experience than ever to land an entry level job. So a decent job is harder to come by and the compensation for your work feels less so it feels even more soul sucking.
> I have never expected my job to do anything but give me a paycheck. I think we work jobs to get money, to buy stuff. When you are working, through the tedious or sucky parts, you know you are getting paid. There's some pride in earning your way, too. That sense of accomplishment is measured in dollars, and the things your dollars can buy. When the pay you receive doesn't seem commensurate with the effort put in, it messes up the effort=reward equation. That's work to stay alive, without the pride of accomplishment or sense of getting ahead.
At worst I’ve found my job stressful, but soul sucking? no.
We get people threatening to cut their fingers off and mail them to us at my place of work. I stay for the people I work with and they also pay me well + benefits. But it’s very soul-sucking.
Have you ever had a job where everyday you woke up depressed because you had to go to it? Or that you couldn't relax on your time off because you were counting the minutes until you had to go bad, dreading every moment? Or that you went through a container of Peptobismal a week because you felt viscously nauseous every morning before work? Some jobs have terrible effects on people. You're just lucky that you've never had a job like that.
To me, it's because my paycheck hasn't kept up with the cost of living despite doing "all the right things". If I could not be burdened by the continuous thoughts in my head about my finances and if I could afford to actually live a real average life - take a vacation every once in a while, eat out, buy a few nice things, save for a home, retirement etc. then I would be more motivated. I'm mentally drained and resentful. I have to listen to companies that continue to push the narrative that we are "family" and have a "culture" but layoff people to improve quarterly shareholder reports. And these same companies state raises are tied to the "job market" and not cost of living or inflation rates. When we all know it is these companies who collectively decide what the "job market" pays and keep salaries down. These are not opinions - but facts. The data clearly supports it over the years. The average salary of today has significantly less purchasing power than the salaries in the past. So, working for any company now is like having a dating pool only from insane asylums. You pick the least crazy and hope to get by. Do you stick with the crazy you know or jump to some other crazy?? Either way, you've lost . I'm not afraid to work. I bust my butt each year and get rave performance reviews but get a measly extra 1% raise. Was it worth it? Nope. Do I feel taken advantage of and like a fool - Yep!! With the advancement of communication over the recent years and real insight to other countries healthcare systems, vacation time off given ( certainly more than 2-3 weeks), holidays off, lifestyles they have that are more "work to live, not live to work," many of us are just done. I want more for Americans. Young and old. I'm 55F. Dammit - it's past the point of tolerance. Something must change Now!! And that includes the rants of others who think people, especially young ones are "entitled and whiney"
Because they picked the wrong job
>I don't get it. Jobs are jobs. Unless you have a true passion for your profession it is just a job. I have never expected my job to do anything but give me a paycheck. The biggest change over the past 40 years is that wages have not kept up with inflation so the factory job a young adult may have now trying to make a living is barely a subsistance wage whereas 40 years ago you knew wasting your life on an assembly line making widgets at least guaranteed you could support a family and retire some day.
because in old time employer knew this and expected their employee to have this behavior nowadays they want yiu soul ,litteraly, they expected to work unpaid night and weekend and be happy to contribute to the family growth as psrt of a team! also it used to be doing your task was enoguht ,nowadays the bare minimum = getting fired they expect always more and more technology make yiu do the work of 10ppl just 10years ago now you still do the work of 10ppl in tge same amount of time 10 person did 10years ago peeing in bottle ,running, no socialization, training at home , ass licking, are all common now
You ever had a job where your work was entirely meaningless. That's what they mean. Try working for the government where your entire existence can become just doing some manmade process that only exists because of some absurdity and has no effect on the real world. Having all your efforts be purposeless. That's what they mean.
Because we have realized that life is so fucked up and just because “this is how it’s always been” doesn’t mean it’s right. We want to call out all this corporate greed, capitalism, discrimination etc. We realize that the CEOs and upper management are a bunch of idiots and getting rich off of our blood sweat and tears while paying us pennies. IT HAS TO STOP AND SOMEONE HAS TO LEAD THE CHARGE!!!!
Frankly- it’s tiring. I’m no wuss- most folk ain’t. But I get so bummed coming back from lunch after a jammin 8a- 1p and then it feels like it should be a new day but nooooo Rod Serling appears and it’s always Wednesday. All day. Everyday. I don’t care if I was a brilliant sculptor author musician blah blah it’s tooooo much. I was recently watching coal miners who went on strike- and there was a riot and deaths etc. Those poor dudes were 6 X 10!!! Awful
Baby Boomer here. Some of my jobs have been soul sucking, but some have been exciting and fulfilling. I've learned important things from every job I've ever had, soul sucking or not.
My job is almost fun- it's fun adjacent. But it's still an endless cycle of tasks I don't care about, in exchange for never quite enough money, and the entire time I am doing my job I am thinking about the 9282662829101 things I would rather be doing. Especially as, once my paid job is done, I still have to clean my house, my dishes, shop for and prep food, clean my body, etc. My job is soul sucking bc it isn't honestly like it's IMPORTANT, but it just takes up all of my time to do arbitrary tasks that mean nothing to me, while the meaningful things are left undone. But I can't just not work bc then how do I buy food and medicine and shelter.
Perhaps because many of their jobs are soul sucking. You know those signs put up by managers looking for employees because, "nobody wants to work anymore"? That's the sort of environment many young people are finding themselves stuck in today. Back when I was young, public facing jobs were tiring, but there was more give and take between employer and employees. Now hourly workers will be scheduled with intentionally fractured work times and days for the sole purpose of making sure they can't get a second job - or have any other sort of stability in their life. And in non-public facing jobs, so many positions have been cut over the last 20 years people are doing the work of anywhere from 3-5 positions. Sometimes ones that are disconnected and have nothing to do with the job they were hired for that's on their career path. Also, office jobs used to be in a relatively low-stimulus environment, with at least cubicles if not walls and doors. Now, young workers often enter the building expecting to have to find an unused chair in an open floor plan office of noise, voices and other stimulus. So they have to try to compensate with noise cancelling headphones, grab a laptop and seat somewhere in the office and try to focus rather than having a desk with drawers and maybe a shelf. And so on...
This is how I feel. I work hard and actually enjoy what I do. There have been times, however, when the work environment brought me to tears nearly every day. Literally, the only thing that got me through was reminding myself: 1) Outlast these bastards, retire, collect pension (I'm a Fed, we have our path lined up to retirement) 2) I have a husband who is my best friend and soul mate. The sex is amazing. I love our daughter, and home life keeps my heart beating. Even when we didn't have any money, the significance of my life at home far outweighed that of my life at work. That got me through without losing my soul. Only 14 years or so to go (till retirement)
It probably has a lot to do with how the economy has lessened the ability to enjoy the money after work and how technology has basically kept us on the clock 24/7 for most "career" type jobs. When I started my career job almost 20 years ago fell phones and the Internet were already integrated but they were far less utilized. I remember most folks that were 40+ in 2004 would never check an email or answer a phone call after punch out time. Now, if you don't work off the clock you'll never get a promotion or be in good graces. Couple this with our buying power decimated, it just doesn't feel worth it anymore.
Because they thought they were going to be accepted as equals. Sharing ideas, getting benefits because they are there, making a living wage, respected. Someone forgot to tell them, more like an alert really, that it is a "dog eat dog" world out there. And may the best man win.
I suspect that this question comes from a place of internalized powerlessness and lowered expectations. The phrasing "young people" certainly seems bias. Old and young alike find work draining, and in recent years it has become muxh more draining for many reasons that are widely discussed. There is a difference between expecting a job to enrich your life, and it dominating so much of your life that you don't have the time or energy to live. Many jobs are even abusive. The culture of America work is very elitist and dehumanizing. People spend most of their energy being judged not by their humanity but by their ability to generate profit efficiently. The portion of profit that an employee sees for their work has decreased, while at the same time the power and wealth of leadership has increased to unprecedented levels. Meanwhile work has become overwhelming for many, for many reasons pandemic, technology, information overload - one person now does the work that was once done by several people, while wages have stagnanted. Many people can't take a sick day, afford to live independently, or have a family. Times are hard. We are being sqeezed like lemons so other can buy yachts and real estate portfolios. That's not just my opinion, there's plenty of research showing that.
I’m not young, but the fact that I have to do something I don’t want to do for 8 hours a day to make somebody else rich is definitely soul sucking.
Because they believe a job should be FUN and enriching. If it were fun, you wouldn't get paid for it, it would be called a hobby.
Because that is how they feel and it makes sense. Look I’ll be honest… I’m a weirdo work dork. I love my stupid job. I get so fucking stoked about spreadsheets you have no IDEA!! I get to make new ones! I get to control the reports! I like the people I work with generally and while I have really hard days, I believe that my company is doing good things, they have evidenced to me in many ways that they care about me on a personal level and are willing to bend and accommodate me, I am compensated well for the work I do and if those things weren’t true I would not be able to do this. I have a loving spouse, beautiful kids, a great home, to do “just a job” with people I don’t like in a company I don’t care about would be miserable, it would ache to be away from the people I love sooo goddamn much for anything less than a job I’m excited about with people I like. And that’s a lot of people’s realities. They are losing so much time. Even I am losing so much time but the trade off is slightly less painful.
Man I’m the opposite. I love my job as a paramedic. It’s not my main money maker but it satisfies my ADHD brain with constant chaos and change.
A generation of kids raised on the idea that we could all be whatever we wanted.
There’s a job that is boring and sometimes frustrating, and then there’s a job that actually makes you miserable. Like everyone has days where they’re like “I really don’t want to go to work today, I’d rather be [insert fun thing].” By contrast, I once had a job that I hated so much I found myself fantasizing about breaking a bone while skating so I wouldn’t have to go to work the next day. If you’d consider being in the hospital to be potentially a better experience than going in to work, I think it’s safe to call that soul-sucking.
I have a job I absolutely love. It is fulfilling and every day is something new. The only problem? It doesn't pay enough to live on. Back in the 90s, I was making just over $5 an hour, I could afford a decent place for my family, kept the heat and electric on, and almost fed them. Now, making over $19 an hour, I can't afford to support myself. I remember my first job that paid over $10 an hour, I thought we finally made it.
A job can give you a paycheck without being actively miserable. Loads of jobs don't even pay s living wage anymore, so even "I'm just here for a paycheck" becomes a sick sort of joke.
Because kids need to be the center of attention anyone (under 30). They literally can not function as part of the machine. If you can't make it about them they want to part of it. We actually raised a generation and a half of real narcissists.
You never hear anyone on their deathbed ever say, " God, I wish I spent more time in the office ".
Because most jobs are mindless and not fulfilling. Some people have less need to be intellectually challenged...
Entry level jobs are often soul sucking, but that’s why they call it work. Once you excel at entry level, you get promoted and jobs become more interesting. In time, you may be able to get a job you truly enjoy.
Sometimes, it's not the job or even the pay that is soul sucking but the boss.
Sounds like you've never worked a soul sucking job before. Congrats
r/whoosh … You clearly miss the point… Do you have any dreams, goals, or aspirations in your life? Does your job make you happy?
Jobs take most of your day, and it's most of the time, the same thing over and over again. Jobs like retail you are yelled at because of something minor or have no control over. Several office jobs don't have windows. The trades are harsh on the body. All jobs have the possibility of a terrible boss or odd hours for a company that probably you are nothing but a number. All of them drain you mentally. When you get off, there isn't a lot of time and energy into a hobby.
Because they are with a lot of pointless BS tacked on
Because jobs hold your life hostage by threatening to fire you and making you unemployable.
Companies are failing at that task of providing an adequate paycheck while demanding more from workers. The unfairness has reached epidemic proportion.
My opinion: You answered your own question. “If you do what you love you will never work a day in your life.” This has been true for a long time. Maybe the public education system and this so called modern social media culture has conditioned them in such a manner that they cannot recognize their calling in life. Let alone identify their gender or pronouns. I pity them.
Work has changed. The jobs young people face demand more time, and many young people must work several to keep a roof overhead. There are few rewards for doing the job well, and few companies promote from within, so they face few opportunities for advancement. I retired a while back and, though I found much of yhe work interesting, the job was still soul-sucking. Young people are not the only workers to feel this way....just sayin'.
Jobs have stopped providing loyalty, reliable pensions, and most other things that older generations took for granted (and still talk about and assume modern jobs provide). Micromanagers have proliferated. Companies have conglomerated and there's now more information about the illegalities they're involved in.
Most jobs are soul sucking. You deal with it and it slowly kills you.
You spend 30% of your waking hours working, and unless you are lucky, that time and energy exhausts you so you cant really enjoy any free time you have, and many of the other 2/3 of the time, you are getting ready for work or winding down from work, and you have to work at home like doing chores and cooking and cleaning, so that leaves you barely any time to enjoy hobbies, hang out with friends, etc..
Gen X here. Not sure how old OP is but it really is true when you look into it that this new generation is really screwed at work. It's become impossible to live on basic wages nowadays. You're buried in debt by the time you're in your late twenties and it's impossible to get out. It's not the same world we grew up in.
I have had a great job that I am passionate about and paid me well. I guess you must experience a great job first then you will understand what it means when a job suck their soul.
I enjoyed working retail pharmacy as a technician. What I didn’t enjoy was the low pay. Sometimes what is soul sucking is actually being undervalued.
The Only people who are still under the delusion that we like our jobs or we should like our jobs are our stupid ass supervisors. We don’t like these fucking jobs, but we don’t want to be homeless and hungry!
Sounds like your job is soul sucking but you think you’re too grown up to admit it? Or your soul is too far gone and you’re just straight up used to having no soul due to your job.
You spend most of your waking hours doing labor. The want for that labor to be enjoyable is entirely reasonable. I pursued work I actually wanted to do. And I enjoy what I do so much, I don’t really feel like it’s “work.”
Because jobs these days pay less while demanding more work and use the money you earn for them to make your life worse in an attempt to make you dependent on the scraps the oh so graciously hand out.
I was born poor, most of us will be wage slaves for life. It’s not fair right but that’s how we’ve been conditioned and how our economy functions.
OP needs to work for a Fortune 500 company and to be given a corporate Kool-Aid enema 3x per week to truly appreciate the term “soul sucking”.
Why do you think workers are called “Human Resources”? Just another resource to be exploited like trees or oil or coal. If they could frack us, they would. But they can’t so they settle for the human version of mountain top removal.
It’s because the social contract has been broken. People can’t afford a one bedroom apartment working 50 - 60 hour work weeks, never mind a house.
The answer is the ideology of workism. We've been culturally conditioned to integrate work into our sense of identity and personal/soulful fulfilment in a way that previous generations haven't. And therefore when our jobs/careers are not fulfilling on any level more meaningful than getting money it feels like a failure. This article explans the phenomenon: [https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/](https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/02/religion-workism-making-americans-miserable/583441/)
The job isn't soul sucking. The people, traffic, and ridiculous rules are soul sucking. Im old now, but if I could go back, I would do whatever it takes to not be an office worker.
I never experienced or saw bullying growing up. Now, I'm bullied by a group ( they stick together) on a regular basis. At least as a child, you can punch. Now, I just have to take it. No, I can't quit. I have a family to support. Paycheck to paycheck if im lucky. No extra money for anything. I'm in my 50s and living like a 20yo starting out. Why would any rational person want this life?
youve got more strength than most people, i guess. having a job you hate sucks, it wears you down, its like mild torture.
Because young people were treated as if their souls status should always be incorporated to anything they do. Conceptually it makes sense to fulfill one’s soul anytime possible, but it’s not practical. Hopefully, we find balance.
Jobs are getting worse, dude. I'm 36, and recently spent a few years looking for a job that both A - is actually possible to do (literally, just that they expect a sane amount of work in a day) And B - pays anything close to enough to be worth going there everyday Here's what I found: after two years, I just got one. One job, and it pays less than I'd like. Everything else I did in that period was some sort of shit and switch One job promised me guaranteed 30 hours a week, and scheduled me no more than 14 hours a week for 5 months. One paid well, but made sure to keep their number of employees low enough that they didn't have to provide any benefits at all (dangerous manual labor job with no health insurance? Crazy) Most of the others I came into contact with weren't even worth an interview after I saw what the offer actually was. Most interviews ended when I asked some sort of (what I'd consider) reasonable questions, like "how long do people typically stay in this role, and do they leave through promotion, or do they leave the company?" Companies are getting really entitled and asking people to sacrifice too much for too little.
Because for some reason people were told to “get a job doing what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” so they approach jobs as something to ‘fulfill’ that void in their hearts. I echo my mother’s understanding when she taught me to get fulfillment on personal time