Same here. I maybe actually work 15 hours a week. The rest of the time I work on my novel. If somebody needs something I jump on it, which makes me seem reliable. That only happens once every couple weeks. And I tell my boss I can take on more, but that never goes anywhere. I don’t feel guilty because our whole capitalist economy is bullshit and I used to work 50-60 hours a week in previous jobs. I make good money so I feel like I hit the jackpot to some degree and am keeping my head down until my novel gets published or retirement whichever comes first.
If your novel gets published it probably won't change your financial equation. Most of them make zero profit, even good ones. Even some of the very best ones. As Hemingway said, money or the expectation of is probably the worst reason to write.
ADHD aside, this is exactly my situation. I have always been underemployed and bored in the sort of laptop jobs where I constantly have to explain what I actually do because the job title meana nothing. What saved me from insanity was Covid. Now I only have to go into the office one day a week and so save all my work for then, doing what I like at home the rest of the time. Yesterday there was an obligatory two hour all staff Teams meeting to slowly and laboriously explain a concept to us which could have been understood in a five minute email. So I turned off my camera and spent the time tending to my houseplants instead. Because I'd rather do that, I'll never 'advance' in my career, never have enough money to be comfortable - but I'm fine with that deal.
I wonder all the time if other people at work are doing as I do, feel as I feel, or if they're all actually as bought into the 'values' and 'objectives' and the bullshit as they seem. I wish there was some sort of lapel badge or secret hand signal to identify my people out there.
Well, we're all masking to a degree (some more than others). It's difficult to know who these people around us at work actually are. What is their true self?
That's actually always been my anxiety too, of being underemployed or underutilized. But our economy is very much of extremes; you're either unemployed or over-employed it seems.
Like most of us can't negotiate our careers into part-time jobs.
you write eloquently about this problem and it is a very real one. The core problem is, of course, capitalism, a system that makes the amassing of profit the primary goal of economic activity rather than the meeting of needs. I have a few friends over the years with your problem (and it is a real one), but most of my life has been spent among those at the other end of the spectrum: blue/pink collar workers who work hard often for longer time periods than they are official paid and white collar worker (teachers, librarians, etc.) who do meaningful work (to themselves and which give some value to their clients, students, etc.) that often demands many more hours than what their salary (often meager to begin with) covers. But at either end of the spectrum it is exploited labor
Great piece, I'm obsessed with this subject having moved from manual labor to a computer job at my workplace. Everything about manual labor was better--freedom to converse, think, move, accomplish meaningful, visible tasks--except for the hernia and lesser injuries. Now I type numbers onto documents with other numbers and wish for a swift end.
Months ago I ordered a basket from Ghana; it arrived today. In the time I've typed thousands of codes onto invoices, someone wove this exquisite art object. It's an astonishing contrast.
I'm curious what you're brainstorming as a solution. Go back to school for a trade, or medicine like your girlfriend? Get a job in a different field? Start a business?
If I could go back in time, I'd be a professional barista. It solid, real work and a very important part of people's day. My husband wishes he was a plumber. We work in bullshit tourism. Creating experiences for people who just want to consume culture. It's bullshit.
I had a bullshit job, loved the students and the pay, but it was doing nothing for my resume AND because I made more- would lose my health insurance. I could not mentally justify being paid to be another body in the building during nightshift, nothing to do, when the med students were self-sufficient and the student workers (that made sense me) did what little work actually came to the desk. I hated feeling useless. Also, what a waste of money for the campus/students. Now I'm back in the public library, less pay, but qualify for health coverage, and am totally engaged. My ADHD loves the front desk! I'm still not ok with the library wages, and lack of upward mobility (better wages, more hours with actual work beside front desk). It's a dead end job. Also, it (the library) survives off the the backs of Part Timers (no benefits like healthcare here in the US), and part-timers partners who have better jobs and can support their part-time partners/spouses. Very heteronormative. Its just a mess.
I'm sorry your soul is dying there. I'm sorry we are all trapped in this system.
The happiest I was was with a part-time (office) job. 4 hours a day, clock out, and you still have half the day for your own stuff. I was productive and had very little bullshit going on. If something wasn't done in one day it could be done the next.
But we don't talk about presenteeism. The obligation to be here because an employer owns our time for 8 hours a day and wants to get the full value out of it.
We could totally work 4 hours a day in office jobs and make the same pay. But employers refuse to even entertain the 4-day workweek because why would they? The deal favors them, they have no reason to negotiate it.
Thank you, great comment! Yeah, reduce the 40 hour workweek (which is often far more) to 30 or 20 hours immediately and watch people become happier overnight.
Even studies show that this is clearly where we're headed. OECD countries are on average 2-3x more productive than they were in 1970, largely thanks to digitization, but we still work just as many hours as our parents and grandparents!
The job you do here writing these essays is definitely not bullshit. It has made me feel seen and not so alone, because I suffer in a similar way. Thank you for this work you do x
Very strong concurrence with Faye here - there is nonzero, and very much nontrivial nonzero value in truthful, reality-hewing narratives like this one, brother. My kudos and thanks too.
Thank you for writing this! I completely feel your pain. And if I had to do it all again, I too would eschew marketing for a job in the trades. These white collar jobs in the corporate world are truly soul destroying. My last job I worked with very bright people, still it was like being in Kindergarten why is everything in corporate so stupid and slow? I realized with a shudder last year why so many jobs require a degree, because only people who went to college would be stupid and tamed enough to sit in a damn cubical (glorified prison cell) all day. That's me! Wish I could have figured this out at 25.
I'm in marketing too and i couldn't agree more. I fell into this career — social media took off right as I was dropping out of college. It's crazy how many Ivy League-educated senior managers I've had to handhold and provide free therapy for just to make them think outside the cubicle and work with me. If they knew I didn't even have a degree at the time, I bet they'd have fired me just to feel better.
I know so well of what you write--the useless, boring, stuck-in-a-cubicle all day type of jobs. I hated them. I wrote (scribbled) on note pads all day long. We didn't have Internet connection as such in some of the office jobs I had back in the day, so I felt very cut off from the rest of humanity, dying of boredom, knowing what I was doing was of no consequence. I remember one staff meeting we had at a governmental agency where I worked when the bosses said, "Yes, what you're doing ultimately is going to be undone by someone else next week in another agency, but just think of it as job security!" Aaaarrghhh...
But what I wouldn't give to have one of those jobs again so I wasn't living in fear of starving to death nowadays. Being old and unemployable is scary.
Eventually we're going to have to start seeing the efficiency created by AI as a common good where savings are divided up among the population. But at the moment, governments are just too wary of displeasing investors to do anything. At least you can use the time to write!
I read Graeber's book and discover another world of BS jobs just like yours where people work on meaningless things a few hours a week. I always had BS jobs but very busy ones where it keeps me occupied the whole time whether I want to or not. I envy the huge amount of free time. I'd love to read much more that I'm able to do and can't do it on my personal time with a toddler to raise and the usual grown up shits to deal with. But I can see how it's slowly eating you inside. This timeline is BS actually, whatever it is you have to do to make ends meet. Good read, thanks.
Wonderful piece, really well written. I’m retired now, but remember my own career as a manager. I enjoyed working with my staff people and coaching them and seeing real growth. The rest of the time was spent in butt numbing meetings and the preparation of reports to illustrate how the department was doing against some metrics, which, with every passing year seemed even more meaningless. Another bullshit job.
I’ve had those jobs. They start out so well but then the facade wears away and you wonder why you can’t have a 12 hour workweek. It’s the fact of being obligated to 40 hours of your life being held hostage by the Machine so you can eat your bread, that is soul-killings.
If I can get my job done in 15-20 hours a week, then let me go the other 20 to knit sweaters and grow world class pumpkins. Fuck your hold on my time. We all know it’s bullshit but keep playing the game.
I keep wondering what we would or could do in a world without money. I’ve wondered it since I was a kid and my dad would explain business and money to me, to help me learn financial literacy and responsibility. I was pretty pro-capitalist until pretty recently. I’m not a commie or a socialist either, nor do I follow any particular Econ theory. After a disastrous stint at teaching and the wasteland of job hunting in the post Covid era, I landed a retail job that is perfect for me in so many ways, and my days fly by because I can see the tangible results of happy customers and growing sales and increased inventory all in one year since opening. That is good honest work I’m happy to do. My husband is a GF for his union after years of being a welder and proving his worth with his hands every day.
But we’re tired and our schedules don’t sync often enough and I miss my family. Sometimes the 9-5 calls me back if only so I could normalize a routine and find time to knit and grow world class pumpkins.
Excellent excellent piece. I am printing this to leave for my coworkers
Thanks for writing this. I understand completely how you feel, I’ve had so many hours wasted sitting in Zoom meetings to discuss meaningless updates to meaningless forms. I’ve also had so many days where I didn’t actually have any work left to do but I was still required to sit there til 5 like I’m in prison and not an adult with free will. It’s so challenging to find jobs that pay enough to live, allow one to use their talents, and produce something meaningful to society at the same time, so we end up taking these shit jobs because we have to. We live in a bureaucratic HR culture. And society’s insistence on glorifying “hard work” makes it feel shameful to admit when you have a job you hate that doesn’t challenge or fulfill you. These are such common jobs though and it’s not always in one’s control to find something better. I’ve had many jobs like this so I thank you for penning this. Hope you hang in there — also just wanted to say even if you change jobs all the time, it’s ok to keep doing that until things are at least slightly better.
Same here. I maybe actually work 15 hours a week. The rest of the time I work on my novel. If somebody needs something I jump on it, which makes me seem reliable. That only happens once every couple weeks. And I tell my boss I can take on more, but that never goes anywhere. I don’t feel guilty because our whole capitalist economy is bullshit and I used to work 50-60 hours a week in previous jobs. I make good money so I feel like I hit the jackpot to some degree and am keeping my head down until my novel gets published or retirement whichever comes first.
Sounds like a good plan, man.
If your novel gets published it probably won't change your financial equation. Most of them make zero profit, even good ones. Even some of the very best ones. As Hemingway said, money or the expectation of is probably the worst reason to write.
You’re absolutely right and my fingers are totally crossed!
ADHD aside, this is exactly my situation. I have always been underemployed and bored in the sort of laptop jobs where I constantly have to explain what I actually do because the job title meana nothing. What saved me from insanity was Covid. Now I only have to go into the office one day a week and so save all my work for then, doing what I like at home the rest of the time. Yesterday there was an obligatory two hour all staff Teams meeting to slowly and laboriously explain a concept to us which could have been understood in a five minute email. So I turned off my camera and spent the time tending to my houseplants instead. Because I'd rather do that, I'll never 'advance' in my career, never have enough money to be comfortable - but I'm fine with that deal.
I wonder all the time if other people at work are doing as I do, feel as I feel, or if they're all actually as bought into the 'values' and 'objectives' and the bullshit as they seem. I wish there was some sort of lapel badge or secret hand signal to identify my people out there.
Well, we're all masking to a degree (some more than others). It's difficult to know who these people around us at work actually are. What is their true self?
That's actually always been my anxiety too, of being underemployed or underutilized. But our economy is very much of extremes; you're either unemployed or over-employed it seems.
Like most of us can't negotiate our careers into part-time jobs.
you write eloquently about this problem and it is a very real one. The core problem is, of course, capitalism, a system that makes the amassing of profit the primary goal of economic activity rather than the meeting of needs. I have a few friends over the years with your problem (and it is a real one), but most of my life has been spent among those at the other end of the spectrum: blue/pink collar workers who work hard often for longer time periods than they are official paid and white collar worker (teachers, librarians, etc.) who do meaningful work (to themselves and which give some value to their clients, students, etc.) that often demands many more hours than what their salary (often meager to begin with) covers. But at either end of the spectrum it is exploited labor
Great piece, I'm obsessed with this subject having moved from manual labor to a computer job at my workplace. Everything about manual labor was better--freedom to converse, think, move, accomplish meaningful, visible tasks--except for the hernia and lesser injuries. Now I type numbers onto documents with other numbers and wish for a swift end.
Months ago I ordered a basket from Ghana; it arrived today. In the time I've typed thousands of codes onto invoices, someone wove this exquisite art object. It's an astonishing contrast.
I'm curious what you're brainstorming as a solution. Go back to school for a trade, or medicine like your girlfriend? Get a job in a different field? Start a business?
Thank you, and yeah I feel that.
My plan right now is mostly not getting fired and waiting for the world to change dramatically, one way or the other.
If I could go back in time, I'd be a professional barista. It solid, real work and a very important part of people's day. My husband wishes he was a plumber. We work in bullshit tourism. Creating experiences for people who just want to consume culture. It's bullshit.
I had a bullshit job, loved the students and the pay, but it was doing nothing for my resume AND because I made more- would lose my health insurance. I could not mentally justify being paid to be another body in the building during nightshift, nothing to do, when the med students were self-sufficient and the student workers (that made sense me) did what little work actually came to the desk. I hated feeling useless. Also, what a waste of money for the campus/students. Now I'm back in the public library, less pay, but qualify for health coverage, and am totally engaged. My ADHD loves the front desk! I'm still not ok with the library wages, and lack of upward mobility (better wages, more hours with actual work beside front desk). It's a dead end job. Also, it (the library) survives off the the backs of Part Timers (no benefits like healthcare here in the US), and part-timers partners who have better jobs and can support their part-time partners/spouses. Very heteronormative. Its just a mess.
I'm sorry your soul is dying there. I'm sorry we are all trapped in this system.
The happiest I was was with a part-time (office) job. 4 hours a day, clock out, and you still have half the day for your own stuff. I was productive and had very little bullshit going on. If something wasn't done in one day it could be done the next.
Employers talk a lot about absenteeism (in Germany they're even sending private investigators on employees that take too many sick days, if I may link my piece: https://criticalresist.substack.com/p/germanys-receding-economy-is-blamed).
But we don't talk about presenteeism. The obligation to be here because an employer owns our time for 8 hours a day and wants to get the full value out of it.
We could totally work 4 hours a day in office jobs and make the same pay. But employers refuse to even entertain the 4-day workweek because why would they? The deal favors them, they have no reason to negotiate it.
Thank you, great comment! Yeah, reduce the 40 hour workweek (which is often far more) to 30 or 20 hours immediately and watch people become happier overnight.
Even studies show that this is clearly where we're headed. OECD countries are on average 2-3x more productive than they were in 1970, largely thanks to digitization, but we still work just as many hours as our parents and grandparents!
The job you do here writing these essays is definitely not bullshit. It has made me feel seen and not so alone, because I suffer in a similar way. Thank you for this work you do x
Thank you so much. Yeah Beneath the Pavement is my outlet, glad some people like it ♥️
Very strong concurrence with Faye here - there is nonzero, and very much nontrivial nonzero value in truthful, reality-hewing narratives like this one, brother. My kudos and thanks too.
Thank you for writing this! I completely feel your pain. And if I had to do it all again, I too would eschew marketing for a job in the trades. These white collar jobs in the corporate world are truly soul destroying. My last job I worked with very bright people, still it was like being in Kindergarten why is everything in corporate so stupid and slow? I realized with a shudder last year why so many jobs require a degree, because only people who went to college would be stupid and tamed enough to sit in a damn cubical (glorified prison cell) all day. That's me! Wish I could have figured this out at 25.
You speak the truth and nothing but the truth.
I'm in marketing too and i couldn't agree more. I fell into this career — social media took off right as I was dropping out of college. It's crazy how many Ivy League-educated senior managers I've had to handhold and provide free therapy for just to make them think outside the cubicle and work with me. If they knew I didn't even have a degree at the time, I bet they'd have fired me just to feel better.
I know so well of what you write--the useless, boring, stuck-in-a-cubicle all day type of jobs. I hated them. I wrote (scribbled) on note pads all day long. We didn't have Internet connection as such in some of the office jobs I had back in the day, so I felt very cut off from the rest of humanity, dying of boredom, knowing what I was doing was of no consequence. I remember one staff meeting we had at a governmental agency where I worked when the bosses said, "Yes, what you're doing ultimately is going to be undone by someone else next week in another agency, but just think of it as job security!" Aaaarrghhh...
But what I wouldn't give to have one of those jobs again so I wasn't living in fear of starving to death nowadays. Being old and unemployable is scary.
Yep, I feel this
Eventually we're going to have to start seeing the efficiency created by AI as a common good where savings are divided up among the population. But at the moment, governments are just too wary of displeasing investors to do anything. At least you can use the time to write!
UBI...
I read Graeber's book and discover another world of BS jobs just like yours where people work on meaningless things a few hours a week. I always had BS jobs but very busy ones where it keeps me occupied the whole time whether I want to or not. I envy the huge amount of free time. I'd love to read much more that I'm able to do and can't do it on my personal time with a toddler to raise and the usual grown up shits to deal with. But I can see how it's slowly eating you inside. This timeline is BS actually, whatever it is you have to do to make ends meet. Good read, thanks.
Wonderful piece, really well written. I’m retired now, but remember my own career as a manager. I enjoyed working with my staff people and coaching them and seeing real growth. The rest of the time was spent in butt numbing meetings and the preparation of reports to illustrate how the department was doing against some metrics, which, with every passing year seemed even more meaningless. Another bullshit job.
I’ve had those jobs. They start out so well but then the facade wears away and you wonder why you can’t have a 12 hour workweek. It’s the fact of being obligated to 40 hours of your life being held hostage by the Machine so you can eat your bread, that is soul-killings.
If I can get my job done in 15-20 hours a week, then let me go the other 20 to knit sweaters and grow world class pumpkins. Fuck your hold on my time. We all know it’s bullshit but keep playing the game.
I keep wondering what we would or could do in a world without money. I’ve wondered it since I was a kid and my dad would explain business and money to me, to help me learn financial literacy and responsibility. I was pretty pro-capitalist until pretty recently. I’m not a commie or a socialist either, nor do I follow any particular Econ theory. After a disastrous stint at teaching and the wasteland of job hunting in the post Covid era, I landed a retail job that is perfect for me in so many ways, and my days fly by because I can see the tangible results of happy customers and growing sales and increased inventory all in one year since opening. That is good honest work I’m happy to do. My husband is a GF for his union after years of being a welder and proving his worth with his hands every day.
But we’re tired and our schedules don’t sync often enough and I miss my family. Sometimes the 9-5 calls me back if only so I could normalize a routine and find time to knit and grow world class pumpkins.
Excellent excellent piece. I am printing this to leave for my coworkers
I feel seen to my core
Thanks for writing this. I understand completely how you feel, I’ve had so many hours wasted sitting in Zoom meetings to discuss meaningless updates to meaningless forms. I’ve also had so many days where I didn’t actually have any work left to do but I was still required to sit there til 5 like I’m in prison and not an adult with free will. It’s so challenging to find jobs that pay enough to live, allow one to use their talents, and produce something meaningful to society at the same time, so we end up taking these shit jobs because we have to. We live in a bureaucratic HR culture. And society’s insistence on glorifying “hard work” makes it feel shameful to admit when you have a job you hate that doesn’t challenge or fulfill you. These are such common jobs though and it’s not always in one’s control to find something better. I’ve had many jobs like this so I thank you for penning this. Hope you hang in there — also just wanted to say even if you change jobs all the time, it’s ok to keep doing that until things are at least slightly better.