More Reasons I Dislike Full Time Work

This video will be somewhat of a continuation of my last video, Six Reasons Full-Time Work Is Not for Me. I should point out that I’ve pretty much only experienced full-time work in an office environment, so obviously, my focus will be more on office-related jobs.

Work: A History of How We Spend Our Time: https://ebay.us/7fWVLn (affiliate link)

“I put my heart and my soul into my work, and have lost my mind in the process. For myself, I can only say at the moment that I think we all need rest—I feel like – a failure.”
~ Vincent Van Gogh (1853 – 1890), Dutch painter

Vincent died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at the age of 37. Despite him working hard at his painting, and even though more than 100 years later he is considered one of the most celebrated artists of all time, he didn’t see himself as a success – no, quite the opposite.

Previously, I mentioned the following six reasons I don’t like full-time work: Massive Time Sink; Can’t Switch Off; Office Politics; Mental Health Decline; Lack of Freedom; and Life Becomes a Blur. So, let’s continue on from there and do six more.

0:00 Introduction
1:17 Forced Socialisation
4:57 Bad for Your Brain
5:42 Death by Meeting
7:43 Wage Slavery / Consumerism
9:38 KPIs
11:46 The Company Doesn’t Care About You

7. Expectation of Socialisation, or, how I prefer to put it – Forced Socialisation. Normally when I go to work, I like to, you know, work. Is that so strange? But often my coworkers prefer to do other things that outwardly resemble work, but actually achieve very little. For them, work becomes more like a social outing. I suppose I can understand this to some extent. Many people’s lives revolve around work. This gives them very little time to have any sort of social life outside of work, so consequently, work becomes their social life in some kind of sick amalgam. From birthday celebrations, to farewell parties, to morning teas to welcome the new guy, there’s so much expected socialisation in the workplace.

8. Bad for Your Brain. I didn’t make this up. Scientists have done research and found that if you’re over 40, working more than 25 hours a week could be affecting your intelligence, and not for the better. There’s nothing much more important than your brain, so I think this is pretty important.

9. Death by Meeting. Obviously, this doesn’t apply to every kind of full-time job, but in every job I’ve ever had, it was seen as some kind of rite of passage to hold a meeting. Consequently, every worker and his dog would hold regular meetings just to show the management team how enterprising and resourceful they were. Of course, all these meetings were marked as “Important!” or “URGENT”, which meant basically, I had to attend, unless I had a very good reason not to. I honestly think that all these meeting organisers purposely marked their meetings as “important” or “URGENT”, because if they didn’t, nobody would have ever attended. So, ultimately, every meeting was considered important, and non-attendance was outlawed.

10. Wage Slavery (and to some extent, Consumerism). I’ve kind of covered this in other points, I suppose, but it’s worth repeating. Most people who are working a full-time job do it to get a wage. They need that wage and cannot live without it. The most obvious reason they need a wage is to pay off a debt, particularly their mortgage. There’s also car repayments, bills to pay, and the ever growing self-delusion that buying more stuff somehow brings happiness. I’m old enough to know now that it doesn’t matter how much stuff I own, it just doesn’t bring me extra happiness. Actually, extra stuff often does the opposite. It actively makes my life more stressful.

11. KPIs. I don’t know if you’ve heard of this term, or similar terms. If you haven’t, you’ve lived a blessed life. It stands for Key Performance Indicators. It’s basically a way for managers to monitor and assess their staff on their performance and progress and whether they’re meeting their key professional targets or not. In my company, they would track how long you were logged onto your computer every day. They would track the length of every phone call you made. They would track which meetings you attended, and which ones you didn’t. In my opinion, it made work as mechanical and inhuman as possible.

12. The Company Doesn’t Care About You. You are nothing to your company. You’re just another resource. They even have a department called “Human Resources”. Unless you have some sort of super specialised job, you are replaceable. Profit is the only thing that matters to big companies. If you get in their way, they’ll just make you redundant.

MUSIC
Melancholia by Godmode

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