u/MotherStill7503

I fucking hate work. I know most of us here are like that, and yes, sure, there are people somewhere who genuinely love working. I can't imagine those people at all. I hate everything about it. I feel like I'm imprisoned, like I'm constantly acting out a fake version of myself, like I'm not free, like my job owns most of my life. Sometimes I genuinely feel like I want to disappear, because the idea of dealing with shitty managers and bosses, forcing myself to smile, pretending I'm okay, and pretending I'm a happy little machine for 40+ hours a week, every week, forever, with no real vacation, no benefits, and only 4 stupid sick days a year, is insane. I mean, who gets sick and magically gets better in 4 days? What the fuck is this.

And on top of all that, they talk down to you, while 96% of the money you help make goes straight to some trash manager or trash company, and you're left with crumbs and told to be grateful. It makes me not want to keep doing this. It feels like a nightmare system where you basically have two shitty choices. Either you go along with them and stay stuck there 8+ hours a day, when all you want is to grab your keys, get in your car, and leave, but you can't because rent exists and bills exist and food exists. You don't have any real say in anything. Half the time your manager is pressuring you to break labor laws for their benefit, like working through your breaks, or staying late without overtime, or answering texts when you're off the clock, whatever. Then if you get sick, your coworkers talk shit about you and management acts like you betrayed the company. But when they need a day off, suddenly everyone is supposed to be understanding.

US work culture is fucked because so many workers brag about how badly they're treated like it's a badge of honor. "I came in with a fever, so they can too," or "I worked 55+ hours this week and didn't complain." Cool, why are you proud of being dragged through the mud? Nobody has empathy for anyone. You rarely get benefits, and when you do get them, they make you feel guilty for using them. Take PTO and people act like you abandoned the team. I swear to God, I've been in the workforce for 16 years and I'm sick of it. I hate what work has turned me into.

When I was younger, like in my late teens and early twenties, I had a part-time job, slept on people's couches, went out all the time, had tons of friends, and was always doing something. Backyard parties, random nights at someone's apartment, cheap beer, dumb stories, anything. I had fun. I was optimistic. I had so many friends I couldn't even keep up with all of them. I was the person people called when they wanted to do something. I felt like I was alive.

Fast-forward 12 years, and now when I'm not working or running errands, I'm just lying in bed. I barely have any friends anymore. I'm usually anxious, depressed, angry, or some mix of all of that. Even when Friday comes, all I think is: "Alright, two days and then I go back there again." Work sucked every bit of happiness out of me and turned me into this bitter person, and that sucks because I didn't used to be like this.

But after being screwed over by coworkers, getting dragged around and bullied by coworkers, and dealing with managers ranging from ordinary assholes to actual fucking monsters, it breaks you over time. I had a job I stayed at for 6 years where my manager didn't have a single good quality. Filthy rich, and still stole from wages, ignored almost every labor law, screamed at people, threw things, insulted people, everything. I stayed because the pay was relatively good for someone without a degree, and that's the trap. You tell yourself it's temporary, and suddenly years have gone by.

I'm thinking about going back to school and working at the same time, but I'm so mentally and physically drained from work that it feels impossible. And I know people with degrees who are drowning in student loans and still working in restaurants, retail, delivery, or some other low-paying job. It feels like unless you have an advanced degree in something that makes money, like being an MD, psychologist, psychiatrist, or something like that, you'll most likely still be eating shit in a different way.

And honestly, looking around me, it feels like everyone is either drinking a lot, on drugs, depressed, anxious, or all of the above. I can't stop wondering if maybe that has something to do with the fact that we're literally tied to jobs that can call us on our day off, text us with questions, ask us to come in, and remind us that they still have a piece of us even when we're not there. We only have one life, and somehow most of it gets wasted making money for people who could replace us in a week.

I don't even want a mansion or an expensive car. I just want to pay rent, buy food, and not spend my whole life drained by a company that sees me as a number. I want a day off to feel like a day off, not a recovery period from being ground down all week.

Does anyone get what I mean? TLDR: Work makes me feel like I'm throwing my life away, but we're forced to do it to survive, and it's making my life fucking miserable.

I don't want to come across as lazy or like I'm expecting life to be handed to me on a silver platter, but don't you think working 38 hours a week for pretty much your entire adult life is kind of ridiculous? The plan is that you keep grinding away at a job you might not even like until you reach 67 and you're worn out, and then finally "enjoy life" when your body has started falling apart... Who decided this was normal?

I'm not some extreme anti-work person or anything, and honestly I do think work has value. Just not this much of it. We're burning a huge part of our lives chasing money, and half the time I don't understand what all of this is even supposed to be for.

Of course everyone's circumstances are different, but I keep thinking that if people were willing to live a little more simply, maybe we wouldn't need to spend so many hours at work just to keep up with life. We have people getting sick from too much food rather than too little, and we have advanced tech that can do things people 150 years ago couldn't even imagine. We should have reached a better system than this by now.

To be fair, work has gotten better compared to the early 1900s, when factory workers and even children worked 10 hours a day for 6 days a week. So yes, I know it could be worse. But "better than something awful" doesn't mean it's good.

I'm saying this as someone with a degree, not much school debt, and a well-paying job with insurance and benefits. So I'm not among the people struggling the most here, which almost makes the whole thing feel even stranger, that despite all that I still think it's insane.

I'm curious what other people think.

I don't understand how people keep going like this I work about 48 hours a week. I've been doing this for the last 16 years. That means I've barely finished roughly the first quarter of my working life. And I still have another 28 years ahead of me...

I've become a moderate alcoholic now. I drink 5-6 beers most nights just to shut my brain off after work. 16 years ago, I might have had 5-6 beers in an entire month.

I used to work out 4-5 times a week and I genuinely enjoyed it. Now I'm lucky if I work out 3-4 times a month. And now I've gained weight. I try to meal prep for the week and eat decent food, but honestly I succeed at that maybe 40% of the time, because making healthy food after a long day feels like a second job.

Nothing ever gets fully done. My apartment is always kind of clean, never clean. Seeing my family or doing anything I care about gets crammed into the tiny gaps between work and recovering from work.

I used to read all the time, usually 25-35 books a year. Now I read about 4-5 a year, if that even happens.

Most of my days off get wasted catching up on dentist appointments, or fixing things, or cleaning, or handling paperwork, or running errands I was too exhausted to do during normal weeks.

I need an 8-month sabbatical just to get my life back into any kind of order, but I can't financially afford to leave my job.

I feel like I'm fighting a war on 6 fronts, because there are so many things I want/need to do, and work sucks up all my time and energy and soul.

Productivity has become more than double what it was in the early seventies, so instead of working 48 hours, we should be working around 30 hours at most as full time. But we're still working almost the same number of hours, even though we produce far more than people did 55 years ago.

Work used to have calmer moments too. Now there's no pause. 120 emails and 18 Slack messages and 25 calls every day, and every single thing is either urgent, or overdue, or somehow required before you've even heard about it.

And I can't take this anymore. It's no wonder so many people are on meds or drinking or have just gone numb. We're all burning out from overwork.