As someone who is going to have to get a job in 2-3 years, I’m dreading the day. Going to the same place 5 days a week coming home with no time and energy left for anything you actually like and doing this for FOURTY years or even more if you were unlucky, sounds HORRIBLE!! How could anyone actually like working?
well, it’s about work life balance, which in most places do not exist unfortunately. but being in home all day and just playing games or doom scrolling or reading occasionally gets horrible after a month or two (i’m speaking from personal experience this is a very subjective thing).
for me the perfect balance would be a hybrid model, where i work from home 2-3 days a week and go to the office 2-3 days a week. but yeah most people, including me, work for a living, if we didn’t work we wouldn’t have a monthly income, which means we couldn’t get food, which means basically homelessness or in some cases death.
there is no freedom to not work lol, if you aren’t working and your parents are still providing for you after you turn like 23 or even 25 then you are incredibly fortunate.
in an ideal world we would still have to work to survive and keep the society going, the difference would be that we, the workers would have 100x more benefits and we wouldn’t be overworked. and idk i do genuinely enjoy some work, because sitting around all day not doing anything is terrible and it invites depression.
TLDR most people work to survive not because they enjoy working in that shitty macdonald’s.
I don’t understand people who do NOT want to work! Sure, it’s nice being home having nothing to do for a few days, but then what? I start feeling bored and useless and I want to contribute and feel useful again.
When people do retire, something like this usually happens. Either they solve it by joining into so many activities and hobbies they’re actually busier than before, they end up finding another job for the hell of it, or they decline into misery.
Doing nothing is like a covid lockdown that never ends, basically.
Okay, you do you.
There’s ways the do all that without working a job?
And who said No Work = No Thing?
Volunteering, Arts, Hobbies, Crafts, Socialisation
And Jesus, you’re going to be depressed when you’re forced to retire, with no friends outside of work and no hobbies
Yeah, avocation and vocation can both fill that hole. It is a hole that most people need filled, though.
The other way to look at it is what are hobbies and volunteering but work in of themselves? Human existence involves work, but every human should be able to find work that they can enjoy (or at least not actively hate)
Wow, that escalated quickly 🤣
Yeah I think I went a bit too hard on it
So here’s the thing, many people hate their jobs and just work them because they don’t really see any other option than to keep working the job they hate, but also plenty of people really enjoy their jobs. Depending on your interests you might have to get a little creative or try something you’d never thought about or something you’ve never heard of
If you enjoy problem solving (a very common human trait), there’s some lucrative corporate careers out there in things like project management, asset management or even just straight management. If you just want to zone out and listen to podcasts and audiobooks all day there’s tons of machine operator jobs that will absolutely fill that role (and often in small towns with very low costs of living as an added bonus) if you want to just get paid go hike there’s jobs to be had in surveying and land management. If you like working with animals the ag sector has you covered, and if you like working with your hands there’s always tons of jobs in trades. If you like helping people there’s the healthcare sector and if that’s too much blood there’s always medical coding or outside of the healthcare sector there’s tons of banks out there looking for loan officers who will talk to people and fill in the blanks on the forms. Sales is also very lucrative and very cushy if you can get into B2B sales. There’s tons of jobs that exist and every job is different, so there’s bound to be one out there that scratches an itch for you and you can enjoy (or at least not actively hate)
And this is all assuming you want to work for someone else, you can always start something on the side while keeping another job that pays the bills, or if you have a supportive partner who’s willing to cover the bills while you take you shot at a business. Go start a hardwood furniture business, or find an obscure thing that nobody makes anymore and start making those. Go create an event that people can buy tickets to attend. Open a bar or a store or a pilates studio! Buy an old building on some unfarmable land and create a winery or fish farm or wedding venue! Sell pancakes out of your garage! Paint murals for people! Grow mushrooms to sell at the farmers market! Start a commune or a bus tour company or a bike taxi! Is it hard? Absolutely. Will there be roadblocks and challenges to overcome? Indubitably! But overcoming these challenges is fulfilling in itself and plenty of people start businesses successful enough for them to retire off of (or at least successful enough to sell to someone else who can make it successful enough to retire off of)
Don’t let the fake world of earning money fuck you up. People want to move and dance and do great things naturally. Most need money to eat and stay warm though and those two things are rarely aligned. If you were a multi-trillionaire would you just want to lay on the beach all day doing nothing?
Due to an inheritance of barely-enough money, I got to retire at age 55. I might need to go back to work in a few years, I don’t know yet. But, I’ve very much enjoyed doing practically nothing even though I’d like to have enough to travel, etc. which I don’t. I do miss the collaboration on solving problems, but I don’t miss the raft of other bullshit “office politics” that goes along with that. The one does not make up for the other, not even close. Neither do I miss putting aside my occasional moral misgivings about a project in exchange for money. Nor do I miss watching the boss/owner make obviously stupid decisions and then watching the fallout, after not listening to me or anyone else.
Finding a perfect job is not going to happen for the vast majority of us. We make do with what we can get, and often that causes long-term stress that is unhealthy.
What desire I have to “be useful” or “contribute” and the pleasure I sometimes got from a job well done pales in comparison to the daily stress of working. Even low-level long-term stress takes a big toll over time. And, none of us are compensated nearly enough in money or time off to mitigate that.
People want to work, and want to contribute and collaborate, and feel useful. But, the work society we’ve allowed to be set up for us is not for that. It’s for wringing every last second of useful to-the-rich effort out of us, while compensating us at the minimum level we’ll accept without chopping their heads off, with the rest going to them. Generation after generation for the past 80 years, they’ve been compensating us less and demanding more. Now we’re close to being virtually enslaved, owning nothing and working to barely survive, assuming we’re healthy enough to do so, otherwise being discarded.
FWIW maybe an office job isn’t for everyone. Some people need different challenges and changes of scenery. Some of those jobs may be a bit more blue collar. Things like survey teams, equipment operators, trades, etc. Probably union gigs, too. I couldn’t handle office politics or being trapped either.
People don’t want to work. They want to live and pay for shit. Work is the only way for people that weren’t born rich to get money. Well, either that or crimes, but some crimes can be seen as illegal work.
Most people don’t want to feel useless, so if you cut their access to cheap dopamine (phones with internet, social media) they might seek out some work out of boredom.
What really sucks is that society expects us to be “specialists” in one thing for the rest of our lives, as if we are fucking ant drones or gears in a complex machine. It’s great for economists and the rich and awful for our individual wellbeing, though some people do enjoy doing the same thing over and over for very long periods of time.
Well, either that or crimes, but some crimes can be seen as illegal work
Human existence requires work. Someone has to grow the food, someone has to fix the things, someone has to build the structures and plumb them and someone has to help fix us when we get broken. The only way to never work is to freeload off of everyone who is working.
What really sucks is that society expects us to be “specialists” in one thing for the rest of our live
Specialization is literally how humanity shifted from being hunter-gatherers who lived to be about 30-40 before getting mauled by a bear or killed by another tribe or dying of an infection because you slipped on a rock.
In the modern economy specialization doesn’t have to mean doing the same thing every day. Any kind of career where you fix things, you can easily find a job that varies wildly from day to day. A mechanic might be replacing an engine cylinder one day and rebalancing wheels the next and rebuilding the exhaust the next. An IT person can be troubleshooting a software error one day then tweaking network performance the next then imaging laptops the next. A project manager will have different work depending on what phase of the project it’s in, and the type of challenges and work will vary wildly by what kinds of projects they’re managing
The trick is, find something you don’t mind doing and that can turn into finding something you kinda enjoy. As long as you don’t wake up dreading work every day (which if you do it’s probably time to shake things up, both for yourself and for your loved ones!) you can have a pretty decent life
It’s either work or twerk and i aint got that kind of body
I absolutely despise work. If there was any way to survive while living alone in a studio apartment or trailer home without having to go to a job I’d do it in a heartbeat. I work a much better job now than I was from 2014-2025, but that’s only cause the pay is better and I listen to podcasts all day instead of being forced to interact with people. I still feel my soul being drained when I wake up at 3 AM and have to drag myself there just to do some B’s I’d rather not do, but I don’t have any other choice given I can’t find anything that will pay better without experience or wasting years on a piece of paper.
I absolutely despise work. If there was any way to survive while living alone in a studio apartment or trailer home without having to go to a job I’d do it in a heartbeat.
Have you tried being rich?
If your really worried about working do your best to find a work place that is fun rather than a workplace that maximizes your income. Assuming you have interests try and find a job that plays to those interests and it helps to feel like your actually helping people rather than being another cog in the machine.
The unicorn job.
Problem is there’s a ton of interests with jobs that just don’t exist really anymore or those jobs pay the absolute bare minimum. Like my main interest/hobby is film and writing my thoughts about every single one I watch (along with videogames, but film is easier for me cause it requires a lot less from me). I don’t have any interest in making a movie and becoming a paid critic nowadays is near impossible with how flooded the market is with hundreds of thousands of people doing it for free in their spare time. I could work in a movie theater or something similar, but then I’m back to making state minimum wage instead the almost double that I’m currently making.
I could work in a movie theater or something similar, but then I’m back to making state minimum wage instead the almost double that I’m currently making.
You could own a theatre. You could also create a local film festival, even if that means just booking the community room at the library and screening public domain silent films to start with. Or if you want to make a job out of it, maybe you can snag the screening rights to some indie/deep backlog films and do a traveling film festival, maybe setting up in small towns where there isn’t already a ton going on where you could also get the venue for cheap.
There’s also companies popping up that have bought the rights to reprint deep back catalogue films. Like I recently heard about one that buys the rights to reprint B movies from the 70s and 80s on VHS, so apparently there is a market for that kind of thing too!
I grew up on a subsistence farm. Everyone always worked. Every single day of the year. Some days were very long, some were short depending on what needed to be done. To survive. Of course we had fun and time off as well. It’s about balance. Most people don’t have to do back to the land subsistence living anymore because they substituted living in cities and taking paying jobs to buy what they need. No matter the path, you still have to do some sort of work to live. You can choose which path to some extent. There are small farms looking for people to come work for them in exchange for room and board.
Good workplaces are like the after-school extracurricular classes, you go because you’re interested, it’s fun to problem-solve with people.
I have to be regularly told to go home at the end of the day.
Finally a positive answer! I completely agree, I enjoy working with competent people, solve issues, and improve myself. Extend my knowledge and experience, try out new stuff and help other people get better.
How long have you worked there?
How long have they been in business?
Is the business stable and well-ran? Do you even know?
When you ask a question like this in a place like this, understand that you’re going to be getting replies from people who have jobs where you can sit around and be bored on the internet
Or sad, unemployed people.
There are many reasons. One is just wanting to know your contributing. Sorta goes with the good days work for a good days pay. Although given pay nowadays is more of a reason not to work. Then there is doing things you are interested in and enjoy. I worked IT for a cs research visualization lab that did a fair amount of networking and colloboration with other labs and fields. It was amazing. Worked at another place were I was hired by a guy and I enjoyed working under him and with the people at the company. Man he left and the job lost a lot of what made it decent. Other places I worked had some good folks and you combine that with my general interest in problem solving the whole contributing thing and its not bad. Granted though I really hate the way we from full time education to full time employment to nothing (if your lucky). would love a citizens income and a more 3 day work week so that the general idea is at some point to work and go to school 3 days a week each and then you fnd someone and have kids you can split it to someone is at home everyday and when they are grown you maybe can grab more educations and it would be nice for the 30 to ramp down as you approach retirment.
Place and purpose baby! Working for someone/being exploited sucks shit, sure, but doing stuff is awesome. What else are you gonna do?
This, and working with a team, and working towards the public good. Building successful teams, improving processes, implementing efficient and sustainable systems - all good fun to achieve.
That said these take weeks and months to accomplish where I work. I’d love to be a chef where the results of my labour was more … immediate.
