Pointless office jobs

But we’re not here to have fantastic fulfilled lives, we’re here to survive and keep our loved ones fed and watered.

I think through the generations our expectations on life has increased as our lifestyles have allowed, but it’s a bit of a gilded cage. The more you have, the more you want. We all now want great relationships with healthy children in lovely homes with nice cars and access to everything we want or need. I’m the same.

But it’s unrealistic. You have a child who needs care and a husband who’s able to do that. So your role isn’t to find your ideal job now. It’s the provide finances and stability. Which you’re doing.

Lower your expectations and you may feel happier.

Also be careful, if you know your job is essentially pointless, so will your organisation eventually. AI is coming fast and redundancies will happen. Save your decent salary as long as possible for a rainy day.

God people on here are miserable! Of course you are reevaluating your job and the meaning of life. Totally normal.

To keep billionaires in brand new yachts!

Could you look for a similar role in a company thats values are more interesting/meaningful?

It does sounds rather meaningless. As much as I’d like to earn 80k, I think I’d find that sort of job soul-destroying.

What do you like to do? I had a role like this, it was great for that time of my life but was unfulfilling. It wasn’t completely pointless, but it wasn’t essential and it gave me little satisfaction. I eventually got made redundant, but found a role I love and even though I need to pay extra for childcare now and I’m working a lot longer hours, I wouldn’t change it for the world. I’m so much happier.

I worked for Local Authority coming from a completely different background . I had one collegue that shared my office and our area . One day I had the courage to say that honestly I couldn't believe how much money we were paid to do this shite . We fell about laughing as it was so true . My DH had a pretty good job involving a bit of a commute and her partner was a bus driver with all the responsibility and often faced abuse . And we earned more

No it won’t. The ironic thing is that these are exactly the kind of jobs that won’t be replaced by AI. Because they aren’t “jobs” in the traditional sense at all. Their entire purpose is to perpetuate capitalism. Unless capitalism itself dies under AI, these are in fact the only jobs that will survive. People think humans are in charge of the economy. We aren’t. We are the honey bees and the economy itself is the honey farmer. Your “job” is to move money around the system. You get paid, you spend the money, the money ends up in the pockets of the ceos. Anything else you tell yourself is just a story.

Could you change roles at all? Or do you have time for hobbies on tbe side?

I would not be leaving an £80k job!!

However, I need to be challenged and have to work in a job where I’m helping people and doing good.

I am mentally exhausted by my job but it gives me so much and I truly make a difference to peoples lives.

I would be losing my mind in an office job, so I completely understand your frustration.

In your situation, I would do either volunteer work or a uni course to enable you to potentially change jobs when your DC is older and DH is back at work.

I kind of get this, I work in HR and everyone is becoming more entitled and grumpy every year.

I wish I had of decided on investment banking as a career, though I’m not sure if that would fit with my current lifestyle requirements.

Anyway, just nice to say things even if nothing can come from it!

Do you understand economics?

I totally get you my job is really completely pointless. It basically tells people how to do something which is basically a created market..if everyone suddenly stopped doing it, nothing would really happen. I have the added impact of premenopausecmaking my ADHD and Autism much much worse meaning my job is now pretty impossible for me to do. Being there is both incredibly stressful, draining and demoralising. Most days I have suicide ideation The mortgage will be paid off shortly - I will be gone then and find a job without the stress (mainly created internally) hours and with a bit more meaning and purpose and no timesheets

Surely no commercial company pays £80 K p.a. to someone to do something absolutely pointless? In my whole 45 year career I have never seen that.

I wonder if this company is profitable......very badly run

Spot on. I'm absolutely convinced that a large number, maybe even the majority, of office based jobs are pointless. Bloated organisations with endless layers of middle management adding nothing but costing a fortune.

I often read of MNers with huge salaries, working from home, and I'm always left wondering "Yes, but what do you actually do?"*

*I'm a fine one to criticise. I doubt if my 30 odd years in the Civil Service would have had less impact if I'd just stayed in bed.

I'm in a similar situation, OP - earn slightly less than you and have great perks of the job in terms of flexibility/never work beyond my contracted hours, but don't feel fulfilled. The funny thing is my role does have a bit more of a real impact than yours sounds like it does, but colleagues doing the exact same role don't seem to care as much as I do and do the bare minimum and there's just no real oversight or consequences of this! So sometimes I can put a lot of effort into resolving a difficult situation and then I look around and one of my peers has basically just signed something off without caring whether or not it's right and I wonder why I bothered.

From what you've posted, can I guess you're mid-30s and wondering how you can already be a third of the way through your career, supposedly reached the goals you aspired to and can't quite believe there's double that amount of time left before you retire to just carry on doing something that feels really meh. As that's my position in a nutshell!

I have resigned myself to sticking at it for now (I have a toddler, would like another baby in the next year or so and want to stick with what I know and the good maternity pay!) Its a family friendly role so I will carry on for maybe 10 years, but saving plenty of my salary in the meantime and then I plan to cut my hours down substantially and do something else on the side that has more meaning/purpose (likely working with children). Is this an option for you?

I thought my job was pointless. Then I retired and I realised that I was good at my job and so what I thought was common sense wasn't to everyone else. I don't have a regret about retiring but I wish I'd started volunteering earlier.

I've now done a couple of small voluntary projects to put those skills to use, and make a difference. Obviously, you can't retire now, but can you stretch yourself at work to learn new skills or apply them for other people.

You'd be surprised! I work in tech and all the big players have cut back their AI investments by 50% for next year!

AI makes too many mistakes and we're finding were holding onto teams set for redundancy

I often look at large offices and think about all the waste of time jobs that must go on in each building.

I also think about how many people are on SM (and MN) when working!