Anyone else just hate working, no matter what the job is?

[DrSheppard]

I'm in a pretty good job right now - the people are nice enough, the pay is very good, the subject matter is relatively interesting and it's flexible (can mostly work from home). But each and every day I struggle. I've felt like this in every job I have, and I've had a fair few! I dislike the routine of work. I dislike meetings and emails and workshops. I hate going into the office especially - I hate the glaring lights, sitting at a desk all day and the feeling of being boxed in. Even in the best of jobs I've had, this feeling never goes away.

I just don't care about work, frankly. I do what I need to do and always get great performance reviews, but I have zero investment in the outcome of what I do. Every day when I log off I breathe a sigh of relief, but the thought of doing this for the next 30+ years is awful. Sometimes I think about retraining but I really don't know if that'd 'fix' it, since I'm already in a well-paid and comfortable role and I've already dabbled in a fair few types of roles. Does anyone else feel this way?

Intrigued to know what work do you do that pays £140 per hour?

And I struggle to my head around why someone with education and opportunities hasn’t managed to find a job they find stimulating.

But tbf it'd have to be a very stimulating job to want to do it if financial circumstances allowed you not to.

Another issue is that a lot of people end up assuming that they need to get a degree and professional job to do well. A lot of them then end up sitting at a desk in the same room for the majority of hours in each day, the majority of days in each week, the majority of weeks in each year, and the majority of years in their life. They continue this until they're a pensioner by which time most of their life has passed by. Of course, they might switch every few years to a new desk in a new room but it's still pretty soul destroying for many.

I feel like men have it both better and worse because they're more likely to do things like trade jobs which generally pay better than office jobs and are less monotonous but on the downside they nearly always work until their mid/late 60s and rarely get to leave work at 30yo like many women do. That extra 35 years must feel like a lifetime!

Lady of the night? 🤭

Me!
My dream is to buy a motorhome and go travelling permanently.
I don't get why people stay in the same office, same shop etc for years and years. I would go insane.

I'm coming around to this point of view. Maybe not on a permanent basis but for large swathes of time.

I know someone who likes working in an office and has worked in the same office for many years - she says her workmates are like family to her as she has known them so long.

I feel the same way. I have changed so many jobs looking for the right one. But, I think the issue is with me. I just am not happy working. I don't know if it's a form of depression or I have not found my purpose but the corporate world makes me sick. The long hours, the artificial pressure. It's horrible. So, you are not alone.

Jobs other than corporate ones do exist.

This thread resonates so much. I love working, I just hate JOBS. I hate the politics, the office environment, the faux family atmosphere, the lack of freedom to manage my time as I want. I went freelance a few years ago and it suits me down to the ground. I choose to work the bare minimum I need to house and feed my family, and the rest of my time is my own.

Absolutely agree with this! I always have multiple freelancer projects in the go, even if I’m doing a longer contract or a stint in house somewhere, just so I know I can leave if I need to. Just like it’s vital to have an escape fund to enable you to leave a crappy relationship, I think it’s important to try and be in a position where you are offering your labour in exchange for money and retain a sense of power in the situation.

Wow, how are you getting on now with your fostering?

@Mmhmmn

Well I am still standing ( just!!)
Fostering this child young person has been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life.
I have tons of meetings, I have to do training on things I really wish I didn't have to know about. And I have a deeply traumatised young person to try and look after.
He is very challenging, to be brutally honest not very likeable, let alone loveable, a lot of the time.
When he lets down his barriers he shows me the child he could be and thats what keeps me going. But it has taken him nearly a year to let me give him a proper hug.
To be even more brutally honest my aim is to keep him alive, away from gangs and out of the criminal justice system.
I didn't go into this blind. I have an adopted son who is doing very well and is at university. I know lots of adoptive families with young people like my fosterling. My foster carer friends all foster babies and toddlers and probably have a much happier time than I do. I knew I was choosing the hardest age group.
What I have been truly astonished about is the utter lack of support for him. 'Management' are refusing an assessment to try and establish what is going on with him. Meanwhile I have a child who is literally screaming for help.
I feel very disheartened and disillusioned. Its scandolous and I'm not at all surprised at the numbers of looked at children who end up in prison, homeless or in an early grave. But I will crack on, because I firmly believe that every child deserves a chance. But I take it day by day at the moment.

Still prefer it to "working' though

Yes to all this! I'd rather work a 70-hour week where the time is my own than a 35-hour week surrounded by office bullshit. Love working hard, hate being controlled.

You’re not unreasonable or unusual to feel like that, but you are unreasonable to keep doing it and also keep whining about it.

I think by the time you get to your third job feeling like you “can’t do this”, then sorry but it is then a “you” problem.

When you list all the faults that have been listed here “bullshit jobs” “fake” “controlled” etc. So what? Like really So what? “Most work is bullshit, populated by arseholes” is not news, the fact you can’t or won’t take it in your stride is on you.

My last job I stayed at for 9 years, until I got made redundant. I was a trainer for a charity and I think I stayed so long because I got a lot of positive things from it, including;

Being able to use my skills and previous experience
Knowing I was genuinely helping people
Training participants who actually wanted to be there
Getting respect and being listened to
Getting good feedback at the end of every course, so I knew I was doing a good job
Doing something that aligned with my values
Doing something that was helping women.

However, the thing that was soul.destroying, was the attitude of management, who didn't appreciate me ( or take any interest in the courses we were running ), the pettiness of things discussed in meetings, like how many biscuits we were allowed to give volunteers, the lack of care and respect given to volunteers, their attitude when I was very unwell, how I had to fight to take annual leave, the penny pinching, the pointless meetings, not feeling valued, the horrid office politics, so many things!

Even though I got a payout when I was made redundant, which was great, I definitely felt a loss of identity afterwards, and I do miss the sense of pride I felt when I met new pp and told them what I did for work.

After that, I became a carer for my dad which is the hardest thing I've ever done. Isolating, frustrating, stressful, monotonous and nearly caused me to have a mental breakdown. Haven't worked since, and I'd love to find something fulfilling again, but now haven't worked for so long I think I'm unemployable!

However, I totally relate to pp saying how much they hate work, you're a v lucky person indeed if you find something you love that you can also make money from...

This thread, and everyone's responses has been so helpful for me, thank you OP. When I lived in London, I was involved in an international self development organisation and I trained to reach some of their courses on self esteem and purpose. I taught about ten of these courses and never for ONE MINUTE, did they feel like ' work'. The only thing that was challenging, was trying to enroll pp into the courses. As I wrote upthread, after being made redundant and then caring for my dad, I've lost my way, but remembering how I felt teaching those courses, and how they were genuinely life changing for so many people, has inspired me to want to teach them again!

I wish there were more like you. I think about fostering in the medium to long term but don’t know too much about the workings of it yet as haven’t started looking into it quite yet. Other things to finish before I could concentrate on that. I didn’t know there was an option to state a preference for an age group. I can understand why you would want to give a home to a slightly older child, not choosing the potentially easier route and that it must be very difficult. They must get shifted around from pillar to post when their behaviour is so trying. I wish you all the best, both for yourself and with improving your fosterling’s chances in life.

I would work even if it wasn't paid - for the training, the learning, the purpose ( healthcare)

Landmark by any chance?

Very sorry not to have read the whole thread; I will tomorrow. I LOVED my job! Once I'd found out this kind of work existed, I took the necessary steps to get it. My work was fast-paced, involved thinking-on-feet negotiations backed by well-argued, statistically sound presentations, and revolved around professional relationships. That meant getting to know a lot of interesting people and spending time with them in pubs, clubs, restaurants and parties. I made my own timetable as long as I brought in the business. Almost everyone I worked with was great, some of those friendships have lasted a lifetime.

My very last job had a bullying culture with mistrustful management structures. I was still dealing with fantastic people, but the office wrecked my confidence.

I know jobs like my old ones still exist, but they're much thinner on the ground now due to the rise of project management and, more specifically, its software implementations. If you need to itemise every move you make in machine-readable format, there's less room for creativity or intuition. I hope that's improving now but businesses have become so attached to getting every detail on a spreadsheet, I fear the concept of enjoyment at work has been squashed.

Still, I wish everybody on this thread the opportunity to "do what you love and get paid for it" 😊 When you get it, take it!

Me. I have a busy fulfilling job in what is my vocational field (if I have to work this is what I would ultimately pick so no issues with the job per se). I like most of my colleagues and the pay is ok. But I would just rather be at home. I am
Never bored at home ( I'm often bored at work even whilst being busy) and I can fill my home time very easily. When I'm at work I just have this awful feeling of time passing me by-I never get to do even the simplest things I like doing for me -long dog walks, swims, gardening bits, and by the time I retire I will be too old and knowing my luck, too infirm, to enjoy them. So we cram things into weekends but the time is never enough.

YABU. You clearly don't thrive in a corporate office environment but there are many other jobs and careers. Self employment and consulting is full of people who don't like or struggle in formal work environments, so think outside the box.

All jobs are a trade off - if they were 100% amazing they wouldn't pay us would they?

I generally love my job as what I do makes a genuine difference to some very vulnerable and marginalised groups (although they themselves will often never know our part in that).

Yes there is all the tedious spreadsheets, management bullshit and governance papers, but I tolerate that as at this point in my life I value a stable employer that treats me well, pays me decently and offers a good pension and a certain amount of corporate bollocks is the price that is extracted.

I largely agree with this.

I've worked in some hideous jobs that truly trashed my mental health, but I retrained to do something that I feel is meaningful and I love so now I am self-employed and the autonomy is bliss.

There are elements of it I dislike, I don't like admin-type tasks and had to work on my mindset around marketing, but those things are necessary and a very small part of what I do.

So many jobs are just crushing though.

Project management kills my soul for exactly these reasons. Just can’t do it.

“the rise of project management and, more specifically, its software implementations. If you need to itemise every move you make in machine-readable format, there's less room for creativity or intuition.”

Have you thought about and looked into ways of working outside the corporate world? No bad reflection on you if that stuff makes you sick, it’s not how we were supposed to live!

no one posted since May but I just found this thread so wanted to tell OP they are not the only one. I am 52 and worked in a variety of jobs. I used to love working up until around 45. The work, the people were interesting and I felt motivated. I’ve been in the same organisation since I was 35 but in different corporate jobs and I plan to retire at 62 so another 10 years to go but I feel so tired and utterly fed up with working and I just want to retire but can’t afford to before I am 62. I feel like now, I have a lot less energy than when I was younger, my brain power has decreased and I am just not interested or motivated any more. I feel like I’ve been there and done that. I hate it now, the early mornings, the 2-3 times per week commute into London, the packed trains etc. I then sit all day at a desk either working, writing reports or in endless meetings. The job is not bad I just hate working after decades in the job market. I am tired but I figure I have to somehow last another 10 years. Changing career is not really an option as my finances would take a hit and it would delay my retirement plans. I am always very envious of people who have enough money to give them a choice what to do with their lives. Most of us have no choice, we are slaves to mortgages and bills.

@Didi25 sorry to see it’s getting you down. Have you any options for change? Moving anywhere less costly or downsizing at all? x