I am a paralegal at a Workers' Compensation Firm. Very standard 9-5, paper pushing, 40k starting salary kind of job. It is literally everything I was supposed to get in a job. I had benefits, a good amount of PTO, and even got a sizeable bonus.
But it is literally a soul crushing job. Office culture is the worst. I have the same 10 lines of dialogue to use in conversation through the week. The work keeps me occupied, but I get so depressed. My job deals with workplace injuries, and the legal battle these workers need to deal with is awful. Many go into debt or get behind on their bills waiting for treatmentment to be approved.
I have a front row seat to see all the problems that come with exploitative labor. And all I can do is pass paper onto the next person and tell our clients that we are doing all we can.
My job doesn't even make sense to me. To make the world a better place and the really help people would make my work obsolete. And I'm totally ok with that. I've been told I need to learn to cope with these realities, but I don't want to just cope. I don't want people to just survive. I don't want to hear another true crime girl talk to me about another mediocre man becoming a serial killer.
Office culture destroys any form of meaningful interaction with each other. Sitting all day hurts my back. And my paycheck literally depends on workers getting injured.
Taking all of this into consideration I went part time to organize in my community. I'm lucky that I can and that I live with people who support me and each other. I just want something different to happen. I don't want us to just be stuck working for things that just maintain a broken system.