No matter where I work, my mind will not allow me to not feel a constant and gnawing furiosity at capitalism and the general ridiculous workings of the office. I don't even abhor where I work. Sure, sitting down for 9 hours a day is killing me but I've had worse jobs with worse culture. But alas, I am just one of those people that constantly feels like it's all bullshit.
They always do weird things and have weird policies trying to assert themselves and I am going to start doing it back. I truly feel boundaries are my best friend at work.
The fucking MANAGERIAL TACTICS. The ridiculous, childish mind games and actions that managers do to “keep us in line.” They never involve being fucking direct. They threw a Christmas Party but refused to disclose any details. We had to all go around asking individual people when it starts. Turns out it started when we were off- and they WOULDN'T TELL US WHAT TIME WE WERE GETTING OFF???? They literally refused to allow us to prepare to go to a PARTY. If I'm going to a party unpaid, its for fucking leisure. I wanna dress up, I wanna feel at ease. I'm not rushing home with 30 minutes to get ready to go show my face so some people feel a slight ego boner for 20 seconds. We were given a gift card since the place had no license and I had to return it upon saying I wouldn't attend and they seemed offended. They literally acted like they were the second coming of christ for planning this party and they obsessed about every detail except telling us how much time we have to get ready and some people live far away and would have basically had to know to get changed AT WORK.
Whenever I'm chatting to someone who isn't my manager, she comes us and asks me for something that is closer to her original position before she came out. She talks ALL. THE TIME. But she will never ever directly tell us not to talk. She needs constant acknowledgement. She's so so friendly but she also does nice things but then goes around and tells EVERYONE the nice thing she did.
And the birthdays. The fucking birthdays. Every day I am signing some card for someone who I barely know, and then I have to go to the back and sing them happy Birthday where I'm not even allowed to participate since I have to listen for the phone, so I stand all alone at the door threshold 40 feet away while they all stand I'm a crowd and sing but apparently it is cardinal sin if I do not stand in the doorway. The manager is obsessed with this birthday stuff and I feel she actually makes the person's birthday about her. She forgot it was an employees birthday one day and she cried all day, she finally got a card and sang happy birthday but I think this employee felt akward at this point and it was HIS birthday. I'm going to say for my birthday I don't want a company wide email, card, song and desk decoration. I will celebrate with my loved ones.
90% of office jobs can be done at home. The real reason they want us there is to make them feel the bigness they wanted to feel when they took the job as manager. Most of my job is listening to management's personal life, acknowledging their every move and pretending to be super interested in all of it. I just wanna work from home.