I wake up every morning at 5:30 and scream into a pillow because I'm still living in this modern hellscape.
I immediately make a pot of coffee because it's the only thing that can motivate me to actually get ready. I have to wake up this early because I need to get in some exercise to counter-balance the effects of sitting down 8 hours a day, only getting up to pour more coffee or use the bathroom. If I didn't exercise then I'd have nothing to look forward to until the evening.
I also wake up this early because there are no jobs where I live, and [Company name] doesn't pay me enough to live anywhere near where [Company job] is located. This means I have a 60-90 commute ONE WAY, twice a day, ten days a week.
I get in my car and begin the first mile of what will be a 100-mile round trip commute. 90% of this commute is spent on [Highway name], the most dangerous highway in [State name]. Every morning I have to deal with reckless drivers and see at least one crash on the side of the road. Every day I've commuted to [Company name] it's occurred to me that this very well could be my last day on Earth. A car could signal wrong, I could run over some debris and have a tire blowout, or someone could be playing on their phone and rear end me going 90MPH.
If I'm not in high-speed traffic trying to avoid becoming a statistic then I'm stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic. No matter how early I leave for work I'm somehow always 10-15 minutes late. You'd think that public transit would be a viable option for the thousands of commuters who make this trek every morning. But this city has been developed for over 80 years and we still don't have buses that can connect from city to city, much less commuter rail.
I arrive at work about a half hour after the coffee kicked in. One of the pitfalls of having to drive to work along a major highway is that it's not very convenient finding a place to use the restroom. Still, the areas off the highway are full of crime – If you manage to reach a gas station chances are they won't let you use the public restroom, it'll be broken, or they'll make you buy something. So every morning I'm not only driving in crazy traffic, I'm trying not to shit or piss myself.
Once I'm done using the restroom I sit down at my desk and begin 8 hours of work that I can absolutely do from home. Scratch that – I only have about 2 hours of work. The rest of the time in the office is spent bullshitting or pretending I'm working. But I can't tell [Boss] that I finished my work because then I'll be rewarded with more work. So instead I stretch out projects, or make “problems” for myself to solve, therefore turning a 2 hour task into an 8 hour one. I'm rewarded for this inefficiency, because somehow it makes me a harder worker. But then again, this is how [Company] is structured, so game recognize game.
The actual workday is inconsequential to my daily routine. I show up, do what I'm told, and spend most of my time checking the clock to see how many hours I have left.
But we can't let people work from home or go home early, it's not like we're in the middle of a pandemic or anything.
5:00 hits and it's time to get ready for another 60-90 minutes of driving. At this point I'm exhausted from the commute in and my un-stimulating workday. I make a cup of coffee to go because I need every ounce of energy to keep me from falling asleep at the wheel and causing a pile-up on [Dangerous Highway].
I get home between 6:00 and 6:30 and have to make dinner. If I don't have leftovers then that's an hour of time I could be spending on personal development, hobbies, leisure activities, etc. I mean I could order take-out, but it's unhealthy as hell and would be a drain on the wallet. And we all know money's already tight working at [Company name].
My girlfriend and I sit down on the couch and eat dinner around 7:30. We both have dreams and goals and hobbies, but we're too wiped out and spend the rest of what little precious free time we have watching Netflix. The show we're watching probably sucks, but we're too tired to complain.
We're in bed sometime between 9:00 and 10:00. I've been exhausted all day, but as soon as my head hits the pillow my 5:00 coffee for the drive home kicks in and I'm wired. I'm lucky if I fall asleep before 11:00 most days. I eventually pass out….
….And the alarm goes off again at 5:30AM. I count down the days till Saturday.