Hi r/antiwork,
I want to share my story, because I am bored and have nothing really to do at work right now. Propaganda would have us believe that we’re lazy and “don’t want to work”, but let me walk you through my example of how this is totally disconnected from reality and an obvious media spin to serve capital interests.
I started my new job a few months ago and the experience so far has been what a lot of other posts say about office jobs, especially when it comes to poor management in corporate hierarchies. I wouldn’t necessarily characterize it as a “bullshit” job, since it could have purpose if I was allowed to do it… but I am generally prevented from doing much at all. Thankfully, it’s remote (we’ll return to this..), so I cope through carefully just doing what I want while it lasts. While I knew that it was like this, I am still amazed that things can be like this. This is not a good system.
I got this job by networking through friends from graduate school. When I first started, I was incredibly excited. It seemed like a good match for my work experience, and it hit a lot of the things I was looking for in a job (remote, similar to a previous job I held, stable with a growing team, good refs from other employees, etc.). The first two weeks were good. Everyone was really friendly and outgoing about being helpful.
Then, of course, things took a turn. When I started my job, I was anxious to get started and do well. I really wanted to help out and prove myself, especially since I have spent the last half decade finishing my PhD (more about that in a bit). I worked really hard and put in max+ hours for a few weeks, outlining proposals, taking on tasks, and generally working myself to the bone to show “I can do this.”
When my manager saw what I was doing, it was all shut down. All of my work was thrown out, rejected, and I was told that the job duties of my job description weren’t what they wanted me to prioritize. This was wildly confusing. In subsequent meetings, the red flags started popping up with my manager, and even some co-workers, talking about how they “don’t follow job descriptions” as if it was a good thing. Over time, I figured out that my manager actually knew very little about my job, and likely only hired into that job description because it’s what they could get the budget approval for. On top of this, my manager is the living embodiment of the Peter Principle. They were promoted to management right after I was hired, and were apparently really good at their previous job, but they have not managed people before. Now my manager doesn’t know what to do with me.
For a while, I tried. I attempted to diplomatically (as gently and passively as I could through “corporate speak”) teach my manager about what’s typically in the purview of what people in this job do, how it can help their goals, etc. Predictably, that wasn’t received well. At points, my manager has talked down to me, and I’ve gathered through interactions that my boss seems insecure that I have more education and experience in my particular role. I’ve had it emphasized multiple times that I am new, that I don’t understand the needs of corporate yet, that I am new to this kind of job, etc.
I am new, but I have never not acknowledged that and I have asked several times for resources and guidance to learn how to do things according to what they're looking for. I am new to the org, but I can apply my previous experiences in this type of role in similar organizations. Yes, I just graduated, but I am in my 30s. I worked for several years before I went back to do my PhD and worked while doing my PhD – I have experience and I have a general idea of what works and what doesn’t work.
As a last ditch effort, I talked my boss into letting me run a survey about the needs of the organization to gather some data relevant to my job. Lo and behold, the responses were perfectly in line with everything that I had been trying to show my team over those first weeks. And, lo and behold, my boss has outright declared that we’re going to ignore it because it wasn’t “the right people” that responded.
My employer has a review process with HR for new hires. I did speak up (foolishly) then that I would like a project or tasks to help me learn how to do the job since I had nothing to do so far other than what I came up with. My manager took this personally and became defensive, saying that it was “too hard to train remotely.” Since then, it’s been mentioned multiple times that I might have to transition to hybrid work or that we’ll do in-person meetings periodically. I live 2 hours away from the nearest office. With the price of gas in my region, driving in would be a good chunk of my day’s pay. If my manager starts to insist on this or pulls me into the office permanently, I’d eventually be forced to find another job or quit.
Disheartened, I realized that I needed to give up. Trying to be “good” at this job was only hurting me. I am still under probation, and the tension with my manager wasn’t worth it. My partner relies on my income, so I need a job. Tragically, this is also the most money I’ve ever made (at 60k), so I am reluctant to rock the boat any further. I spend about 3 hours a day of solid work on the minor tasks my manager gives me – tasks that I think aren’t a good use of my time, but it’s what my boss wants me to do so I do them. After that, I have nothing. At first, I tried to keep creating my own work to cover my ass, but I started running out of that stuff. There’s only so many times you can create a calendar or create a template you know will never be used. I just get creative with my timesheets with plausible “work” or having a coworker team up with me to waste time. I stopped asking to do more and definitely stopped doing extra. Even if I tried now, my manager gets upset if I do anything close to my job description without direct oversight. I now spend most of my time either doing things around the apartment, applying for jobs, or watching TV.
The thing is, this is a weird experience for me. I have a reputation among friends and colleagues for being a notorious workaholic. I powered through my degrees easily putting in 60-80 hours a week working and researching. While I intellectually understood criticisms of “hustle culture,” I am typically terrible at practicing what I preach. I usually get hyperfixated on work and was known for being able to pull a 14-hour shift in the lab or library. I’ve never not put in 110%. Burn out? I welcomed it, managed it, and felt masochistic pride in it. Hell, against my better judgment, I was ready to keep doing that in this job!
During my PhD, I landed major awards, funded my degree through scholarships without incurring more debt, finished my defense without revisions (I know, weird to mention, but to people in my field that’s a “Big Deal”), and have a few publications under my name. I don’t come from money and had no parental support (no trust fund baby here), so I had to work my way through it and get the degree funded based on accomplishment. I did everything “right.” I’m even still associated with my research colleagues and help them out with analyzing data every now and then. My friends actually applauded me for stepping down from some volunteer committees to make some more time for myself, because it was such an unusual thing for me to do.
The statistics can be all over the place depending on the field and region, but generally it’s not unheard of for less than 5% of PhDs to land a job in academia, and even then that’s not necessarily tenure track. I knew going in that the stats were bleak and I had made my peace with it long before I even finished my dissertation. But in my case, an academic career was especially not going to be feasible due to the needs of my partner. I won’t get into it for obvious privacy reasons, but essentially taking care of people in my life has me geographically bound to one area. Being stuck in one place is a death sentence for academic careers, and the statistics show that newly minted PhDs generally need to move and land that postdoc or job within two years of graduation or they are sunk. Academia, being cutthroat and cruel, has no mercy when it comes to life situations. And so, I’ve had to move on.
Basically, what I am getting at is that I am bewildered that I would be characterized as “lazy” or “unwilling to work” like the portrait that so many media like to paint of our economic climate. I know that my personal background isn’t the most relatable, but I hope that it helps people who work jobs in manual labor (like my partner) and service positions to know that, hey, even people who seem to have all the markers of “middle class” white collar jobs are absolutely bewildered. I literally have tried everything reasonable to work this job, but because of having to answer to management it’s absolutely better for me if I don’t.
If you read through all of this, thank you. Solidarity. I’m going to go back to playing Baldur’s Gate 3 now.
(P.S., I know some folks will suggest going to HR or trying to figure something else out within the organization – I'm on it and trying to quietly transfer to another team. I'm also applying for jobs as much as I can. In the meantime, like the title says, what else am I supposed to do?)