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Man Criticizes Corporate Culture and Says the Traditional Work Ethic Has Serious Problems

man upset at a desk

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Hey, working is not for everyone

Actually, let’s be honest: a lot of us would love to kick back, relax, and live a life of leisure forever and ever…

But that’s just not realistic for about 99.99999% of the population.

Still, we all get burned out and bogged down at our jobs from time to time.

But this guy has multiple problems with the whole system…and he’s not holding back!

Check out what he had to say about today’s work culture.

“Work Ethic” is an oxymoron.

“What exactly is ethical about work?

This moralization of working regardless of what the work is contributing is so unbelievably stupid.

This guy isn’t holding back!

We’ve internalized this archaic Protestant garbage so thoroughly that people actually brag about how much of their lives they give away.

“I worked 60 hours this week.”

“I haven’t taken a sick day in 5 years.”

“I always come in half an hour early.”

“I don’t even take my full lunch break.”

“I stay until the job is finished. I don’t care if I’m getting paid.”

Congratulations? You’ve played yourself.

He’s not buying into the whole system.

Your employer buys 8 hours of your day and somehow you’re the selfish one if you don’t occasionally give them a ninth for free?

Total garbage.

And the most messed up part is that management doesn’t always have to enforce this anymore. Workers have been conditioned to enforce it on each other.

Leave exactly when your shift ends and somebody will joke about you being eager to get away.

Take your entire lunch break and somebody notices.

Don’t answer emails on your day off and you’re “not committed.”

Tell us how you really feel!

Folk have even internalized this idea of moralizing work and the concept of being productive that when they finally get a chance to sit around doing nothing for an afternoon there’s that little voice “I should really be doing something.”

Why?

Maybe you already did everything that needed doing.

Maybe doing absolutely nothing for three hours is precisely what you want to do with three hours of the only life you’re ever guaranteed to have.

If technological progress lets us produce what society needs with dramatically less human labour, the obvious reward should be dramatically more human leisure. Bertrand Russell put forth this argument over a century ago and it’s still accurate.

Instead we invented machines capable of doing the work of ten people and somehow concluded that the remaining person should still be working 40 hours..

We invented computers. Still 40 hours.

The Internet. Still 40 hours.

Automation. Still 40 hours.

And we’re already asking what new jobs everyone can do when AI replaces your old one.

Now I’m getting depressed…

At some point you have to wonder what exactly we’re trying to achieve here, what’s the point?

If society can produce the same food, housing, healthcare, infrastructure etc etc all the things we actually need while everyone works 20 hours instead of 40 then that’s exactly what we should do.

And every time I bring this up in real life, people get skittish around the idea of eliminating unnecessary work. They always ask what folk would do with the extra time.

Anything!

Raise their children. Visit their parents. Exercise. Read books. Paint terrible pictures. Learn the guitar badly. Grow tomatoes. Get wasted with their friends. Spend six hours trying to complete Dark Souls. Sit under a tree scratching themselves.

It’s their life. Let them live it their way.

Wanting to work as little as possible is not unethical.

Constructing a society capable of freeing people from enormous amounts of unnecessary labour and then teaching them to feel ashamed for wanting to be free of it is unethical.

Forget about “Work Ethic”, there’s nothing ethical about coercing people into throwing away hours, days, weeks, months, years of their lives. I’m so tired of hearing people talk about “work ethic”, makes my blood boil every time I hear the phrase.”

Reddit users spoke up.

This person weighed in.

Another individual shared their thoughts.

This Reddit user spoke up.

If you enjoyed this story, check out this post about an employee who thought HR was doing them a favor, only to realize they were really saving the company money.

And another individual chimed in.

Gee, tell us how you really feel…

Hey, I get it, but you gotta stack that paper if you want to have a decent quality of life!

Hopefully he finds a job that he actually enjoys at some point…

Well, it sounds like this guy isn’t a huge fan of working…

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