Our only purpose in this world is to be uncomfortable

[Tintypographer]

We exist for the purpose of discomfort. I am convinced of this. We are not here for joy or love or peace. Ultimately those things end and we are faced with discomfort, despair and stress. Our lives and careers consist of being produced to do things no one would do. The less desirable a task is, the more there are requirements to do it. We must be reminded and prodded to do things we don't want to do and cause us discomfort. From standing in line at the DMV to completing required annual training forgetting careers where our jobs are to convince others to spend money. We exist to be uncomfortable. I believe the revulsion to suicide is a sociological version of an evolutionary trait for preventing the loss of members who could share some of the burdens and pain. Without those to do the bidding of others eventually all the power and money in the world can't make a painful unimportant task disappear. You must have someone to do the drudgeryl!

I was once contacted about a consulting role: I didn't want to do the work and didn't need the job. I didn't mind helping a bit with the advising as I knew the company and the leadership but I knew that there are parts of the work scope related to regulatory requirements that I simply don't enjoy. I told the company that I would advise and answer questions for free but I would not accept a contract or payment and I reserved the right to decline to participate in any regulatory or quality assurance work at all. The amount of anger and vitriol that came out of the teams there was very intense. They were mad at me for not wanting to take their money and for not wanting to do the work.

I believe we have reached a point in the world where more people are employed to do work to simply eliminate risk and prive things aren't someone's fault than people who actually produce things that are useful.

I hate this and it makes me live without hope.

I work for a mega company of over 100k employees. They have an annual "cybersecurity" , "privacy" "sexual harassment" required training. Everyone must take it and score a certain percentage on the exam. I was responsible for the data associated with showing compliance and that included a survey about the training. Nearly 98 percent felt it was a waste of time. The only want to have compliance is to force people to take it by having a deadline where if you don't complete it by a certain date you don't get your annual bonus.

So we have built something that is COMPLETELY REQUIRED and is so loathed and so considered that it is a waste of time that the only way to get people to do it is to THREATEN THEM WITH THEIR PAY all for the purpose of collecting attestations so that someone can't sue the company for breaches in the stuff that the program is training. The program is in fact teaching you not to do something. We have a system in place that requires statistical validation to prove that over 100k people have been trained not to do things and everyone considers it a waste of time.

We are already in hell. The rock that Sisyphus rolls uphill: it is our existence.

 

[Forever Sleep]

I was initially shocked when you said the company you offered your expertise to for free rejected you and with such disdain. Thinking about it though- I bet it's because you've shown them you're too smart and too ethical to play by their ridiculous rules. You won't play the game and I bet it shows them up.

They must realise it's all baloney but they're willing to play along and take the pay cheque- even though there are better ways of doing/not doing things.

Pointless meetings and 'training' really irritate me also. Makes you wonder just how much money is spent on stuff that doesn't really benefit anyone. (Not to say all meetings/courses are pointless but a lot seem to be!)

 

[FuneralCry]

It does seem as though life is just endless problems and suffering. I agree that we live in hell. Humans have to endure so much all for the sake of it, there could never be a point to living.

 

[Tintypographer]

I had a number of projects in an area called HR analytics at my company. We are big with over 100 k employees. Many projects are survey related and overwhelmingly we have learned that people prefer remote work where it is possible.

The primary reasons: lack of commute, flexibility, family, lack fo interruptions. Most preferred a hybrid model of say 20 percent in office and 80 percent at home. Where it works is the jobs like customer service, coding, testing, analytics and reporting, and things similar to that. It's harder with manufacturing. The employees love it.

The group who hates it: supervisors. They overwhelmingly prefer to have employees under direct supervision.

I think that often leaders are absolutely afraid of people enjoying work. It's as though the belief is that enjoying your job is stealing from the company. If the work is not uncomfortable and hated then they don't feel good about paying for it.

I wonder if Michaelangelo enjoyed painting the Sistine chapel and the priests decided that his paintbrushes should be made of lead and weigh 25 lbs and he should have to be stung by bees during the work to make sure it was uncomfortable enough.

On the consulting work I mentioned, it was regulatory quality assurance. And it sucks. No one likes to do it. Even people who do it for a living hate it. The work is about proving that potential errors in manufacturing or a quality system can't happen but the proof is not simply showing the error is fixed, you have to write these long horrible justifications about how you changed your quality monitoring and proved it was changed then retrained people and why the corrective action was not caught before and what was wrong with the quality system.

It's all stuff I hate and it's why I left that company in the first place. I don't want to do it. And I changed career. I think because I did the work before and it's so horrible and complex that they want someone to just do the work for them and when I chose to agree to help but not be paid and abjectly refuse to do that work they realized that they had to do it themselves and by not paying me they knew there was no leverage. I'm sure that's frustrating but it tells me again that in the world of today, work is complete crap that ai mainly justifying garbage no one cares about to avoid legal liability. It doesn't matter what you do, most of your effort will go into limiting liability. We are squabbling leeches all trying to win and there will never be an end to the race.

 

[hellispink]

I have always felt like people are just slaves for others wishes and dreams. There is no point on this miserable existence for me.