Wake, work, sleep, repeat is a reductive, but painfully relatable way to describe many people’s daily routine. As with many troubles in life, we cope with the power of humor. Bad weather, bad bosses, hard times, misfortune, all can be contextualized and compartmentalized with a little good humor.
So this Instagram account gathers the best memes about just how bad workplaces can be. So prepare yourself and get comfortable as you scroll through, be sure to upvote the most relatable posts, and comment your own workplace tales below.
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The tone of many of these posts varies from comforting other employees to a simmering hostility. It’s true that a lot of workers in this day and age are growing more and more fed up with workplace conditions and poor management. Employee turnover is growing as people have started to just quit when conditions are no longer suitable.
Another growing and supplementary trend is that workers are also getting better at sniffing out if a workplace is ultimately for them or not. In 2021, nearly half of all resignations were from people who had worked at a position for less than one year. Workers are no longer content to spend half a decade suffering with no promotions, now a company has to prove itself in a number of months.
And in the latter, you've actually lost something you can't get back (pun not intended)
I get paid per job. My productivity is through the roof. I love being busy.
Combine these two statistics and it becomes clear that a large proportion of workplaces are just hostile to life. Even the name of the aforementioned Instagram account is just a reflection of what people tend to feel about work and workplace conditions. The risk of it taking forever to find a new job has also diminished, as more than a third of workers surveyed in one study indicated that they were ready to quit before finding a backup plan.
You should have been born to rich parents. Things get a lot easier when you start out with lots of money.
Research into why workers quit has found all sorts of reasons, but the number one culprit is pretty predictable: bad bosses. Management was cited by almost 60% of US workers who voluntarily left their jobs, indicating issues like harassment, bullying, or just plain old incompetence. A bad boss has a palpable, almost measurable effect on a workplace and tends to drag down everything.
Yup. If an interviewer is unhappy with your answer just ask "So what's the motivation of this company"
Turnover isn’t cheap. Companies need to factor in the cost of finding a new worker, training them, and the subsequent drop in productivity while the post remains open and while a new hire comes up to speed. Some bosses attempt to justify their tyranny by stating that it ultimately benefits the company. But research shows that this mentality drives away the workforce and the vast majority of resignations could have been prevented had the right steps been taken.
My last manager had the memory of a goldfish with dementia. I emailed EVERYTHING to her. If we had a verbal conversation I emailed a summary of it afterwards. An almost daily satisfaction was forwarding emails when she claimed I had/hadn't done something that she had/hadn't asked for. Although in hindsight a lot of her behaviour was probably deliberate gaslighting as she was trying to bully me into leaving.
Similarly, empirical evidence suggests that job satisfaction is actually pretty closely related to productivity. A motivated worker has fewer reasons to slack off and doesn’t have to constantly manage workplace-induced depression or stress. Similarly and less directly, job satisfaction leads to better worker retention, and experienced workers tend to be more effective, and efficient and bring other complimentary benefits to their team.
This needs to be someone's signature line at the end of every email
After work it’s me time, no I don’t want to go to happy hour with my department, waiting 8 hours to leave and go see my cat
But, as we have seen here, job satisfaction has been plummeting lately. This silver lining is that workers can get a little boost of dopamine when they finally get up and quit. Some studies suggest that quitting actually has a positive effect on reducing the symptoms of depression. This, of course, also means that workplaces can be and often are the direct cause of these symptoms, but that, unfortunately, goes without saying these days.
Because capitalism has managed to individualize everything to a point most of us have internalized selfishness and loneliness as "human nature", and deeply believe life is just about everyone struggling against everyone - while the only reason our ancestors somehow managed to survive and make it through poverty and disasters until when we were born was a sense of community and solidarity.
At the end of the day, the trends at workplaces around the world show that something needs to change. Workers spend less and less time at the same job, with the average length of employment at one company having fallen to roughly two years these days. The cost of replacement in the US is over fifteen thousand dollars, on average, per employee, plus whatever the incidental costs of having a job position empty. Companies need to assess if they can really afford to keep churning through workers like this if they want to stay in business.
Do you suppose it might also be that, as we get older, we have a lot more responsibilities? People have kids to care for, maybe an older family member needs help, there are organizations that a person volunteers for, the dog needs to be walked, and so forth. I'm not sure we can lay all the blame on "capitalism."
I also do. Remember that Malcolm quote : " You can't beat the system, but you can surely break it down".
And I head straight to the airport and buy a ticket to somewhere far, far away and just turn my phone off.
My hunter-gatherer skills suck so this is my only chance at survival...
It's always the same at my work. Especially when we have several batches of the same product to inspect in a row.
Note: this post originally had 49 images. It’s been shortened to the top 30 images based on user votes.
Sisyphus was punished by the Gods by having to push a boulder up a hill, When he reached the top of the hill the boulder rolled back down to the bottom. He had to repeat this futile task for eternity, Why a boulder? Because emails hadn't been invented yet.
Sometimes when you get overwhelmed, you just have to remember the 20,20,20 rule: take 20 deep breaths, then count to 20, the disappear and live in the forest for 20 years
this made me laugh 'cause I'm in the forest right now hiding on a tree. 20 years to go and I'll be all set for work tomorrow.
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Being told I’m not being positive enough one week by one boss. Being told my problem is I’m “too nice” the following week by another boss. Me + Head + Swivel = overworked, underpaid, and exhausted.
I got in trouble at work twice in one month. First for being to nice then for being to mean. Now I just say mean things with a smile and it seems to work.
Load More Replies... Sisyphus was punished by the Gods by having to push a boulder up a hill, When he reached the top of the hill the boulder rolled back down to the bottom. He had to repeat this futile task for eternity, Why a boulder? Because emails hadn't been invented yet.
Sometimes when you get overwhelmed, you just have to remember the 20,20,20 rule: take 20 deep breaths, then count to 20, the disappear and live in the forest for 20 years
this made me laugh 'cause I'm in the forest right now hiding on a tree. 20 years to go and I'll be all set for work tomorrow.
Load More Replies... Being told I’m not being positive enough one week by one boss. Being told my problem is I’m “too nice” the following week by another boss. Me + Head + Swivel = overworked, underpaid, and exhausted.
I got in trouble at work twice in one month. First for being to nice then for being to mean. Now I just say mean things with a smile and it seems to work.
Load More Replies...