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30 Painfully Relatable Work Memes That Show The Dystopian Reality We Already Live In
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.
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Chihuahua Mama 2 years ago
And in the latter, you've actually lost something you can't get back (pun not intended)
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James S 2 years ago
Over and above performance in a large corporation is a career disaster. All you're doing is raising the floor for what is "good enough" performance. And great performance very rarely generates a worthwhile return, for example, as a salaried employee working late over many weeks isn't going to result in extra pay or bonus that is equivalent to your normal pay (unless OT is paid). At best you'll get a tiny uptick in your annual pay increases or bonus. Instead, if you work for a large corporation, you need to decipher what result would be considered "good enough" and then work the absolute minimum to achieve to this, whilst keeping busy. That way you maximise your pay to effort ratio, achieve all your objectives and don't have capacity for anything more. P.s. I've worked in large corporations for 25 years, 15 of them as a manager. Take it from me, the last thing you want is be noticed as a high flyer. Your co-workers will hate you, your manager will pile more work on you while keeping you away from other internal jobs and promotions.
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.
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Junebugjump! 2 years ago
Exactly. In America, you're not set up to win but to serve unless you're in the 1%. Then no matter how f*****g stupid you are, you fall up. Look at Trump and his kids. Lord almighty!
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.
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UncleRussian 2 years ago
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.
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Jennik 2 years ago
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.
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Isa's left eye 2 years ago
This needs to be someone's signature line at the end of every email
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Vasana Phong 2 years ago
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.
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Wysteria_Rose 2 years ago
My husband's boss will do this. If someone approaches her with their two weeks, she just gets upset and tells them to not bother, that they can just leave...so then the rest of the team has two weeks where they COULD have had help but she's too mad to care.
Mark Stewart 2 years ago
Employers loved to dangle the carrot that going the extra mile would be looked upon favourably for bonuses, promotions, etc and employees have slowly woken up to the fact it's actually a stick and counts for absolutely nothing when the company decides they want to get rid of you. Management don't like they're being given the same loyalty they ultimately show their staff.
Jennik 2 years ago
Employee expertise, loyalty, long service, and dedication count for NOTHING when a company decides to get rid of someone. And they'll use all sorts of underhand tactics to make the severance as cheap for the company as possible.
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Christie Egendoerfer 2 years ago
Yes and no. We had an employee who tried to talk everyone into walking out at the same time because this person was upset even though it had nothing to do with us.
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François Carré 2 years ago
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.
#21
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.
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Mylittlecorgi 2 years ago
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."
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Miss Walker 2 years ago
I also do. Remember that Malcolm quote : " You can't beat the system, but you can surely break it down".
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Wysteria_Rose 2 years ago
And I head straight to the airport and buy a ticket to somewhere far, far away and just turn my phone off.
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Chihuahua Mama 2 years ago
My hunter-gatherer skills suck so this is my only chance at survival...
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Analyn Lahr 2 years ago
It's always the same at my work. Especially when we have several batches of the same product to inspect in a row.
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Brendan (banned for downvotes) 2 years ago
If only my career involved the study of these natural splendours.
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TheAmericanAmerican 2 years ago
*Sigh* Taxes aren't the problem, people. Taxes are required for a society/civilization to operate. It's WHERE the taxes are going that are the problem. Over 25% of every tax dollar goes to the military. Most developed countries spend around 2% of their tax revenue on their militaries. We give the oil corporations(literally the most profitable corporations in history) tax subsidies for "Research & Development" for "new technologies" in the energy sector... You'd have to be a child to not realize that those subsidies are going into stock by-backs and shady pockets.
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rob 2 years ago
A little over a hundred years ago many people had it so much worse. There are still places in the world were people work as slaves or seven days a week in sweat shops but we complain like we in the first world countries have the worst deal ever because you work 5 days a week. Look at how many people in the world live in horrible conditions and stop feeling sorry for yourself.
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Crazy Meerkat Lady 2 years ago
Stress is the holy grail of weight loss, make that weight and hair loss...
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Brendan (banned for downvotes) 2 years ago
Following my manager (alone) to the meeting room feels like walking the green mile.
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Andrew Vince 2 years ago
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.
Wren Hard 2 years ago
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
Amelia 2 years ago
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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Allison S 2 years ago
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.
Angi 2 years ago
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... Andrew Vince 2 years ago
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.
Wren Hard 2 years ago
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
Amelia 2 years ago
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... Allison S 2 years ago
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.
Angi 2 years ago
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.
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