Why People Hate Their Jobs
Internationally, 75% to 95% hate their work. There's a reason.
From time to time, we see the statistics of yet another poll on whether people love, like, or hate their jobs. It appears that, regardless of country, the vast majority of people hate their jobs. Yet the media is full of articles about how one must be passionate about one's job, and how this passion leads to success. Business owners advertise for people with passion, and business owners tell how happy they are in their work. In fact, the happiest people are business owners, and the most stressed are middle management. They are caught between the demands of the ownership class and the despair of the working class.
We work because we need the money to survive. That's the only reason we put up with the terrible stress that our jobs engender in our lives.
The Problem Must be the Jobs — Not the People.
When the numbers are this high, there is not even remotely the possibility that this is a problem of attitude, laziness, stupidity, or a lack of suitable skills. The problem is the ownership class — their attitudes, their lack of ethics, their bullying of their staff, the underpay, the lack of fairness in granting rest (sick leave,vacation leave,emergency leave), and their fundamental inhumanity to their workers.
Far from the ownership class being smarter than their workers, they are anything but. The Finland government conducted some research a while ago and found out that business owners had an average IQ of 115. That is on the higher end of average — average ranging from 85 to 115. Genius comes in at 140. To put that in some sort of perspective, my late father and my late brother had IQs of 185. In other words, business owners are not very clever at all.
All these articles about how they share this characteristic or that characteristic miss out on a very essential point — most workers share those traits as well. The one trait that is dominant in business owners (CEOs) that is not dominant in the working classes is psychopathy. Yup. 20% of business owners and CEOs are psychopaths, and while it hasn't been measured, a good many of the rest of them are probably on the spectrum somewhere.
CEOs and business owners are not smarter — they are more ruthless, and they bend the rules, and that's why they make money. And that's why 75% to 95% of working people hate their jobs.
Daily Events at Work
I worked for a good 30 years before I dropped out of work and became a writer. From day one, people in senior positions cheated me, lied to me, sexually harassed me, and took advantage of me in one way or another. In addition to that, goal posts for sales targets kept changing. The more I reached a target and made the commission, the higher they made the target, until it was virtually impossible to reach. Why these people were surprised when I resigned is beyond me.
Like many others, I can tell you story after story. Bosses of any sort tend to be bullies; they tend to look down on those 'beneath' them, and they are generally not as intelligent as some of their workers. I keep hearing these stories over and over again, and I'm sure you can tell me some as well.
I recall about fifteen years ago, a CEO from one of the biggest tech companies in the world (American) was talking to his management staff at the San Diego Convention center. One of the convention staff told me that she asked permission to go into listen. It was granted. She told me that the CEO (I'm not going to mention names) told his staff that they must recruit as many interns as possible to work without pay because their own pay depended on lessening the gap between what 'junior' staff were paid and what executive staff were paid.
In other words, if you're a sales manager, and you want to take home $250,000 a year, you tell your staff they get minimum wage plus commission. Then you keep raising the goals, and while you (and the company) is benefitting from the extra business, the sales staff reponsible for this increase in bounty, get treated like shit, and cheated of their rightful percentage as well.
Office politics is another nightmare. This happens particularly between women. They will scandal and gossip about others, often undermining those whom they consider competition — generally acting as if it's high school all over again. Who isn't familiar with the office gossip? And I'm being kind.
Then there's the theft of work. It has become customary that highly innovative staff sign over their work to the company. They never earn any sort of financial renumeration from the product that they designed or invented. This all goes to the company coffers. The reasoning is that the innovator was paid for his skills, and therefore anything s/he produces belongs to the company. The difficulty is that the innovator often doesn't have the resources to invest in his ideas, so he is forced to work for another. A fair solution would be a 50% split. However, business corporations hold the power, and they are not so much interested in being fair as being as profitable as possible.
Commute Time and Overtime — When Do We Attend to Our Own Lives?
It is amazing how much gets left undone because we spend a few hours traveling to our jobs every day. In addition to that, many of us have been scared to death of leaving on time because we think the boss will think we're not interested in our jobs.
Here's the cold hard fact. We aren't interested in our jobs. Isn't it time we actually told the ownership class that we don't like the job, and if they want us to work for them, then they better give us more money and better working hours? The only reason these people get away with it is because we, the workers, aren't welding the power we have. We allow them to manipulate us.
The 'burn and turn' policy of recruiting staff is well documented. There are school-leavers and college graduates coming off the 'assembly line' every year. They are hired, worked half-way to mental illness, and then they are let go. They are replaced by the next year's arrivals. There's no shortage of new workers.
It's quite something that it's taken a world-wide pandemic to get bosses to realize that we just don't want to work for them. Of course, they're interpreting that to mean that we're lazy. It doesn't occur to them that the kind of people who become bosses aren't nice human beings.-
There will, of course, be blow-back on that remark. No doubt, someone will come back to me and say, "I know the CEO of this and that company. He has millions, and he is a really nice human being." No, he's not. He is paying his low-level workers minimum wage. He is making demands on their time that are unreasonable. You go ask those minimum wage workers, and I can assure you that nice people don't expect others to work in those conditions.
Just a point here. A lot of people confuse 'nice' with 'good.'
Let's Talk about Passion
Repeat after me:
I don't need passion to take the rubbish to the bin.
I don't need passion to give a quick grin.
I don't need passion to take it on the chin,
And I don't need passion to avoid a tempting sin!
Do you know why that ad is looking for someone who is 'passionate about their work?" So that they can pay you peanuts. So that you will work overtime. So that they can use and abuse you. And you're going to take it on the chin because you love your job (passion) so much, that you're never going to say a thing. Um. No, you're not going to say anything because if you say something, your boss will find a way of penalizing you — even costing you your job.
You don't need passion to write. I've been writing for 60 years. Sorry I don't have any passion. I've also been traveling for a life time. I don't have passion. I just don't have passion as a person. Not an ounce of passion exists in me. Yet I've been surprisingly good at most things I've done, and I've had more than one job where I did the work of three people. Oh, that wasn't because I was passionate. I just worked much faster than other people did, and I didn't realize it.
Your lack of passion has nothing to do with your lack of success. There are other reasons.
The Desperation for a Non-Stressful Income
The number of people who are attempting to earn an income on the web where they don't have a boss or a b-with-an-itch is substantial. Most people reach a point where they can't do their jobs anymore.
Then, just to make sure they don't get away from the money-making machine, there are an endless number of coaches, success-gurus, teachers, hawkers of courses, etc. on the web telling you how, you, too, can make $10,000 a month. What they dont' tell you is that a lot of it is luck, and 95% don't make it. I've worked on writing sites since 1999 when I started writing for Associated Content (long gone now). On every single content site I've ever worked on, it's only the top 5% who reach payout — generally around $50 per month. And it's only the top 1% who earn a living.
If you want to earn a living on the web, learn the skills, but don't pay a success-guru for the data you need. Go to the library and get a book and read up. If you want to be a successful writer, be sure that you write well. And be sure that you write on topics that people want to read. From too-much-experience, it's a hit and miss affair. None of us get it right all the time. And make your goals reasonable. It's not necessary to reach the stars when the moon is closer.
That said, let's get back to why people hate their jobs so much.
People Actually Do Like to Work
The idea that people hate their jobs because they don't like to work is erroneous. I love work. I genuinely do. Whether I'm cleaning and tidying up, writing an article, or trying to organize something, I enjoy it. So do many others. What they don't enjoy is a job where there is nit-picking, long hours when they are beyond exhausted, the worry of personal things left undone, and the fact that despite working 40 to 60 hours per week, they still don't make enough to cover the essentials with ease.
We Can Change This NOW
Yes, we can.
Business owners are surprised that people are resigning rather than going back to work. There are reasons for this.
- During the time they were off, they managed to develop another stream of income so they don't need the job anymore.
- They've realized how exchausted and unhappy they were in the job, and they've counted the cost to their health and their families, and they've decided that there are worse things than downsizing and making do.
- They have decided to find something else that is less stressful, and they are still looking. Eventually, when bosses realize that their staff is not coming back, they might be forced into making some changes — shorter working hours, higher salaries, sick leave, 3 weeks paid vacation every year, etc.
I know that there's been a lot of indoctrination concerning careers. I, personally, have never had one bit of interest in a career. That is not what life is about. Life is about experiencing this wonderful earth of ours. It is about planting roses, swimming in the sea, building something with our hands, having coffee with friends, spending time with family, caring for the earth, and more. Life is not about building wealth for someone else. It is not about an hour commute to work, working 9 hours, then another hour home, ducking into McDonalds to get something for supper because you're so tired, and then falling into bed. That is not life.
Do you want a life? Do you hate your job? Let' be honest to those who employ us. Let's tell them their jobs suck, but let's tell them collectively. It's about time they heard that.
Adriano Olivetti (11 April 1901–27 February 1960) was an Italian engineer, politician and industrialist whose entrepreneurial activity thrived on the idea that profit should be reinvested for the benefits of the whole society.He was son of the founder of Olivetti, Camillo Olivetti, and Luisa Revel, the daughter of a prominent Waldensian pastor and scholar. Adriano Olivetti was known worldwide during his lifetime as the Italian manufacturer of Olivetti typewriters, calculators, and computers.Adriano Olivetti succeeded in creating a new and unique factory experience in the world after the Second World War in a historical period in which two great powers were facing each other: capitalism and communism. Olivetti believed that it was possible to create a balance between social solidarity and profit, so much so that the organization of work included an idea of collective happiness that generated efficiency. The workers lived in better conditions than the other large Italian factories: they received higher wages, there were kindergartens and houses near the factory that respected the beauty of the environment, the employees enjoyed agreements.Inside the factory too, the environment was different: during breaks, employees could use libraries, listen to concerts, follow debates, and there was no clear division between engineers and workers, so that knowledge and skills were within reach of all. The company also welcomed artists, writers, designers and poets, since the entrepreneur Adriano Olivetti believed that the factory needed not only technicians but also people capable of enriching the work with creativity and sensitivity.Wikipedia
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