Current Events > Join the anti-work movement (guardian article itt)

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/oct/27/quit-your-job-join-anti-work-movement-elle-hunt

In hindsight, this is embarrassing to admit. But, pre-pandemic, I might honestly have told you that work was the most rewarding part of my life. Even as a child I couldnt wait to get started with my career, rushing through school and university to get on with the main event. Through my 20s I broke up with boyfriends as soon as they started to encroach on my primary relationship: my job.

That relationship was one of the many to fall apart in lockdown, however. By forcing me into my home, freeing up every hour of my day to devote to work, the pandemic swiftly revealed it to be unsustainable, unhealthy and ultimately unrewarding.

In two years, I have gone from an out-and-proud careerist to actively cultivating a mindset that might be called anti-work, and online I have found my community. On Reddit, the antiwork forum has seen enormous growth as people like me increasingly come to our senses; the number of subscribers has increased almost 400% over the past year to reach 900,000.

The forum states its aim as to start a conversation to problematise work as we know it; to resist an approach that values the needs and desires of managers and corporations above and beyond workers; and to imagine a world with unemployment for all, not just the rich!. In its library, it shares recommended reading, such as the late anthropologist David Graebers indictment of bullshit jobs, Bertrand Russells 1932 essay in praise of idleness and fiction with anti-work themes (including Herman Melvilles Bartleby, the Scrivener).

There's an ancestral saying in my culture that goes like this: "Ningn trabajo es malo, lo malo es tener que trabajar."

It means that we must abolish wage slavery and the profit motive.

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This is the kind of thing a bunch of middle schoolers would put together to try to get out of doing chores. These are grown men and woman. How embarrassing.
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Duncanwii posted...

This is the kind of thing a bunch of middle schoolers would put together to try to get out of doing chores. These are grown men and woman. How embarrassing.

Why are you being pro-corporations?

WingsOfGood posted...

Why are you being pro-corporations?

Work is an inevitable part of being an adult. Even I had to get a job at points. These people are being children.
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maybe people should find work that they like instead of complaining that everyone else should feel as they do about hating work.

just a thought.

Last week a user in the US, a bartender, shared messages from their boss, demanding that they come into work at short notice on a Saturday for what would be a ninth consecutive day. When their boss threatened to take away their company benefits, the bartender resigned.

fair enough, but that's not because the bartender "hates" work now does it...

Duncanwii posted...

Work is an inevitable part of being an adult. Even I had to get a job at points. These people are being children.

Not for management, which is the point of all this.
Look at me, I am technically at work today.

CommonGrackle posted...

maybe people should find work that they like instead of complaining that everyone else should feel as they do about hating work.

just a thought.

why

Duncanwii posted...

Work is an inevitable part of being an adult.

No it isn't.

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WingsOfGood posted...

why

WHY shouldn't people find something they enjoy doing? I'm not sure how to answer that.

CommonGrackle posted...

WHY shouldn't people find something they enjoy doing? I'm not sure how to answer that.

Last week a user in the US, a bartender, shared messages from their boss, demanding that they come into work at short notice on a Saturday for what would be a ninth consecutive day. When their boss threatened to take away their company benefits, the bartender resigned.

fair enough, but that's not because the bartender "hates" work now does it...

I think you might be starting to get it.

CommonGrackle posted...

WHY shouldn't people find something they enjoy doing? I'm not sure how to answer that.

Pretty hard to find what you enjoy doing with the amount of gatekeeping, shitty hiring practices, abusive employers, low wages, etc.,

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EmbraceOfDeath posted...

No it isn't.

for the bottom caste it is at the moment

perhaps that is what he meant?

Work itself is good, its work under capitalism that is bad.

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Shablagoo posted...

Work itself is good, its work under capitalism that is bad.

care to explain? work under socialism is good?

I just want to point out that the TC did not write those words; maybe he just forgot to put quotes.

also, while I can goof off at work and post here

I would rather be doing something more fulfilling

but if I did that, I would make less money

that is a problem

WingsOfGood posted...

care to explain? work under socialism is good?

In theory, yes. Workers would have democratic say over their wages, work hours and the specifics of how they work.

Like if everybody gets their tasks done for the day within 3 hours of work, they could all decide to just go home for the day.

Whereas currently, people are forced to be in the office for 8 hours because their boss says so, even if they only need 3 hours of actual production to meet goals.

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WingsOfGood posted...

Reddit

Oh there we go that explains it.
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WingsOfGood posted...

care to explain? work under socialism is good?

Basically, yeah, when youre not getting exploited work can be good. People need to do things for society to function.

If the capitalist class werent robbing people of so much we would individually be working wayyy fewer hours than we are now.

Automation can help with that as well as long as we dont let the capitalists just use it to further exploit people, instead allowing it to ease all of our burdens.

But a fully-automated utopia where no one has to work at all is probably many lifetimes away.

P.S. I agree with the general sentiment of the topic completely, about things like bullshit jobs and all that, just sharing some thoughts.

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Our society literally creates busywork jobs that don't need to exist, all because of this perpetuated myth that everyone needs to contribute to society with this bullshit.

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Shablagoo posted...

But a fully-automated utopia where no one has to work at all is probably many lifetimes away.

Until we get to a Star Trek utopia, all we have in the meantime is an ambiguous choice of which liberties we surrender at any given moment.

gunplagirl posted...

Our society literally creates busywork jobs that don't need to exist, all because of this perpetuated myth that everyone needs to contribute to society with this bullshit.

It's also a status thing for higher-ups.
"Look at how many assistants I have helping me do my very hard and extremely productive job! Anyway, see you at 2 for martinis."

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One personal anecdote I should mention.

My job can easily be done from home. They've given me a company laptop and a work phone to use. I have access to the corporate VPN. My job only requires me to dispatch technicians via the ticketing software and call businesses up to confirm appointments. Any communication between me and my team can be done via Teams or Skype or however we choose to go about it.

But instead I have to commute to the office every morning for....reasons. It doesn't make much sense, and the company could probably find better ways to use the money they're spending on office space, but....

I would imagine everybody I work with would just decide to work from home. But we have no say over that.

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Who wants to work as an entitled American I just want to enjoy the fruits of other peoples labor and play video games some one has got to make the dew and doritos it just isn't going to be me.

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gunplagirl posted...

Our society literally creates busywork jobs that don't need to exist, all because of this perpetuated myth that everyone needs to contribute to society with this bullshit.

I feel like everybody has SOME way they can meaningfully contribute to society, but since a lot of labor isn't financially compensated (or at least doesn't pay well), we sort of get pigeonholed into jobs that don't serve any real purpose.

It's how a lot of people grow up to be 30-something not knowing what the hell they want from life.

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ElatedVenusaur posted...

It's also a status thing for higher-ups.
"Look at how many assistants I have helping me do my very hard and extremely productive job! Anyway, see you at 2 for martinis."

Oh yeah, supervisors getting paid without understanding what those who do the actual work have to do.

RchHomieQuanChi posted...

I feel like everybody has SOME way they can meaningfully contribute to society, but since a lot of labor isn't financially compensated (or at least doesn't pay well), we sort of get pigeonholed into jobs that don't serve any real purpose.

It's how a lot of people grow up to be 30-something not knowing what the hell they want from life.

Disabled people exist. Not everyone can even sit up on their own.

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My own experience from Whole Foods is this:

Most of the managers spend 90% of their shifts in back. They actually have work to do, especially since they are now responsible for stuff like payroll(lol), but a lot of their work is checking in with store leadership and/or regional and reporting on how they're doing on whatever BS goals corporate assigns them. My manager is super lazy and spends a lot of time emailing lame memes to the supervisors and also works a lot of overtime. So far as I can tell, the assistant manager does 75+% of the actual work.

Meanwhile, we have five registers open on a busy Saturday and no one bagging because we're so severely understaffed. At least one supervisor or boothie must be at the booth at all times because people are constantly returning Amazon crap(at least half of them have no idea how this works). 90% of the time they leave without buying anything.

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gunplagirl posted...

Disabled people exist. Not everyone can even sit up on their own.

Plenty of disabled people have things they can do. The current job market just doesn't value them.

But regardless, I'm not arguing that they should be forced to work, especially if society produces enough to care for these people.

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WingsOfGood posted...

Why are you being pro-corporations?

Because Duncan needs his subway.

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"Find something to do" are the 4 most dreaded words in the human language. Also, why the fuck aren't you allowed to SIT on the job? I will be exactly as efficient sitting as standing, and I also won't be in pain.

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My job is fine other than that I don't get paid enough. I mean things have definitely gotten worse these past two years in terms of the how efficiently the store is operating. But I'm never expected to do more than the 40 hours I'm scheduled for.

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Garioshi posted...

"Find something to do" are the 4 most dreaded words in the human language. Also, why the fuck aren't you allowed to SIT on the job? I will be exactly as efficient sitting as standing, and I also won't be in pain.

It's all about appearances. They want us to be Stepford wives. If we sit down, even if we're busting our asses off, that's seen as 'laying down on the job'.

People are treated like machines. Except machines break down too, so what does that say about a far more fragile human body?

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Quicksilver posted...

Who wants to work as an entitled American I just want to enjoy the fruits of other peoples labor and play video games some one has got to make the dew and doritos it just isn't going to be me.

are you un american?

Duncanwii posted...

This is the kind of thing a bunch of middle schoolers would put together to try to get out of doing chores. These are grown men and woman. How embarrassing.

you don't even work bro

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Umbreon posted...

It's all about appearances. They want us to be Stepford wives. If we sit down, even if we're busting our asses off, that's seen as 'laying down on the job'.

People are treated like machines. Except machines break down too, so what does that say about a far more fragile human body?

100%. One of my fellow cashier assistants(*) has been a boot for months now due to inflammation around her Achilles tendon. She asked if it would be ok to sit down on occasion, and they told her she can only sit on break.
It's also a status thing as well.

*We get carts from the lot, bring out and stock bags, that sort of thing. We're constantly moving when it's busy.

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This might be going too far.

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F1areaGaman posted...

This might be going too far.

?

I'm positive I will get the job I want as soon as the reason for having it is done away with

...sarcasm

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I'm a person who concretely believes in a 30-hour work week, that people should never have to work weekends if they don't want to, and I support the concept of a modest UBI... and yet I find this article fucking lolzy.
Trying to give everyone a means to never work again is a race to the bottom that nobody wins. If they want to reform worker's rights, that's fine. But then call it work reform, not literally "anti-work". (Unless the principles of it quite literally are to be a lazy fuck, in which case by all means)

Here's an idea: instead of whining that your entry-level position at OfficeCo has too many hours and that you're mad at executives getting more money than you, go look for a small business to work with more flexibility, with owners who treat you better.

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