Miserable at work? You're not alone, so let's laugh at it. Think of the most depressing aspect of your work. Someone has it worse, and now you can feel better about yourself. You're welcome.
NecessaryZombie asked working misers of Reddit: What's the most depressing way you can describe your job?
Submissions have been edited for clarity, context, and profanity.
The woe of payroll, perhaps.
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I constantly stare at the screen making sure people get paid more than me.
Gotta learn somehow.
I force students to use their non-existent English skills by pretending I don't speak their native language.
That's what Reddit is for.
It's 8:17 and I'm already done with actual work but have to sit here until 5 anyway.
Those poor, poor IT specialists. Oy vey.
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If you took a second to google the problem, I'd lose 75% of my workload.
Literally programming yourself into obscurity.
The company doesn't want to pay people to mindlessly press buttons all day so I write scripts that mindlessly press buttons for me, then watch as the computer accomplishes in five minutes what would take me an entire day to get done.
Then every once in a while they tell me to make the computer mindlessly press some buttons but I can't, so I have to spend the rest of my day pretending I'm the computer.
Someone has to keep people like me away.
I go to a construction site all night and sit and watch a fence till the sun comes up.
Too much?
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Occasionally I sit in a chair and get called the devil by little old ladies who believe they're in hell. More often I'm a professional a** wiper.
Any guesses?
I use very subjective and limited information to determine if people are lying to me, and my performance is based solely on whether or not my coworkers agree with my decision.
Delivery driver of some sort?
I deliver poisonous food to lazy people who are often overweight and otherwise sick from eating the wrong thing. I drive in some of the most dangerous traffic in America (Dallas, TX). My first year on the job some teenagers plowed into the front wheel of my car while I had the right-of-way in a parking lot, a few days before Christmas. A few weeks ago a big orange traffic barrel rolled right out in front of me and I was forced to swerve into an under-construction entrance ramp in order to avoid being in a huge accident.
People who work in retail have stomachs made of stone.
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I'm at the mercy of suits and plebs at least 50, mostly closer to 60 hours a week. I'm a retail manager. The suits are always pressuring for better efficiency and goal hitting while the plebs are pissed eggs went up 10 cents and want to return an item they bought 7 years ago but don't have their receipt.
An editor, perhaps?
I have to check the work of people much smarter than I am to make sure they don't make stupid, stupid mistakes.
If I miss one of the stupid mistakes, I'm the one who gets in trouble, not the smart person who made the stupid mistake in the first place.
This is deep, for a signmaker.
I arrange shapes and colors in an attempt to communicate a message, but also to make it pleasing and/or intrusive to the viewer, depending on the context. Sometimes this kills the soul piece by piece, other times it makes me feel powerful because people like me have already gotten to you and messed with your brain in ways some of you possibly can't comprehend, whether you'd like to admit it or not.
Horrible side effects working with it include, but are not limited to: never being able to look at packaging/signs/menus/posters etc the same way as before, and becoming somewhat of an arrogant dick that people don't much care for, for reasons they might not even get themselves. But then I have to remind them that it's because of people like me that they might get out of a building on fire safely, and/or get out of accidents etc with their lives and limbs intact too.
We have a winner.
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Hotel housekeeping. If it comes out of the human body, I've cleaned it up. I started in a by-the-hour motel when I was 14, owned by a woman who didn't bother with hazardous waste procedure and cleaned up what looked like a murder scene with nothing but bleach and kitchen gloves. I walked into that room, and was absolutely positive that when I pulled the shower curtain open there was going to be a body in the bathtub. Thankfully there wasn't, just blood everywhere. Owner refused to let me report it, made me clean it, and I didn't want to get in shit for bleaching a murder scene at 14 so I never did call the cops.
