I was in a bit of a soft argument (where nobody was insulting another or being cutthroat and illogical) with a friend about something they were venting about. And we got to a part of the discussion where he admitted that he would rather be a 'robot' who wakes up, looks in the mirror, goes about their job and is 'okay' with it.
Like he didn't understand why it is that people seek so much escapism to be away from dealing with the bleak, always-gloomy mentality of work. I brought up a point that we're all essentially working our asses off to make other people's lives better than ours, those people being managers/CEOs/Executives.
And that we need our escapism to better handle it. Because that's really the reality of work as it is now and has been for essentially decades and decades. It's not that we can't accept the reality, because we already do, it's when we have to step away from our homes, spend however many hours in places we don't like being in, exhausting ourselves, stressing ourselves, spending however long in commute back and to. That's our way of accepting the reality as much as we hate it.
I respect my friend for being one of the few that can just shrug it off and go about business as usual. But, I don't like it when people look down at others and wonder "why do you play so much video games?" or "why do you just binge so many shows and movies?" .etc
...Why not? What's the alternative? Just work ourselves like "ohhh boy! I can't wait to get all of these bills in the mail, both electronically and physically! oh boy!". As well as just get excited for yet another drawn out workday where some of us fear for our jobs?
That's not how things should be, to me. It never should've been like this.
In a different time, under different assumptions, meritocracy can happen. Working and working a lot in that kind of environment, enriches yourself, your company and society, without a downside.
Overtime you put in, may be more work, but it's temporary, necessary, because you in your job doing the overtime, helps orders of magnitude more, in critical situations, than other people can, or maybe there is actually nobody else to do the job and the job doesn't get done. E.g. specialized surgeons saving lives. And that effort and overtime would be recognized and rewarded under those assumptions as well.
Somebody who has worked extraordinary amounts, would have put in extraordinary effort. They would be community champions.
It's important to recognize that clash of assumptions.
His words, or yours?