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Stab

I work for the Department of Work and Pensions in the UK, delivering benefits to the public.

I hate my job.

I work on the top floor on a five story building, in a large open plan office, with around 60 other workers on the same floor. We work on a flexi arrangement, starting when we want and finishing when we want - providing we have done 7 hours and 24 minutes that day, and 37 hours that week. Over 600 staff work in the building, and so it is cramped and over used.

I generally arrive at 07.15am, the earliest I am allowed to. Put my things in my locker and take out my work shoes and I hang my jacket on a peg. I then proceed into the main office and wish "good morning" (for the first of a hundred times that day) to the first faceless person I come across. I walk across the floor like ghost and sit at my desk. A colleague is always there before me - a forty something, and she is good evidence that insects have learnt to mimic human behaviour. She asks me how my weekend was, though she neither cares nor expects an answer, but she is a habitual insect and asks out of sheer repetition.

The day begins it slow descent into banality and boredom and I cease to exist. The essential thing that is me has taken a back seat, replaced by an automaton, and I go through the motions, the repetion - I talk, answer the phone, fill out my forms, tap on my keyboard, but it is all without any sense of purpose or meaning. I do it because I am expected to do it, and to those around me I do it well, but inside I am dead, a nothing, a nobody, a loathsome office non-entity and I hate myself for it.

4.00pm comes, and the end of the day. I wish a "good evening" to all the ghosts I pass, and I leave the building, and slowly the automoton dissipates and I return. The machine is stored away to take control the next day, and for the rest of the day I exist.

We all go through these motions, slaves to the wage. We promise ourselves that things will be different, that we will get better jobs, that we will find ourselves in a rewarding career. Yes, we will, and we will start the ball rolling tomorrow .. always tomorrow. We lie to ourselves, lazy creatures of habit and repetition, for we know that tomorrow never comes and that the next day is merely a mirror of this day and nothing changes, we do it all again, that we have already done.

We are ghosts and self-deceivers. Fools.

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Wow, that sucks...
Submitted by wageslaveZ on Sun, 05/18/2008 - 00:45.

And here I thought public service was it's own reward... Keep it evil.

Join in my
Join in my child
and listen ...
Digging through
My old numb shadow

My shadow's
Shedding skin
and I've been picking
scabs again.
I'm down
digging through
my old muscles
for a clue.
I've been crawling on my belly
clearing out what could've been.
I've been wallowing in my own confused
and insecure delusions
for a piece to cross me over
or a word to guide me in.
I wanna feel the changes coming down.
I wanna know what I've been hiding
in (my shadow. 2x)
Change is coming through my shadow.
My shadow's
shedding skin.
I've been picking
my scabs again.

Join in my
Join in my child,
my shadow moves,
closer to me

I've been crawling on my belly
clearing out what could've been
I've been wallowing in my own chaotic,
insecure delusions.
I wanna feel the change consume me,
feel the outside turning in.
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and
cleansing I've endured in,
(my shadow. 2x)
Change is coming.
Now is my time.
Listen to my muscle memory.
Contemplate what I've been clinging to.
Forty-six and two ahead of me.

I,
choose to live and to,
grow,
take and give and to,
move,
learn and love and to,
cry,
kill and die and to,
be,
paranoid and to,
lie,
hate and fear and to,
do,
what it takes to move through.

I choose to live and to,
lie,
kill and give and to,
die,
learn and love and to,
do,
what it takes to step through.

See my shadow changing,
stretching up and over me
soften this old armor.
Hoping I can clear the way by
stepping through my shadow,
coming out the other side.
Step into the shadow.
Forty six and two
are just ahead of me.

(Tool: 46 and 2)

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i want to shoot myself
Submitted by jas22 on Thu, 06/12/2008 - 15:53.

Dole, that was the most depresing thing ive read in a while (save for 2 baltimore toddlers being shot at random while in a public pool).

what you wrote could easily have come from my mind, especially this part:

"We promise ourselves that things will be different, that we will get better jobs, that we will find ourselves in a rewarding career...always tomorrow..."

ive been perusing this message board for FIVE years now, i think! ive stopped betting on a "rewarding career", because i just dont know what i want to do.

but i hope your routine getts better for you.

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Jas22, i know about the kids too, I am near Baltimore
Submitted by wolfietherat on Fri, 06/13/2008 - 04:53.

Are you? Everyday you are learning and becoming a better person. Don't let your job define you, that is just something you are doing for money now. It is not your life.
Don't shoot yourself. If you are in Baltimore, I would go to, say, Howard county, if you are in balto, you know, and look for work.

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