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When I was a teenager, I thought Office Space was representative of real life. Yeah, you'd have to show up to a job you hate, but at least you could openly hate it and call out its bullshit brainwashing culture to your friends and coworkers. You could all be united in a "this is fucking stupid, no one actually enjoys this, and all the weird office mannerisms, politics, and minutia are only bought into by the tools who no one likes."
20 years later, that wasn't really true. People seem to buy into the BS, or at least keep plausible deniability about it, such that you never really know. You can't openly call this out to your acquaintances, because you need rely on them for job referrals.
I don't know if this is a real difference between the 90s and 2010s/2020s, or maybe it's just the way it's always been. But it would seem the honesty and rebellious "fuck the man" attitude of the 90s has given way to the "live the hustle" attitude of the 2010s.
Maybe our economic situation being such shit has enforced this, since people don't have the ability to stick it to the man by even pretending they can opt out anymore. Unemployment in the late 90s was around 4%. It's possible that major economic shocks like the 2008 crisis or recent inflation changed how people think about job security.
Maybe also social media caused this, the same way it (in my opinion) caused the major ramp up in politics in the past 15 years. LinkedIn has turned everyone into their own personal brand. In the 90s - or at least in the Office Space/Fight Club version of the 90s - you clocked in and clocked out. Now you're expected to be passionate about quarterly earnings, and if you want to be secure in getting that next job after you're laid off from your current one, you better make sure you have a passionate public image, too. Note also, globalization may have something to do with this as well, since you're competing in a global market now, so you need to be better than more than just the local competition.
I posit that maybe being in a world where everyone seems to believe and live the BS has similar negative effects as social media does for causing people depression due to the highlight reel effect. The plausible deniability of "everyone seems to buy into this crap" makes others pretend to buy in too. This has obvious political parallels as well.
This is nothing new at least for me, it is Havel's greengrocer problem all the way down. Majority of the CW stuff also comes down to this, especially related to corporate environment where people are softly pushed into wearing rainbow keychains or attend Women at X lectures etc.
But there is also something to be said for maintaining positive attitude toward your work in general. I dislike 24x7 grumpy whiners, who are just doom and gloom about everything, poisoning the well for everybody else. A company gives you a gift card as a present - oh my god, those stupid fuckers should have given cash instead. These people are sometimes pain in the ass to be around, in the end there is a time to stop whining, grit your teeth and just move forward.
Poisoning the well is now present quite explicitly with a new "trend" of so called quiet quitting - because of course everything is now a TikTok trend - which is basically just the idea of punching the card, doing what is necessary and come home to family or church or you garden or other hobbies where you self-actualize. You know, the thing most factory workers were doing for centuries. Except now, it is a life philosophy and some people see it as a mission in their life, it is their hobby they do when they come home from work. They expect to be hailed as a new Socrates or maybe even Karl Marx, awakening white collar class to their oppression and pointlessness of their work and achievements and everything. They think that Wally from Dilbert is a role model to be followed, where the goal is to become corporate ninja and sabotage the company as much as possible without getting caught, instead of a comical relief.
As with all things, everything in moderation.
This attitude doesn’t end when these people punch out and leave. Some people are just miserable wretches to be around, whose first pleasure is in finding something to complain about with everything.
I haven’t just seen it with the old. I’ve seen it among the newcomers onto the labor force. These are the new lineup of complainers and whiners to yell, kicking and screaming as you drag them through the day. It wasn’t just inculcated in me as a kid that this is the wrong attitude to have. It’s an attitude that simply doesn’t work. After you stand around shouting that there’s so much work to do and you’ve tired yourself out; your work is still going to be sitting there, waiting for you.
Anyone that’s ever actually tried this knows it’s harder to be lazy at the extremes than it is being productive. Because at some point most of us have tried it. Go ahead. Let your dishes pile up in the sink until everything is overflowing. Don’t wash your clothes so you smell like a walking piece of shit to everyone. You’ll find it much harder to live life that way than staying on top of your own affairs.
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