I am pathologically apathetic about work.

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

A friend asked me how often I get performace evaluations tied to salary increases at work, and was a little shocked when I told him I had no idea. Clearly to him, this was something a person would know, and he couldn’t imagine someone not knowing this.

My reasoning for not knowing is simply that I don’t care. I just don’t care. I like my job okay, I like the people okay, my pay isn’t fantastic but I get by, and I just don’t care. It’s a job. It’s what I do to get a check to buy things with. I honestly don’t care beyond that.

I don’t care about the office politics. I don’t care who is getting promoted or hired or fired or whatnot. I don’t care about what’s going on in the Sales division. Just tell me what you want me to do today and leave me alone while I do it. I come in at 7:30 and I leave at 4:00 and I don’t plan at all on thinking about this place except in between those times. And I don’t care if I never get a promotion or a snazzy office or anything.

I am thankful that I can go home at 4:00 and be at home. I don’t carry a beeper or a cell phone and there is almost no chance anyone will call me at home with an emergency. And I don’t think I’d take a job where any of those things are possible. I never have to work weekends except if I want to, and except for this one time, I’ve never wanted to.

I know who my boss is and who my co-workers are and a few other people I interact with in my work. I have very little interest in the products this place makes except in the capacity that it affects my job. I don’t read any of the magazines that might talk about things that apply to the type of work I do because I don’t care.

I just want to do my job and get my check. That’s all. It’s a job. I’ve never had a career and I can’t imagine which one I’d have if I did have one. I have abandoned the notion of ever having one because I really don’t like working and I’m not willing to put in the effort it seems to require to have one.

Am I a freak?

2

Only your frankness is freaky, Legomancer, not your sentiments. More people feel feel the way you do than would ever admit it.

3

Seriously though, while I don’t share your views, I respect them. I enjoy working and even building a career, but you are right, at the end of the day it’s just a paycheck. My job is not my life. Raises, promotions, fancy titles are nice, but they don’t do anything for me when I head home. I seek to become a better person, which has very little to do with editing a research paper, writing a program, or designing a presentation. Hell, half the stuff I do is boring and if I were given the choice of either working or staying home to doing what I want to do, you would see me sitting on the couch wearing slippers and eating a pint of Starbucks Java Chip ice cream. Work is work. If it were meant to be fun it wouldn’t be called work.

Work sucks but it beats the alternative.

BTW- Surprisingly Java Chip is a very good flavor! Not because of the coffee flavor, but the blend of a hard chocolate chip with an sharp coffee flavor. The only other ice cream that rivals it is surprisingly Edy’s French Silk, which is a <gasp> LIGHT REDUCED CALORIE ice cream!!! I know, up until I tried Edy’s FS I thought the “Light” ice creams were used to fill pot holes…

4

I have to agree. I like my job, my boss, my co-workers and my paycheck but my job isn’t my life. I work 8-4 Monday through Friday and that’s it. I don’t let my job stress me out like some people around here do. One of the girl’s I take breaks with come in at 6:30 every morning and works until 5:00 and sometimes even as late as 6:00. She’s always stressed out and worried about being behind and she’s always bitching about the people she works with and acts like the place will fall apart if she doesn’t come in to work. I find this funny because she’s a clerk (in a company of more than 350 people… yeah, we can’t live without her! :rolleyes: ) and she makes about $8.00 an hour! I’m sorry but I wouldn’t let myself get that stressed out and worn down for an $8.00/hour job. I’d find another freakin’ job.

I’m not into the gossip that circulates around here either. I don’t give a shit who’s dating whom, who’s having an affair, who got fired, and I’m not going to talk about people behind their backs. It just doesn’t interest me. If and when the day comes that I don’t like coming to my job… I’ll get another job and quit this one. I don’t see that happening anytime soon though.

5

That was exactly what I meant. I work for the Gub-ah-ment, so I have seen both the slackers and the ass busters, but neither lifestyle is attractive to me. I can’t remember the source of this quote, but I think it sums it up nicely:

“Nobody ever died wishing they had spent more time at work.”

Work is an means to an end. If a career is your end, then I respect that- I don’t understand it per se, but I can respect it.

At the end of a work day I don’t look forward to getting up at 6:00am to get ready to go back to work. No, instead I look forward to seeing my wife. Or a good hockey game… well, that’s beside the point.

My point is unless your career takes you somewhere emotionally, spiritually, or even physically (traveling around the world sounds neat to me…) then it is not worth investing your life in. Sure do the best you can do, give it your all, but more likely than not at some point you will switch jobs (average American switches jobs 7 times in his/her life time.)

I love my wife and my friends and family.

6

Let me just add a “me too!”

And does anybody else dislike going out to lunch with your co-workers? The “girls” at my workplace don’t seem to take the hint that my lunch hour is MY TIME. I like to go, alone, and lose myself in a good book for an hour, or just a quick cat-nap in the car. That is my time to get away and rejuvenate myself for the rest of the day.

Don’t get me wrong, I like my co-workers. They’re very nice people, and I appreciate that they’re trying to include me. But I’m with them 40 hours a week. I need that hour of solitude!

And they keep asking, and keep asking. I’ve gotten to where I go every now and then just so I don’t seem like an unsocial bitch who hates everybody. I’ll almost always go when it’s someone’s birthday or something.

Auugghh! Okay, rant over.

7

How refreshing to hear someone echo my own thoughts! I always figured I was one of very few, since everyone I worked with (for a large corporation in recent years) seemed not only to know but to care deeply about all those things like sales trends for a particular brand, the rate structure for an incentive plan, so-and-so leaving the Canadian office, a recent announcement in a trade publication, etc. I would always just nod non-committally and make acknowledging noises, since it seemed imprudent to say that I had no clue about things that didn’t specifically relate to my job, and don’t particularly want to know either.

As others said, I don’t want a career, just a job that doesn’t make me unhappy every day and a check that pays my bills. I don’t want to get rich, or keep moving up to bigger houses and newer cars. My fulfillment in life comes from what I call my “real life”, and I honestly couldn’t care less about the things that make up my job.

In case it sounds like I’m one of those dead-weight people we all hate, let me say that I spent 14 years with my last company and was promoted (entirely by accident, in my mind) five times; I had a responsible position and I performed well. I was laid off last winter when the whole division of the company was shut down, and my recent months of unemployment have been the happiest of my life.

Here’s one of my problems: When I go to interview for a new job, how do I answer that inevitable question, “Where do you want to be in xx number of years?” The honest answer is, sitting at home on my back deck with a good book, drinking a beer and living off my lottery winnings. The realistic answer is, in the same job you are going to give me now, providing it’s working out okay - but obviously that’s the wrong answer. I’m the only person I’ve ever talked to who couldn’t answer something like, “I want to be head of sales,” or “I want to finish my degree and move into regional management,” etc. I don’t look down on people who do find fulfillment in their career, but it is certainly a drum whose beat I do not hear. The OP kind of hit the nail on the head, though, at least as I read it, in that it isn’t just a matter of not seeing work as the most important thing - it’s a matter of seeing work only as a necessary evil that I do not, in truth, give a rat’s behind about, as long as I am performing up to standards and making a living.

Refrshing to hear that I’m not quite as completely alone in this feeling as it always seems.

BTW, Oreo, I so much hated being invited to lunch with the group. I hated even more the occasional obligatory meetings of the department for an actual dinner at 7 PM. Other people actually seemed to look forward to it.

8

Legomancer, I have to say that you are really freaking me out because I have noticed since you started posting that you pretty much express every single opinion I myself have. I’m starting to develope this deluded science fictiony paranoia that some splinter personality fragment of mine is actually posting as a sock puppet while I’m in some sort of fugue so I don’t remember it later.

And yeah, that’s exactly how I feel about my job. It’s fine, but if it ended tomorrow, I would get another job, which I’m sure would also be fine. I like to do a good job, but I hear people make presentations and start with “I was in the office ALL WEEKEND working on this” and I want to say “Why?” I can’t imagine ever working all weekend on a presentation. The way I see it, if I can’t get my work done during the work week, I’m not doing a very good job.

I will work overtime if there’s an emergency going on (but an actual emergency, like Sept. 11, not “we need a better presentation!”) and I will work more hours to cover for someone who is sick, etc, because I know they would do it for me. I feel like the people who talk about how they worked 19 hours on a Sunday for no particular reason are bragging about something really weird.

9

I’m with Oreo on the lunch thing, and with Legomancer on the OP.

My job isn’t my life. When I’m not at work, I think as little as possible about work. The place vanishes from my consciousness, and I like it that way. This has nothing to do with how I feel about my co-workers. I’ve had this attitude about every place I’ve worked. It’s just me; nothing personal. But I have no doubt that this approach has helped me become less stressed about the picayune details of the workplace or my job.

As for lunch, Oreo has described exactly how I feel about the lunch time. My hour, my time, and I will use it however I damn well please. (This is one of the many reasons why I especially despise meetings that are scheduled during the lunch hour. I’m paid for 8 hours of work a day. The lunch hour is unpaid. Making me attend meetings and do work during the lunch hour is making me work for free. Managers who do take away lunch hours should have their lunches taken away from them for the following month, and during that hour be forced to watch “Jerry Springer.” The same episode. Over and over and over again.) As long as I’m back by 1 pm and ready to go, I really don’t see why anyone should have a problem. I’m not anti-social, I just want time to recharge. I’ve noticed that if I am able to literally get away for a time during the lunch hour, I’m usually in a much better mood and attitude to take on the rest of the day.

Oreo and Legomancer, in a show of solidarity, we should all arrange not to have lunch together. :smiley:

10

I admire all you guys.

Here’s me thinking “whats wrong with me, I only think about work while(st):wink: I’m here” but as soon as I step out that door at night I’m FREE. I hate work. I dream about the lottery, a job in the IT industry (because I would actually enjoy it), a job as a porn star, a job as father christmas (santa claus) anything but what I do (airfreight exports, yay).

The lunch hour to is a good point, no money, no work. I will not pick up a phone during my lunch hour. I don’t get paid overtime, so I go home at 5.30. If somebody aint finished their work, well fuck you. (just to say that everyone moans about how busy they are in my work, when we are all equally busy, yet they can still go for 7-8 cigarettes a day??? go figure).

So yes, work is the ultimate means to an end, and unless you wanna be unemployed, their aint no choice. As for enjoying your career, as Donnie Brasco said, “fuggedaboutit”:slight_smile:

11

I hate to be the one to point this out Legomancer, but everyone’s a freak. Just so you know.

12

Sounds good to me! I’ll…um…NOT see you there! :slight_smile:

13

Legomancer…

I don’t think that’s a bad or freaky mindset at all. Better to have the kind of peace you seem to have regarding your job, rather than being a mean old workaholic with no life.

My father always said that your work should be a pleasure.

And even though maybe your work isn’t a “pleasure” for you, it doesn’t appear from your description to be hell either. You seem to actually have a very healthy attitude!

14

I love my job. And I love work in general. And I constantly work so that my next role has more influence, responsibility and scope than my current one. And I define at least part of me by my job, my past jobs and my accomplishments in life in general.

I have friends who echo the above sentiments, some good friends in fact. But I (and other employers) do everything possible to weed out the type of workers who idealize this ‘waiting for the lottery to hit’ mentality. We only wish there was some secret question we could ask in interviews to weed out such folks, but unfortunately they always squeak by to infuriate us later.

15

With due respect to your own attitude (to each his own, after all - we did say that we don’t despise someone who does love their job), I just wanted to add that you would not have been infuriated by me later if you hired me, nor, I’m sure, by necessarily every other poster who has indicated some lack of gung-ho-ness. I have always gotten outstanding ratings on performance evaluations (from some ten different supervisors), have been consistently promoted based on achievement, have been singled out for a role on certain critical teams for many projects, and have been given a number of merit raises based on my accomplishments. I almost always performed better than most of my co-workers. My competence is not at issue - just my wholehearted interest. I do my best, because I can’t reconcile my own values with doing less, and I am a very capable worker. I’m not just watching the clock tick by, and that is one of the key points, I think - the common attitude seems to be that you are either deeply immersed and consumed by your job, or you are a slacker. The idea of an objectively indifferent employee who nevertheless does an excellent job just doesn’t seem to occur.

16

Why?
So long as we (and I very much identify with the OP) come in, do a damn good job, and don’t cause any problems - what is wrong with our absolute lack of ambition?
(In fact, I think you’d love us, we’re reliable and dependable, and you don’t have to worry about us trying to destroy you or other co-workers by stealing your jobs. We don’t care enough to do that)

To tell the truth, I would love to have a job that I was deeply and truly passionate about - one where I looked forward to going to work, and wanted to think of new ways of doing a better job when I left. I haven’t yet found it. Part of me very much envies people who do. I think it would be nice to have such passion about my work - but right now, I really don’t. I like the job I have well enough, otherwise I wouldn’t be there. But when I get in my car to go home, I’m done for the day. (I really don’t understand people who are that obsessed about their jobs when they don’t like them. My previous boss was like that. It was one of the many telling signs about him.)

My answer to the “xx years” question is always “I want to have learned more than I know today. I want to be applying that knowledge to whatever job I’m doing then, and making a positive contribution to my workplace.” Or something like that. In truth it’s living off my lottery winnings, or having somehow found the way to fund being a professional student and pursuing that, or perhaps having found the mystical profession that I’d like to make a career. But I am pretty sure that saying that would not lead to employment.

Luckily, I do like my co-workers enough (and probably would like them if I had met them outside of work) that I like having lunch with them from time to time.

17

cygnus wrote

That’s admirable, and more power to you. But I think you’ll agree that there’s a strong coorelation between having no interest and low performance.

But frankly, that’s not really what disappoints me about the ‘watching the clock’ attitude. See, for me I see work as a part of my value in this world. (There are other values: Parenthood, Charity, Mentoring come to mind). But work – for me – is one of the ways that the world is better for me in it. So I just don’t understand the idea of not caring whether you’re accomplishing anything or not.

Also, I see work as one of the key ways that I take care of others in my life, and that is also of great importance to me. The harder I work, the more financially secure those around me are. Also, the harder I work, the more jobs I create for other people in my organization. Taking care of the people in my life is very important to me.

So, from that viewpoint, I see people who watch the clock as very selfish. That’s just my viewpoint; discard at will.

18

amarinth wrote

Doing as you describe, “a damn fine job” there is nothing wrong with lack of ambition. But as I said above, I think you’ll agree that if you look at a random group of people with ambitition and another random group without, the first group will on average do less of a “damn fine job”. There are exceptions of course, and I applaud you for being one of them.

There’s an interesting thing about money and jobs: the economy isn’t a zero-sum game. When people work hard, more jobs are created. There’s no stealing of jobs, only creation of jobs (or lack thereof). As an employer, I’d much rather hire someone that will grow and take my job in a year. Presumably I’ll grow as well and also take another job.

19

Oh, my…it’s an economic idealist!

In the reality I’ve seen lately (i.e. in the last 10-15 years), job security and company loyalty are creatures equivalent to Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny. As long as CEO’s watch the bottom line and their own bank accounts more avidly than they watch out for the welfare of their employees, I figure I owe about as much loyalty and life-time to any company I’m employed by as they’ll pay me for, no more, no less.

My slogan is “‘Salaried’ is another word for ‘sucker’”. My goal is to go in at the appointed start time, do my job until the appointed end time, clock out and pretend the place doesn’t exist. My time off the clock is mine, and if the company wants me to spend it doing things for them, they’d better darn well be paying me more than the $6.75/hour I’m getting. If something comes up during the day that I think I may have an advantageous talent for (such as memo/flyer/newsletter layout and writing, which is not what I’m currently paid for), I’ll help out. I’m conscientious in the work that I do (data entry/word processing), noting possible errors and problems and taking care of them. But I refuse to invest more of myself into it than I’m paid for.

Like others who’ve posted, my ideal is to be independently wealthy through some non-work-intensive means, such as living the rest of my life off the interest from the million dollars I’d win on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire if I ever got on the show. The Protestant Work Ethic can perform self-fornication as far as I’m concerned. I just work to survive. If that makes me a slacker… shrug

jayjay

20

jayjay wrote

I wasn’t talking about company loyalty at all. The days of the gold watch at 20 years are pretty much gone. I was talking about ambition.

I honestly don’t mean this to be degrading, but at least in California, you don’t have a choice. It isn’t legal to pay someone a salary for that low of a wage. The logic is that when you’re talking barely over minimum wage, demanding extra hours for no pay is not ethical.

Hate to be a party pooper, but you wouldn’t be living large. First taxes will take a big hunk. Next, let’s assume you buy a modest to decent house. Then you put the money in to reasonable investments. You’ll probably get $20k/year for the rest of your life. Only a bit more than your current $6.75/hour.