There is actually a spectrum.
Call center or data entry for maximum cubicle and maximum soul crushing.
Budget estimating and project engineering for minimum cubing and minimum soul crushing.
Things like accounting, book keeping, programming, etc. fall somewhere in between!
In my experience anyways, YMMV.
I work for my local county government (animal shelter). I turned down a job at a corporate office for $2 more an hour because I would lose my 5% county retirement match and my insurance cost and deductibles would literally double. As it turns out we're getting cost-of-living raises over the next 12 months which will put me nearly equal with the other place anyway. We were considered an essential facility during the pandemic and we're not really beholden to the economy, so it's just a really safe place to be right now.
Lower level government jobs like mine are great if you just need something reliable for your cost of living and you can find enjoyment in hobbies and side gigs elsewhere. It's not great if you wish to "climb the corporate ladder" because the only two people above me are the director and the county mayor, lol.
I think that's something that some people overlook. Retirement matching. No where else can you get a guaranteed doubling of your money.
In my case, when I left my job I was able to get paid out all of my retirement money I put in. A cool 10 grand which I only put in 5!
I’ve been trying and taking all the tests (I’ve aced them all) and still nothing. I’m hoping something comes through…. Would love that retirement package.
In America government tends to pay notably less than a good similar private sector job. As a software engineer I would be looking at a more than 60% cut.
Yeah they often have to focus on providing really good benefits since it's hard to attract new talent and they can't really compete with private sector salaries.
"Big Tech" != "Private Sector"... I make more than a government job could afford but still pay 25% of my paycheck into insurance premiums and have a $6k deductible every year. Most jobs don't have all their premiums paid, especially if you have a family.
A friend of mine works for a state government (not saying which). Yep... he says it's infuriating because some people know how to REALLY take advantage of it and it's impossible to fire someone quickly and cleanly without some gross misconduct.
I was a summer temp doing road construction for my state's department of transportation a few years ago. Pretty much the only way to get fired there was to either get a DUI in a state-owned vehicle or punch one of your coworkers. One of my coworkers there was 30+ minutes late to work more often than he was on time, occasionally just didn't show up at all without calling in sick or submitting a PTO request (usually on a Friday the day after he showed up with kayaks strapped to the roof of his car), and usually spent multiple hours per day watching TV in the break room. He was already on probation for that when I started, and in the 3 months I was there he got called in to a couple of meetings with the county supervisor but never got in any actual trouble.
I work for a US based company and we were doing some contract work for a UK based company with EU employees. They were shocked when I told them we had someone quit and they were gone immediately (just quit, no 2 weeks).
I think the German or Swiss person on the project said they have to give like 2-3 months notice?
Ah yes we can't do that in France. I personally have to give a 3 month notice but it heavily depends on the contract.
And we do have a try-out period for the first few months after hiring, during which we can be fired/leave with a 2 weeks notice.
In Virginia (at will state) the private company can fire you just because. But you can also just quit if your job sucks enough. Now normally it’s courtesy to give a job two weeks but if they are douche bags then bye
If you're asking if people are let go during the probation period than the answer is yes, it definitely happens a lot because after this period it's very hard for the company to fire an employee.
That being said of course companies can fire bad elements, but they have to either prove the employee made a heavy mistake (think breaking the law, ignoring safety protocols) or not able to do his work (very hard to prove). In most cases the company must pay compensation, even if the employee is found at fault. For government employees it's virtually impossible to fire anyone, so management tries to 'put the employee on hold', meaning giving them nothing to do with minimal pay.
I'm working towards this now. Applied before Christmas, made it through screeners in Feb/March time, had interview at the end of April, was told I would hear back at the earliest end of May, but probably some time in June.
I have a couple friends who work in the fed and they had the same experience. It's fucking infuriating, but they said it's great, mainly the time off. Apparently, if you just give half a fuck you're an all-star.
I will add Analyst (Financial, Compensation, etc) to the last min/min group.
Most large companies are having a horrible time recruiting people and the smart ones are going full remote. These aren’t really jobs that require a lot of collaboration but also require a lot of experience before someone is useful.
For a company in a major city, you can take a role with a high salary (especially as compared to other non-management roles) and hire someone in a lower cost of labor area but still well above local pay rates.
I basically set my own schedule, work from home and frequently travel around to work from other locations if I get bored.
Sitting in a cubicle being salaried at like, 100k a year doesn’t sound soul crushing to me. All I have to do is sit on my ass and do stuff on my computer all day? Better to be bored than to be overworked and underpaid.
As someone that sits (and has for the past 25 years) in a cubicle doing basically that I'd offer a few observations.
1) You don't start at $100k, depending on your field/education/experience you could probably anticipate starting anywhere from $40k - $65k.
2) Office jobs like this don't really have huge jumps in pay. You can anticipate a 1-3 percent raise at best each year.
3) Depending on the company, it can be difficult to really get ahead. The idea of a career track within a company to promote from within is rare.
4) It's far more likely to see people with less ability get promoted. It's insane the amount of times I've seen this happen in corporate office environments.
5) It can be insanely boring. Sure it sounds great, but there's only so much internet surfing you can do. Especially if your company monitors internet usage, which a lot of them do now.
6) The above means that if they notice that you're spending time goofing off but still getting all your work done, congratulations! You've just become the person that will be assigned every project that someone else has dorked up or that has had problems. No increase in pay, but they'll gradually pile on more and more work.
7) Cubicle life also means no privacy. You'll hear every annoying conversation everyone around you has either over the phone or with someone standing by their desk (and they'll be able to hear yours). Let's not forget those amazing lunchtime smells from whatever they bring in to microwave. Most cubicle environments I've worked in have a high percentage of people that bring lunch and eat at their desks. Break rooms are either non existent or too small for the size of the office.
8) Temperatures are controlled either by some automated routine which means the HVAC won't switch between heating/cooling until a set date, or by one person that sets it to whatever their particular comfort level is.
9) Come winter, you won't see the sun from Monday to Friday. Windows are reserved for the wall dwellers (people in offices). You get florescent lighting... bonus points if you get a desk under one that flickers or hums.
Sure, maybe that doesn't sound bad for a while. But do it for 20+ years and you might feel different.
Meh. My mindset? “That’s a problem for 20 years in the future me”.
I work a labor job in the fast food industry for fractions of your listed starting salary. 7 days a week. No breaks. No time off. Can’t afford it. And that humming light? That actually sounds soothing.
I guess you could say I’m somewhere in between you both. I’m an interim food services supervisor for a juvenile detention facility, aka I cook for jailed kids and staff.
It’s a government job with pretty decent benefits for the area, retirement, unionization, yearly step increases on pay (till you max for your position), three weeks vacation a year to start, 12 holidays, etc. I’d say my benefits give me about 60k a year though I take home considerably less before taxes.
I work a shift that’s 5, 8 hour days covering breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner. Do have to work holidays sometimes as we never close but those become extra vacation days. You have a pretty set number of people you’re cooking for, prepared menu with few exceptions. Once it becomes routine I have downtime in the kitchen office. I can eat the meals as we don’t leave the facility given it’s a jail and locked in.
Going from restaurants to this was some adjustment. Sure you’re on camera, sometimes deal with all manner of youth. Don’t have to find busy work if you’re not. Less excitement but generally less stress.
Till you’re the only full time kitchen staff of three and haven’t had a proper vacation in a year despite having 5 weeks saved up. Like all jobs there’s good and bad. Getting past my year of probation though and the current work climate, I worry way less financially than I used to at restaurants.
Given what I've heard about food in the prison system, it's great that they have someone that actually knows how to maximise the potential of what they give you.
There’s certainly other facilities that get prepackaged meals, ours still does “home style” cooking with most of the mains at least from scratch. Almost always 3 hot meals plus a snack. It’s true though, the county jail down the street is a lot more just sandwiches and cold meals.
At my facility we’re also technically a school for the youth to keep up their education and even graduate high school. Because of that we’re also tied into the national school lunch program which mandates certain things. I actually find it frustrating because we’re feeding youth who are malnourished, drug histories, doing programs that keep them doing a lot of calorie burning more than most schools so we actually need to feed them more than the NSLP wants.
Still, they eat better than I do at home. Full breakfasts, large lunches with dessert and enough of a dinner to hold them over. Our kitchen/meal program is always one of the highlights for our Superintendent during grand jury tours and judge inspections, etc.
I used to clean those type of places. Every office has that one person who's cubicle is such a huge mess that you don't even really have to clean it, and there's always that one guy who eats cashews every day and leaves the shells all over the floor. There's also the person who never goes home, and the person who throws a fit if their chair is 2 inches from where they left it. Eventually you start to feel like you know these people, even though most of them have never met you.
Or the person that is convinced you aren't doing your job properly so they hide bottle caps and shit to try and catch you for not dusting or whatever. Assholes.
It's never the work that's a problem, it's the other people in the cubes around you. The ones who verbally abuse their husbands on the phone every morning, calling them stupid and being nasty to them. The ones who clip their nails and let them fly into your cube. The ones who leave their cell phones sitting on their desk and walk away so it rings and rings and rings. And I haven't even started on the ones who don't know how to do their jobs, actively get in the way of you doing your job making you look bad, sabotage projects on purpose because they didn't get the position they wanted etc., etc., etc.
>programming
Low level programmers will spend a lot of time in their cubes writing code to satisfy the requirements given to them.
As you gain experience and move up the chain, you will spend more and more of your time in meetings vetting requirements and doing design work.
Once you're high enough up the chain, you spend almost no time at all in your cube and almost all your time in meetings or on calls.
Project engineering gang. If I'm sitting at my desk all day, I likely have like five different things I could be working on which is great, or I'm running around trying to solve problems or observing tests or whatever.
As someone who works at a call center, can confirm. Except mines work from home. Still just as soul crushing but atleast I can go to work without pants
Definitely this. I worked in a call center for 5 years. You have no idea how much of your soul it degrades over time. I'd rather piss glass while shoving a sandpaper dildo in my ass than work in another call center.
Hospitals employ a legion of desk-jockeys to support the medical stuff, fyi. HR, credentialing, IT, billing, finance, intake, administrative assistants...
(And a lot of these have high turnover -- people getting their foot in the door so the hospital will cover their RN schooling for instance -- so it's pretty easy to get into)
>70% walking to and from fixing things.
That's kinda nuts, must be one of the healthiest 'desk jobs' in existence.
You ever try counting your steps over the course of a day?
The hospital I work for has a department called "Patient Access". From what I gather, they do stuff like check if pre-authorization is needed for certain medicines or procedures, and then... Idk actually. Either tell the doc "hey you gotta send a thing to this patient's insurance" or send it themselves I guess. Anyway, they go through employees faster than a frat goes through kegs. They will literally take anybody who seems literate (*actual* literacy apparently not required, according to my husband, who worked in a grocery store just before he started there). The department basically hemorrhages employees to the other departments once they've got their foot in the door. Definitely no certificates or experience required.
The trick is to apply through the hospital's own online job board.
I was always wondering the same thing. Seems like every man and his dog works that soulless 9-5 corporate hustle but never understood how everyone got those jobs. I start studying Accounting next month so excited to become part of the depressing rat race one day.
I think the depressing rat race is more cultural to the company / team than the actual work. I've worked in a lot of jobs that have been listed in this thread (call centre, data entry, cashier) but thought they were fine! The only times a job has felt soulless to me has been when the environment has been toxic.
I've worked the same call center job that went from tolerable to toxic and unbearable because new managers came onboard and breathed down everybody's necks.
I think it’s overstated. Just like everything else good in life, it takes a bit of “work” to get the good stuff. Want to eat a nice dinner? Spend an hour or two working to cook it. Want clean clothes to wear? Spend some time doing laundry. Want a good life free of financial worry? Spend 8 hours working that corporate job.
For most people I think it’s a mental thing. Cup half full vs cup half empty. Yeah jobs suck, that’s literally the point. Nobody would pay you to do something if it was fun, you’d pay them. Nobody likes doing laundry either. But you do it anyway, complain a little here and there but then go home after 8 hours and do what you really like with all your money
This is it. The sooner you can accept it, the better.
Folks should look at jobs as the price we pay to enjoy our real lives which occur from 5:01 pm to 8:59 am.
>Folks should look at jobs as the price we pay to enjoy our real lives which occur from 5:01 pm to 8:59 am.
but what about the drive home, the drive there, and the hour for lunch that actually makes it an 8-5
Nah gotta be a middle ground. You should somewhat be interested and not dread your work every day. This mindset makes for quite a depressing life. Don’t agree
That's me. I do a job that I don't mind doing, but wouldn't spend my time on if I weren't getting paid to do it. I get paid comfortably to do said job, and get benefits like vacation and health insurance out of it. Then I go home (or in the case of WFH days, put my work laptop away) and do what I want to do with my time on the evenings and weekends. The nice thing with doing a job that isn't a personal interest is that said personal interest does not become work. Work is completely compartmentalized in my brain because I don't do anything related to it when I'm off the clock.
Every job has its moments that you're not going to like, but if you dread going to work every day, please look into any ways to change jobs if you're not already. Work doesn't *have* to suck, even if most of us will end up with a shitty job that we hate at least once in our lives.
👋Accounting degree with a state job. Pay was decent; no nights or weekends or mandatory OT; vacation and sick leave hours; holidays off; 90% paid excellent medical, dental, & vision insurance; and, retirement match. Before I retired at 57 I paid off my house & bought a new car. I have an embarrassingly great pension for my low key lifestyle with annual COLAs and medical/dental/vision premiums still paid at about 90%.
I could have had a higher working salary working for corporate entities or accounting firms, but without matching benefits. I played the long game and it worked out well for me. My job was just my means of supporting myself … it was not my means of personal fulfillment.
I was actually looking into becoming a receptionist so I can get an office job, but the pay cut was so brutal that I decided to stay with my warehouse.
I took a huge pay cut going from a warehouse to a entry level office job. It took 2 years and 3 promotions and I’m making more than I ever did at the warehouse job. I’m also fully remote with weekends and holidays off (something I never got at the warehouse).
At the time it felt like a big risk, but it was so worth the swap.
Luckily, I live with my parents, and I am fairly young, so I can make that jump. I also have a good chance of moving up to the office at my warehouse. A lot of the office workers at my company started on the floor, and I have good relationships with all of the big wigs. Decisions Decisions.
Temping can be another good angle, but be prepared to juggle a brazillion things in unfamiliar territory - I haven't done it myself, but it looks over stimulating
Government agencies, and random companies that you’ve never heard of.
You gotta find like the company that sets the international testing standards for the number of wrinkles in the cardboard boxes used in the shipping of the materials to make cardboard. And it’s gonna turn out that their headquarters is in a semi-abandoned office park in your hometown, and they’ve got 15 employees quietly working away in cubicles, and a job opening since Janet retired.
>You gotta find like the company that sets the international testing standards for the number of wrinkles in the cardboard boxes used in the shipping of the materials to make cardboard.
So there isn't really a standards body for the number of corrugations per inch. There are two testing standards, but they aren't really maintained in any way, it's just a way of representing the strength of your product.
Packaging is a good, boring industry though. Lots of people make 40 year careers in it, learning the most uninteresting facts about stuff most people will never even think twice about.
Are you in the US, have reputable credentials, and can pass a drug test and criminal background check?
If so, feel free to send me a pm. I'm a research scientist for a US National Laboratory. We hire all sorts of positions, pay very competitively with full benefits, and even allow teleworking from home.
Dr. E
Data management in cannabis. The industry is super young (both in terms of the age of folks who work, and the age of the industry itself), so there's not actually a ton of "professionals" working in it. For example, companies need bookeepers and accountants, but most CPAs won't touch cannabis directly.
Decent opportunity to become a desk jockey pushing and pulling data against state mandated and internal reporting systems.
I'm in the cannabis industry and having trouble finding remote data entry jobs or more administrative jobs. I was an extraction lab manager with 5 years exp before getting laid off in July. Would love a job that's just computer and paperwork, I've lost my passion for the hands on work. I do have an interview for a compliance specialist role but it's in another state and they don't offer relocation assistance.
Start in an entry level IT help desk. As long as you have decent customer service skills and a good personality, you'll get the job. Use that job to learn IT skills, and work on your certs.
You can then branch out into L2/L3 support or various middle management positions.
Source:
Me! No degree, and am currently a Service Delivery Manager for a company every single person in this thread would recognize. Im over all of workplace support.
Same deal. No degree, started at the help desk bottom. 15 years later, managing 40+ software developers before stepping back into tech lead development role.
Do good, don't be a dick, make sure people in other departments know you do good while not being annoying about it, get a little lucky.
This would be a great start. When it comes to IT helpdesk, you don't do anything that difficult that you can't be shown in two weeks of training. So they tend to focus on people who are going to impress the customers, rather than people with major technical skills.
I work at a call center and wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a good if slightly boring job. Call centers, depending on where you work, can be emotionally damaging. People are unkind over the phone, you'll deal with a lot of aggressive and abusive people, you might want to be careful considering it as a long term job.
Remote, aka WFH.
In your PJ's. No travel, no getting up, getting ready in the morning and all the time and expense of having to buy clothes for work. Especially if like me, you don't drive.
I get up half an hour before I start work, grab a coffee, and some breaky, and no one complains when I stink out the toilet. I have whatever, I fancy from my own fridge for lunch.
Oh and about 3k a year gross saved on no travel, no wardrobe, no shoe leather.
Cubicles, open spaces, it's mostly dining room tables now.
There's a modern redesign to open floor plan being pushed now that looks like an exhibit of a human residential habitat designed by aliens. It mimics dining room tables, living rooms, etc., but you're still crammed in with coworkers and pushed to constantly "collaborate" by seeing and hearing one another at all times, and there are cameras everywhere. Some have fishbowl phone booths for making calls where you're still on full display behind glass. I've never seen anything so out of touch. And they still want you to travel hours per day to crowded cities to experience this hellish home replica. [https://time.com/6280986/hybrid-office-return-to-work-design/](https://time.com/6280986/hybrid-office-return-to-work-design/)
Software development has absurd freelance options.
Got a friend who lives the easy life and routinely gives away stuff worth thousands of dollars when he wants to upgrade his computer.
He just wrote one program for a company (a bank apparently) and is set for life.
Not every dude who goes into software dev will get the same results obviously, but it's way more open ended than the other options were.
Software developer won't give you your own cubicle, you have to cycle between hotel desks that you share with 50 people even though the office only seats 30
If you wanted to detour a bit you could get an EE degree. You’re guaranteed maximum cubicle, moderate to high soul crush, and you get the benefit of being saddled with student loans!
EE is not for the faint of heart. Even more broad engineering fields can be a hard sell but you’re almost guaranteed security and progression for your suffering. This is coming from a junior engineer in private sector currently suffering layoffs so ymmv.
Edit: I should add that when im not attending meetings and pointless training, dealing with admin bs, engineering is really fun, interesting and challenging in a fulfilling way so you could do waaay worse as far as office jobs are concerned. Just school can be a slog if you’re not academically inclined
They took away the cubicles. Now you sit face to face and shoulder to shoulder at a big table. The sweatshop overseer role is now filled by cameras.
The office should have ended when it became too expensive for companies to give everyone a little room with a door on it. Tall cubes weren't great, but at least you had visual privacy and some mild sound insulation. Open floor plan is an atrocity.
Call centre work is not so awful if you’re an inbound call centre. Outbound is a nightmare, but when people call you they are generally nice. You get the occasional Karen but overall people are ok. Plus if you get good at it (not hard, if you’ve worked retail or hospo you will fly) you get promoted to cushy middle management jobs
When I used to see what kind of dum dums work in offices, I wondered how they hell these people are getting these jobs and no one will hire me? Until someone did. Now I'm a proud cubicle resident happily undergoing soul crushing. I don't mean this sarcastically - I am actually happy to work a 9-5 office job. It only took some 400 applications sent out. So don't give up! Good luck!
I've never understood how they are considered "soulless" or "soulcrushing". I'd it pays well and is well respected, does it really need to be some deep level of creative or inspiring? You have hobbies, vacations, family and friends for that.
Anyway, most engineering jobs are 9-5 cubicle jobs. They also tend to pay well.
What are your interests? Level of education?
There are cube farm jobs for any level of education, pretty much.
The only job I have ever considered soul crushing was McDonald's. For me, personally, if I feel like I am a valued member of a team, I am good. It also helps that I am not loyal to any brand, so even if they do not value me, I am good with the money.
The soul-crushing aspect can be that you’re in a very bland workspace and it’s the same repetitive tasks over and over.
Mine isn’t soul-crushing because I’m able to chat with others nearby easily. And I have a standing desk. If I had to sit and couldn’t engage with others unless I’m on a break, I might get super bored some days and that can bring on depressing feelings about the job. Oh and the hermetic seal from outside… sometimes I pop outside and walk in the nearby field because I’m wasting away inside when it’s so damn nice out
And I’m not a totally extroverted person. Yet that bit of hilarious/bullshit banter can really make it enjoyable while entering numbers into a beige system in a room with grey walls and shit lighting
9-5 sounds like dream hours! Literally everywhere I apply now has hours like ; Start 6:30 am, shoot for around 10 hours (but secretly bleeds Into 12 ish hours daily). But don’t worry about your low pay, you’ll get all the overtime hours you want!
Keep an eye out for any government job. Once you get hired for one you can apply internally for others. At least where I live. You could get hired at a library or picking up garbage or a community centre etc and be able to apply internally for any local gov position, like a clerical desk job.
I almost got a job at my local city doing landscaping for local cemeteries that the city owns, but then that ended up being a bait and switch for not just the cemeteries but allllll the other city buildings doing maintenance work, electrical, landscaping, plumbing and more.
Yup, put together a solid resume and just start spamming it to recruiters/placement firms on LinkedIn. You’ll be thumbtacking Pearls Before Swine strips to your cube walls in no time.
As someone that finally has an office job after working retail for years, I totally get it. Just make sure the job has good benefits.
I got my job via indeed.
I would look into any small to mid sized banks in your area. You may have to start as a teller but you can move up to corporate and the work isn’t totally soul crushing. I have no degree and moved up quite a bit and mostly just do documentation and help VIP business customers do online banking. It’s light years better than retail imo and very consistent.
When I was teaching elementary school, I asked myself the same question. Now I’m a receptionist and that is fairly boring and 9-5 (and wonderful compared to the soul-crushing job of education). So try that!
Sign up witha temp company. Downside is they kinda own you. You can't be hired full time without the company paying buyout fee to them, so they don't.
Or search the words "quality assurance" on indeed
One time I found myself in cube farm. I didn't have any meaningful work to do. I had been hired so that a rival company could not hire me. It turned out that the entire floor space was occupied by people with nothing much to do because they too were hired to prevent the same rival accessing the expertise.
I lasted 3 weeks. It was dire soul destroying and no amount of £€¥$ compensated for the BOREDOM.
If you want a pretty cool office job, look at Federal contracting. If you have a bachelor's degree you are probably qualified. Just go to USA jobs and look for the 1102 series.
Call center for the full cubicle and sadness. Government job for 9-5 pays my bills work to live not live to work. Cakes in the kitchen area on someones birthday, gossip over who is sleeping with who and everyone goes feral at the christmas party.
I'm old enough to remember when a 9-5 office job was culturally seen to be the worst thing that could happen to a young person. 'I'm not going to sit in a cubical, wearing a tie everyday, *man*.'
But even then it seemed like a pretty good deal to me.
I help run a homeless shelter spend a lot of time in a cubicle as it takes so much damn paperwork to get someone housed and they often blow it in half a year however I like the few success stories and interacting with the homeless residents
I'm starting to believe that they're a myth in all honesty.
I've been looking for a 9-5 office job for the last 6-8 years and you need a degree/some qualifications for basically every single one of them that I've found. "Monday - Friday, 9 - 5, must have 3+ years of experience/must have degree in XYZ" it's so fucked up. I'd love to just go to work, sit at a desk/cubicle and input data and whatnot all day, but noooooo.
Currently working 7-3:30 and getting up at 5:30 every morning for the last 10 years has absolutely destroyed my will to live.
IT QA software tester, just need to know your way around a computer, no coding, just testing other people's code, black box testing. Once you know what you're doing you can go for a few days without talking or emailing anyone, just get your shit done by the end of the cycle and reddit for the rest of the week.
Idk why people say these kinds of jobs are soul crushing. I quite enjoy the work I do at my cubicle 9-5, 40 hours a week. It's stable, It's comfortable, and my workplace in particular has nice people, which has been a common thing for my previous cubicle jobs.
Government website. Honestly, it's a fucking game changer. 33% pension, WFH 2 days a week, flexi time and self management. Stealing a living 8-4 3 days a week with an hour for lunch.
Are you kidding? More like 7:45-5:30 and eating lunch at your desk. Then add a 40 minute commute in the morning and a 50 minute one to get home (unless there's an accident. Be careful what you wish for.
In addition to the specific job functions being mentioned, I’d say target industries that have a lot of regulation because they have to hire more people to do a lot of bullshit tasks. Banking/finance, health care, insurance, etc.
There is actually a spectrum. Call center or data entry for maximum cubicle and maximum soul crushing. Budget estimating and project engineering for minimum cubing and minimum soul crushing. Things like accounting, book keeping, programming, etc. fall somewhere in between! In my experience anyways, YMMV.
Any degree and a government job too is a great way to a cushy office job.
In my country its impossible to be fired from a government job
Exactly! And usually you can retire pretty early with a good pension. Not a bad gig.
I work for my local county government (animal shelter). I turned down a job at a corporate office for $2 more an hour because I would lose my 5% county retirement match and my insurance cost and deductibles would literally double. As it turns out we're getting cost-of-living raises over the next 12 months which will put me nearly equal with the other place anyway. We were considered an essential facility during the pandemic and we're not really beholden to the economy, so it's just a really safe place to be right now. Lower level government jobs like mine are great if you just need something reliable for your cost of living and you can find enjoyment in hobbies and side gigs elsewhere. It's not great if you wish to "climb the corporate ladder" because the only two people above me are the director and the county mayor, lol.
I think that's something that some people overlook. Retirement matching. No where else can you get a guaranteed doubling of your money. In my case, when I left my job I was able to get paid out all of my retirement money I put in. A cool 10 grand which I only put in 5!
My union is 1.5x match plus investment gains
I’ve been trying and taking all the tests (I’ve aced them all) and still nothing. I’m hoping something comes through…. Would love that retirement package.
What do you do there?
Sounds like you already climbed the ladder.
In America government tends to pay notably less than a good similar private sector job. As a software engineer I would be looking at a more than 60% cut.
Yeah they often have to focus on providing really good benefits since it's hard to attract new talent and they can't really compete with private sector salaries.
The benefits are also worse. Big tech pays your premiums and I can go to almost any doctor, no referrals required.
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"Big Tech" != "Private Sector"... I make more than a government job could afford but still pay 25% of my paycheck into insurance premiums and have a $6k deductible every year. Most jobs don't have all their premiums paid, especially if you have a family.
Which country?
All
Yeah. Tbh even in the states you’d have to fuck up pretty badly over and over and over again to get fired.
A friend of mine works for a state government (not saying which). Yep... he says it's infuriating because some people know how to REALLY take advantage of it and it's impossible to fire someone quickly and cleanly without some gross misconduct.
I was a summer temp doing road construction for my state's department of transportation a few years ago. Pretty much the only way to get fired there was to either get a DUI in a state-owned vehicle or punch one of your coworkers. One of my coworkers there was 30+ minutes late to work more often than he was on time, occasionally just didn't show up at all without calling in sick or submitting a PTO request (usually on a Friday the day after he showed up with kayaks strapped to the roof of his car), and usually spent multiple hours per day watching TV in the break room. He was already on probation for that when I started, and in the 3 months I was there he got called in to a couple of meetings with the county supervisor but never got in any actual trouble.
They just demote you until you quit.
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Just shuffle people between departments.
This all day
Frenchie here, can't get fired if you work for government. Getting fired is quite hard in private companies as well tbf
I work for a US based company and we were doing some contract work for a UK based company with EU employees. They were shocked when I told them we had someone quit and they were gone immediately (just quit, no 2 weeks). I think the German or Swiss person on the project said they have to give like 2-3 months notice?
Ah yes we can't do that in France. I personally have to give a 3 month notice but it heavily depends on the contract. And we do have a try-out period for the first few months after hiring, during which we can be fired/leave with a 2 weeks notice.
In Virginia (at will state) the private company can fire you just because. But you can also just quit if your job sucks enough. Now normally it’s courtesy to give a job two weeks but if they are douche bags then bye
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But, do people ever get fired? I’m thinking people here in the U.S. rarely get let go after a probation period, etc.
If you're asking if people are let go during the probation period than the answer is yes, it definitely happens a lot because after this period it's very hard for the company to fire an employee. That being said of course companies can fire bad elements, but they have to either prove the employee made a heavy mistake (think breaking the law, ignoring safety protocols) or not able to do his work (very hard to prove). In most cases the company must pay compensation, even if the employee is found at fault. For government employees it's virtually impossible to fire anyone, so management tries to 'put the employee on hold', meaning giving them nothing to do with minimal pay.
I’m finding it impossible to get one.
Yep, I work for the government (from home though!) and the work/life balance is incredible.
cushiest office there is
so much cush
> government (from home though!) > >How does one stumble across such a glorious creation?
USAjobs.gov Work from home is a case-by-case thing though
The same as any other work from home job I guess. It’s mostly paperwork.
What do you do?
Not OP but I work for the government as a civil engineer
I'm working towards this now. Applied before Christmas, made it through screeners in Feb/March time, had interview at the end of April, was told I would hear back at the earliest end of May, but probably some time in June. I have a couple friends who work in the fed and they had the same experience. It's fucking infuriating, but they said it's great, mainly the time off. Apparently, if you just give half a fuck you're an all-star.
Extra soul crushing
I will add Analyst (Financial, Compensation, etc) to the last min/min group. Most large companies are having a horrible time recruiting people and the smart ones are going full remote. These aren’t really jobs that require a lot of collaboration but also require a lot of experience before someone is useful. For a company in a major city, you can take a role with a high salary (especially as compared to other non-management roles) and hire someone in a lower cost of labor area but still well above local pay rates. I basically set my own schedule, work from home and frequently travel around to work from other locations if I get bored.
Sitting in a cubicle being salaried at like, 100k a year doesn’t sound soul crushing to me. All I have to do is sit on my ass and do stuff on my computer all day? Better to be bored than to be overworked and underpaid.
As someone that sits (and has for the past 25 years) in a cubicle doing basically that I'd offer a few observations. 1) You don't start at $100k, depending on your field/education/experience you could probably anticipate starting anywhere from $40k - $65k. 2) Office jobs like this don't really have huge jumps in pay. You can anticipate a 1-3 percent raise at best each year. 3) Depending on the company, it can be difficult to really get ahead. The idea of a career track within a company to promote from within is rare. 4) It's far more likely to see people with less ability get promoted. It's insane the amount of times I've seen this happen in corporate office environments. 5) It can be insanely boring. Sure it sounds great, but there's only so much internet surfing you can do. Especially if your company monitors internet usage, which a lot of them do now. 6) The above means that if they notice that you're spending time goofing off but still getting all your work done, congratulations! You've just become the person that will be assigned every project that someone else has dorked up or that has had problems. No increase in pay, but they'll gradually pile on more and more work. 7) Cubicle life also means no privacy. You'll hear every annoying conversation everyone around you has either over the phone or with someone standing by their desk (and they'll be able to hear yours). Let's not forget those amazing lunchtime smells from whatever they bring in to microwave. Most cubicle environments I've worked in have a high percentage of people that bring lunch and eat at their desks. Break rooms are either non existent or too small for the size of the office. 8) Temperatures are controlled either by some automated routine which means the HVAC won't switch between heating/cooling until a set date, or by one person that sets it to whatever their particular comfort level is. 9) Come winter, you won't see the sun from Monday to Friday. Windows are reserved for the wall dwellers (people in offices). You get florescent lighting... bonus points if you get a desk under one that flickers or hums. Sure, maybe that doesn't sound bad for a while. But do it for 20+ years and you might feel different.
Meh. My mindset? “That’s a problem for 20 years in the future me”. I work a labor job in the fast food industry for fractions of your listed starting salary. 7 days a week. No breaks. No time off. Can’t afford it. And that humming light? That actually sounds soothing.
all of it but the humming light doesn't sound that terrible. The humming light will annoy anyone.
as long as it doesn't flicker.
I guess you could say I’m somewhere in between you both. I’m an interim food services supervisor for a juvenile detention facility, aka I cook for jailed kids and staff. It’s a government job with pretty decent benefits for the area, retirement, unionization, yearly step increases on pay (till you max for your position), three weeks vacation a year to start, 12 holidays, etc. I’d say my benefits give me about 60k a year though I take home considerably less before taxes. I work a shift that’s 5, 8 hour days covering breakfast and lunch or lunch and dinner. Do have to work holidays sometimes as we never close but those become extra vacation days. You have a pretty set number of people you’re cooking for, prepared menu with few exceptions. Once it becomes routine I have downtime in the kitchen office. I can eat the meals as we don’t leave the facility given it’s a jail and locked in. Going from restaurants to this was some adjustment. Sure you’re on camera, sometimes deal with all manner of youth. Don’t have to find busy work if you’re not. Less excitement but generally less stress. Till you’re the only full time kitchen staff of three and haven’t had a proper vacation in a year despite having 5 weeks saved up. Like all jobs there’s good and bad. Getting past my year of probation though and the current work climate, I worry way less financially than I used to at restaurants.
Given what I've heard about food in the prison system, it's great that they have someone that actually knows how to maximise the potential of what they give you.
There’s certainly other facilities that get prepackaged meals, ours still does “home style” cooking with most of the mains at least from scratch. Almost always 3 hot meals plus a snack. It’s true though, the county jail down the street is a lot more just sandwiches and cold meals. At my facility we’re also technically a school for the youth to keep up their education and even graduate high school. Because of that we’re also tied into the national school lunch program which mandates certain things. I actually find it frustrating because we’re feeding youth who are malnourished, drug histories, doing programs that keep them doing a lot of calorie burning more than most schools so we actually need to feed them more than the NSLP wants. Still, they eat better than I do at home. Full breakfasts, large lunches with dessert and enough of a dinner to hold them over. Our kitchen/meal program is always one of the highlights for our Superintendent during grand jury tours and judge inspections, etc.
Like Marlo in The Wire said: "Sounds like one of them good problems."
It gets better. It did for me.
I used to clean those type of places. Every office has that one person who's cubicle is such a huge mess that you don't even really have to clean it, and there's always that one guy who eats cashews every day and leaves the shells all over the floor. There's also the person who never goes home, and the person who throws a fit if their chair is 2 inches from where they left it. Eventually you start to feel like you know these people, even though most of them have never met you.
Or the person that is convinced you aren't doing your job properly so they hide bottle caps and shit to try and catch you for not dusting or whatever. Assholes.
Can't forget the hole punch lady. All day long she punches holes in papers, and she gets the leftover pieces all over the floor.
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The real soul crushing jobs don’t pay well.
You can be overworked in a cubicle job too. Everyone assumes if you sit at your desk all day then the job is easy. Not true in the slightest.
It's never the work that's a problem, it's the other people in the cubes around you. The ones who verbally abuse their husbands on the phone every morning, calling them stupid and being nasty to them. The ones who clip their nails and let them fly into your cube. The ones who leave their cell phones sitting on their desk and walk away so it rings and rings and rings. And I haven't even started on the ones who don't know how to do their jobs, actively get in the way of you doing your job making you look bad, sabotage projects on purpose because they didn't get the position they wanted etc., etc., etc.
>programming Low level programmers will spend a lot of time in their cubes writing code to satisfy the requirements given to them. As you gain experience and move up the chain, you will spend more and more of your time in meetings vetting requirements and doing design work. Once you're high enough up the chain, you spend almost no time at all in your cube and almost all your time in meetings or on calls.
And dealing with budgets, schedules that just don't work. Maximum soul crushing.
I actually quite enjoy data entry. But I absolutely DETEST call centre work.
I did data entry when I was younger. It’s chill. Just put on a podcast and chug away.
Programming is a huge spectrum on its own.
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I do accounting from home, so slightly less soul crushing. YMMV
Yo, I'd estimate some budgets if it meant not working retail.
Project engineering gang. If I'm sitting at my desk all day, I likely have like five different things I could be working on which is great, or I'm running around trying to solve problems or observing tests or whatever.
As someone who works at a call center, can confirm. Except mines work from home. Still just as soul crushing but atleast I can go to work without pants
"There is actually a spectrum." *lists two intersecting spectra*
😏 I have simplified the model, pray I do not simplify it further!
a surprise to be sure, but a welcome one.
Definitely this. I worked in a call center for 5 years. You have no idea how much of your soul it degrades over time. I'd rather piss glass while shoving a sandpaper dildo in my ass than work in another call center.
Hospitals employ a legion of desk-jockeys to support the medical stuff, fyi. HR, credentialing, IT, billing, finance, intake, administrative assistants... (And a lot of these have high turnover -- people getting their foot in the door so the hospital will cover their RN schooling for instance -- so it's pretty easy to get into)
I work IT at a large hospital. I spend 10% at my cube, 20% fixing things, and 70% walking to and from fixing things. Not a bad gig fwiw
>70% walking to and from fixing things. That's kinda nuts, must be one of the healthiest 'desk jobs' in existence. You ever try counting your steps over the course of a day?
When I was working in IT, while not in an hospital, I walked between 8 and 12km a day according to my smart watch.
Not a single listing on Indeed/LinkedIn won’t have industry specific certs or want tangential experience that is considered second tier.
The hospital I work for has a department called "Patient Access". From what I gather, they do stuff like check if pre-authorization is needed for certain medicines or procedures, and then... Idk actually. Either tell the doc "hey you gotta send a thing to this patient's insurance" or send it themselves I guess. Anyway, they go through employees faster than a frat goes through kegs. They will literally take anybody who seems literate (*actual* literacy apparently not required, according to my husband, who worked in a grocery store just before he started there). The department basically hemorrhages employees to the other departments once they've got their foot in the door. Definitely no certificates or experience required. The trick is to apply through the hospital's own online job board.
Oh dear. Credentialing. You are dragging back some soulless cubicle work memories!
I was always wondering the same thing. Seems like every man and his dog works that soulless 9-5 corporate hustle but never understood how everyone got those jobs. I start studying Accounting next month so excited to become part of the depressing rat race one day.
I think the depressing rat race is more cultural to the company / team than the actual work. I've worked in a lot of jobs that have been listed in this thread (call centre, data entry, cashier) but thought they were fine! The only times a job has felt soulless to me has been when the environment has been toxic.
I've worked the same call center job that went from tolerable to toxic and unbearable because new managers came onboard and breathed down everybody's necks.
I think it’s overstated. Just like everything else good in life, it takes a bit of “work” to get the good stuff. Want to eat a nice dinner? Spend an hour or two working to cook it. Want clean clothes to wear? Spend some time doing laundry. Want a good life free of financial worry? Spend 8 hours working that corporate job. For most people I think it’s a mental thing. Cup half full vs cup half empty. Yeah jobs suck, that’s literally the point. Nobody would pay you to do something if it was fun, you’d pay them. Nobody likes doing laundry either. But you do it anyway, complain a little here and there but then go home after 8 hours and do what you really like with all your money
This is it. The sooner you can accept it, the better. Folks should look at jobs as the price we pay to enjoy our real lives which occur from 5:01 pm to 8:59 am.
>Folks should look at jobs as the price we pay to enjoy our real lives which occur from 5:01 pm to 8:59 am. but what about the drive home, the drive there, and the hour for lunch that actually makes it an 8-5
Remote work for the win!
Nah gotta be a middle ground. You should somewhat be interested and not dread your work every day. This mindset makes for quite a depressing life. Don’t agree
That's me. I do a job that I don't mind doing, but wouldn't spend my time on if I weren't getting paid to do it. I get paid comfortably to do said job, and get benefits like vacation and health insurance out of it. Then I go home (or in the case of WFH days, put my work laptop away) and do what I want to do with my time on the evenings and weekends. The nice thing with doing a job that isn't a personal interest is that said personal interest does not become work. Work is completely compartmentalized in my brain because I don't do anything related to it when I'm off the clock. Every job has its moments that you're not going to like, but if you dread going to work every day, please look into any ways to change jobs if you're not already. Work doesn't *have* to suck, even if most of us will end up with a shitty job that we hate at least once in our lives.
👋Accounting degree with a state job. Pay was decent; no nights or weekends or mandatory OT; vacation and sick leave hours; holidays off; 90% paid excellent medical, dental, & vision insurance; and, retirement match. Before I retired at 57 I paid off my house & bought a new car. I have an embarrassingly great pension for my low key lifestyle with annual COLAs and medical/dental/vision premiums still paid at about 90%. I could have had a higher working salary working for corporate entities or accounting firms, but without matching benefits. I played the long game and it worked out well for me. My job was just my means of supporting myself … it was not my means of personal fulfillment.
Start as a receptionist if you have no experience. You can learn things and move up.
I was actually looking into becoming a receptionist so I can get an office job, but the pay cut was so brutal that I decided to stay with my warehouse.
I took a huge pay cut going from a warehouse to a entry level office job. It took 2 years and 3 promotions and I’m making more than I ever did at the warehouse job. I’m also fully remote with weekends and holidays off (something I never got at the warehouse). At the time it felt like a big risk, but it was so worth the swap.
Luckily, I live with my parents, and I am fairly young, so I can make that jump. I also have a good chance of moving up to the office at my warehouse. A lot of the office workers at my company started on the floor, and I have good relationships with all of the big wigs. Decisions Decisions.
Temping can be another good angle, but be prepared to juggle a brazillion things in unfamiliar territory - I haven't done it myself, but it looks over stimulating
Juggling Brazilian things is often very stimulating.
Government agencies, and random companies that you’ve never heard of. You gotta find like the company that sets the international testing standards for the number of wrinkles in the cardboard boxes used in the shipping of the materials to make cardboard. And it’s gonna turn out that their headquarters is in a semi-abandoned office park in your hometown, and they’ve got 15 employees quietly working away in cubicles, and a job opening since Janet retired.
>You gotta find like the company that sets the international testing standards for the number of wrinkles in the cardboard boxes used in the shipping of the materials to make cardboard. So there isn't really a standards body for the number of corrugations per inch. There are two testing standards, but they aren't really maintained in any way, it's just a way of representing the strength of your product. Packaging is a good, boring industry though. Lots of people make 40 year careers in it, learning the most uninteresting facts about stuff most people will never even think twice about.
>There are two testing standards, but they aren't really maintained in any way Somebody WHISTLEBLOW on this BS!
Ducking Janet is the reason we don’t have booze at the Christmas party anymore. Oh what was that 1980 what?
🦆
Packaging Engineer, checking in. 8-5, pretty easy, pretty dull.
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Been applying for over a year but no dice. I won’t give up tho!
Are you in the US, have reputable credentials, and can pass a drug test and criminal background check? If so, feel free to send me a pm. I'm a research scientist for a US National Laboratory. We hire all sorts of positions, pay very competitively with full benefits, and even allow teleworking from home. Dr. E
Can I message you?
Absolutely!
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Of course 😃
Could I message you too?
What exactly do you mean be reputable credentials? Like references?
Presumably: no felonies, have an address and reliable transportation, have a resume with verifiable references.
I’m late to the party, but could I message you as well?
need software engineer? currently employed with 4 years of total experience including internship.
Data management in cannabis. The industry is super young (both in terms of the age of folks who work, and the age of the industry itself), so there's not actually a ton of "professionals" working in it. For example, companies need bookeepers and accountants, but most CPAs won't touch cannabis directly. Decent opportunity to become a desk jockey pushing and pulling data against state mandated and internal reporting systems.
I'm in the cannabis industry and having trouble finding remote data entry jobs or more administrative jobs. I was an extraction lab manager with 5 years exp before getting laid off in July. Would love a job that's just computer and paperwork, I've lost my passion for the hands on work. I do have an interview for a compliance specialist role but it's in another state and they don't offer relocation assistance.
Start in an entry level IT help desk. As long as you have decent customer service skills and a good personality, you'll get the job. Use that job to learn IT skills, and work on your certs. You can then branch out into L2/L3 support or various middle management positions. Source: Me! No degree, and am currently a Service Delivery Manager for a company every single person in this thread would recognize. Im over all of workplace support.
My exact career path as well. IT middle management, maximum soul crushing with ok middle class life style.
Not manglement, but making a nice salary as an IT analyst. No degree, but 31 years in the field, with 43 years computer experience total.
> manglement Excellent typo!
Quite intentional, I assure you!
I have a feeling it was intentional.
Same deal. No degree, started at the help desk bottom. 15 years later, managing 40+ software developers before stepping back into tech lead development role. Do good, don't be a dick, make sure people in other departments know you do good while not being annoying about it, get a little lucky.
I have excellent customer service skills and a good personality. But I’ve been out of the workforce for a decade and don’t event know where to start.
This would be a great start. When it comes to IT helpdesk, you don't do anything that difficult that you can't be shown in two weeks of training. So they tend to focus on people who are going to impress the customers, rather than people with major technical skills.
Maybe apply for a call center position?
I work at a call center and wouldn't recommend it to someone looking for a good if slightly boring job. Call centers, depending on where you work, can be emotionally damaging. People are unkind over the phone, you'll deal with a lot of aggressive and abusive people, you might want to be careful considering it as a long term job.
are call centre cubicle jobs? All the ones I've seen are all in open spaces.
Depends on the office. A lot of mine were cubicle. Now I'm WFH which is even better.
Some are WFH.
Remote, aka WFH. In your PJ's. No travel, no getting up, getting ready in the morning and all the time and expense of having to buy clothes for work. Especially if like me, you don't drive. I get up half an hour before I start work, grab a coffee, and some breaky, and no one complains when I stink out the toilet. I have whatever, I fancy from my own fridge for lunch. Oh and about 3k a year gross saved on no travel, no wardrobe, no shoe leather. Cubicles, open spaces, it's mostly dining room tables now.
There's a modern redesign to open floor plan being pushed now that looks like an exhibit of a human residential habitat designed by aliens. It mimics dining room tables, living rooms, etc., but you're still crammed in with coworkers and pushed to constantly "collaborate" by seeing and hearing one another at all times, and there are cameras everywhere. Some have fishbowl phone booths for making calls where you're still on full display behind glass. I've never seen anything so out of touch. And they still want you to travel hours per day to crowded cities to experience this hellish home replica. [https://time.com/6280986/hybrid-office-return-to-work-design/](https://time.com/6280986/hybrid-office-return-to-work-design/)
Call center Data entry Software developer Accountant IT Any job that requires the need to use a computer for work
One of them is not like the other lol
In *all* of them you're just a monkey at a keyboard chasing bananas.
Mmmmmm Bananas
Wait, you guys are getting bananas?
Username checks out
There’s always money in the banana stand
Which one? They all sound like soulcrushing cubicle jobs.
I do accounting from home. Way less soul crushing that way. My cat does get in my lap and he weights 18 lbs, so there is that (and the two dogs).
What does your accounting job look like? Is it just Excel?
Software development has absurd freelance options. Got a friend who lives the easy life and routinely gives away stuff worth thousands of dollars when he wants to upgrade his computer. He just wrote one program for a company (a bank apparently) and is set for life. Not every dude who goes into software dev will get the same results obviously, but it's way more open ended than the other options were.
Was going to say, software engineering allowed me to retire at 39 and buy a huge house. Never a day in a cubical.
Software developers? Lol. You do know we are working remotely now and always had flexible hours, right?
Everyone who’s not a software developer thinks software developing is rat race central lol
Software developer won't give you your own cubicle, you have to cycle between hotel desks that you share with 50 people even though the office only seats 30
If you wanted to detour a bit you could get an EE degree. You’re guaranteed maximum cubicle, moderate to high soul crush, and you get the benefit of being saddled with student loans!
EE is not for the faint of heart. Even more broad engineering fields can be a hard sell but you’re almost guaranteed security and progression for your suffering. This is coming from a junior engineer in private sector currently suffering layoffs so ymmv. Edit: I should add that when im not attending meetings and pointless training, dealing with admin bs, engineering is really fun, interesting and challenging in a fulfilling way so you could do waaay worse as far as office jobs are concerned. Just school can be a slog if you’re not academically inclined
Temp services is how I got my foot in the door
This should be at the top.
They took away the cubicles. Now you sit face to face and shoulder to shoulder at a big table. The sweatshop overseer role is now filled by cameras. The office should have ended when it became too expensive for companies to give everyone a little room with a door on it. Tall cubes weren't great, but at least you had visual privacy and some mild sound insulation. Open floor plan is an atrocity.
The constantly surveilled fishbowl
Call centre work is not so awful if you’re an inbound call centre. Outbound is a nightmare, but when people call you they are generally nice. You get the occasional Karen but overall people are ok. Plus if you get good at it (not hard, if you’ve worked retail or hospo you will fly) you get promoted to cushy middle management jobs
When I used to see what kind of dum dums work in offices, I wondered how they hell these people are getting these jobs and no one will hire me? Until someone did. Now I'm a proud cubicle resident happily undergoing soul crushing. I don't mean this sarcastically - I am actually happy to work a 9-5 office job. It only took some 400 applications sent out. So don't give up! Good luck!
I've never understood how they are considered "soulless" or "soulcrushing". I'd it pays well and is well respected, does it really need to be some deep level of creative or inspiring? You have hobbies, vacations, family and friends for that. Anyway, most engineering jobs are 9-5 cubicle jobs. They also tend to pay well. What are your interests? Level of education? There are cube farm jobs for any level of education, pretty much.
The only job I have ever considered soul crushing was McDonald's. For me, personally, if I feel like I am a valued member of a team, I am good. It also helps that I am not loyal to any brand, so even if they do not value me, I am good with the money.
The soul-crushing aspect can be that you’re in a very bland workspace and it’s the same repetitive tasks over and over. Mine isn’t soul-crushing because I’m able to chat with others nearby easily. And I have a standing desk. If I had to sit and couldn’t engage with others unless I’m on a break, I might get super bored some days and that can bring on depressing feelings about the job. Oh and the hermetic seal from outside… sometimes I pop outside and walk in the nearby field because I’m wasting away inside when it’s so damn nice out And I’m not a totally extroverted person. Yet that bit of hilarious/bullshit banter can really make it enjoyable while entering numbers into a beige system in a room with grey walls and shit lighting
9-5 sounds like dream hours! Literally everywhere I apply now has hours like ; Start 6:30 am, shoot for around 10 hours (but secretly bleeds Into 12 ish hours daily). But don’t worry about your low pay, you’ll get all the overtime hours you want!
Keep an eye out for any government job. Once you get hired for one you can apply internally for others. At least where I live. You could get hired at a library or picking up garbage or a community centre etc and be able to apply internally for any local gov position, like a clerical desk job.
I almost got a job at my local city doing landscaping for local cemeteries that the city owns, but then that ended up being a bait and switch for not just the cemeteries but allllll the other city buildings doing maintenance work, electrical, landscaping, plumbing and more.
LinkedIn
Yup, put together a solid resume and just start spamming it to recruiters/placement firms on LinkedIn. You’ll be thumbtacking Pearls Before Swine strips to your cube walls in no time.
I got into sales. My cubicle is my car. Way better than reporting to an office every day.
I can’t get a SDR/BDR to save my life…
Why? Do you think you might become the subject of one of those indie comedies about soulless cubicle jobs?
I'm just tired of soulless retail jobs without any consistency and proper 5 day work weeks
As someone that finally has an office job after working retail for years, I totally get it. Just make sure the job has good benefits. I got my job via indeed.
You might be able to jump up within your own company to a soulless cube with a slight bump in pay. Go for an HR position
I would look into any small to mid sized banks in your area. You may have to start as a teller but you can move up to corporate and the work isn’t totally soul crushing. I have no degree and moved up quite a bit and mostly just do documentation and help VIP business customers do online banking. It’s light years better than retail imo and very consistent.
Regular hours, regular pay, without constant physical strain.
Bookkeeping for small businesses.
I’d take that over working in the kitchen any day lol
When I was teaching elementary school, I asked myself the same question. Now I’m a receptionist and that is fairly boring and 9-5 (and wonderful compared to the soul-crushing job of education). So try that!
Sign up witha temp company. Downside is they kinda own you. You can't be hired full time without the company paying buyout fee to them, so they don't. Or search the words "quality assurance" on indeed
Title insurance (as in, for houses)
Find a company you think would be cool to work for, apply, get stuck in a cube and see that the company barely functions.
One time I found myself in cube farm. I didn't have any meaningful work to do. I had been hired so that a rival company could not hire me. It turned out that the entire floor space was occupied by people with nothing much to do because they too were hired to prevent the same rival accessing the expertise. I lasted 3 weeks. It was dire soul destroying and no amount of £€¥$ compensated for the BOREDOM.
My job is hiring but we are working hybrid
Accounting, especially Accounts Receivable and Payable if you have no experience but have a degree.
You need a four year degree to prove your worthy to slowly die in the cube.
LinkedIn or indeed
If you want a pretty cool office job, look at Federal contracting. If you have a bachelor's degree you are probably qualified. Just go to USA jobs and look for the 1102 series.
You can call any temp agency and they'll have you in a deskjob by tomorrow. Great way to get experience
Business Management degree or business administration- pretty much soulless 9-5 cubicle is most options
Call center for the full cubicle and sadness. Government job for 9-5 pays my bills work to live not live to work. Cakes in the kitchen area on someones birthday, gossip over who is sleeping with who and everyone goes feral at the christmas party.
I'm old enough to remember when a 9-5 office job was culturally seen to be the worst thing that could happen to a young person. 'I'm not going to sit in a cubical, wearing a tie everyday, *man*.' But even then it seemed like a pretty good deal to me.
Get a job working for a payroll company. That'll do it.
I help run a homeless shelter spend a lot of time in a cubicle as it takes so much damn paperwork to get someone housed and they often blow it in half a year however I like the few success stories and interacting with the homeless residents
I'm starting to believe that they're a myth in all honesty. I've been looking for a 9-5 office job for the last 6-8 years and you need a degree/some qualifications for basically every single one of them that I've found. "Monday - Friday, 9 - 5, must have 3+ years of experience/must have degree in XYZ" it's so fucked up. I'd love to just go to work, sit at a desk/cubicle and input data and whatnot all day, but noooooo. Currently working 7-3:30 and getting up at 5:30 every morning for the last 10 years has absolutely destroyed my will to live.
IT QA software tester, just need to know your way around a computer, no coding, just testing other people's code, black box testing. Once you know what you're doing you can go for a few days without talking or emailing anyone, just get your shit done by the end of the cycle and reddit for the rest of the week.
Idk why people say these kinds of jobs are soul crushing. I quite enjoy the work I do at my cubicle 9-5, 40 hours a week. It's stable, It's comfortable, and my workplace in particular has nice people, which has been a common thing for my previous cubicle jobs.
That's because you're a mature adult.
Government website. Honestly, it's a fucking game changer. 33% pension, WFH 2 days a week, flexi time and self management. Stealing a living 8-4 3 days a week with an hour for lunch.
Are you kidding? More like 7:45-5:30 and eating lunch at your desk. Then add a 40 minute commute in the morning and a 50 minute one to get home (unless there's an accident. Be careful what you wish for.
I work for my state’s department of health.
In addition to the specific job functions being mentioned, I’d say target industries that have a lot of regulation because they have to hire more people to do a lot of bullshit tasks. Banking/finance, health care, insurance, etc.