‘I honestly don't get why corporate work is often treated as uniquely awful compared to every other form of labor’: Employee reflects on whether we’ve exaggerated how bad corporate jobs are

It's not that corporate workers are exaggerating; it's that we have several conflicting ways to measure sufferingWhy is sitting in an office sipping your favourite coffee, answering emails, and filling endless Excel sheets while alienated from the product of your work considered the epitome of modern work-related suffering, while other types of (very demanding) labor are considered 'just regular jobs'? Are we treating some kinds of suffering as more 'prestigious' than others?We all have a clear image of what a corporate job looks like, even if we never had one. The fluorescent lights, the endless lines of cubicles and desks, the greyish carpets, and the millions of people working hours on end on something they'll likely never see come to fruition.For us, the corporate employee became the symbol of someone who sold their life to a company. This might be because an existential crisis is much easier to narrate when everything else seems fine: no obvious physical costs to our job, it looks comfortable, and it's financially stable. When we're still unhappy in a situation like that, it forces us to look underneath the surface.This is where I think we go wrong. People actively participat…

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