If you are sick of the dystopian hellscape of the modern office, this is for you
Here’s a post I saw on facebook once. Am I the only one who gets angry when kids give advice to adults? Yes, I left in the misspellings.
“Can i say something without making any big people mad? I have to get on my moms facebook page in order to use my page. I sometimes read down my moms fb pages wall. Adults complain a lot!!!! You really do. Why are so many of you so miserable? You tell us not to complain all the time, but you complain more than we do. I’m not trying to be mean, I am just trying to understand you. I mean I see you things that really, you should just appreciate things more, like be glad you have a job. It’s called work, because it is work. My lemonade stand is fun but it is work, hard work. My mom does most of it and i help as much as what I can help with. I don’t complain because it hard work, i don’t complain when I am tired. Be grateful for what sleep you have gotten, be happy you have a bed to sleep on and if you don’t have abed, be happy you have a roof over your head. If your lunch didnt taste good, cant you just be thankful that you got to have a lunch? If your kids get on your nerves, do you think it is very nice to get on FB and complain about them? Don’t you love them? shouldn’t you be happy you have kids, some people do not get to be so lucky. I am just saying, its not really that hard to just except things as they are and just be thankful and happy for what you have been given. And if there are things that are making you not happy, everyone has the power to change their situation. And if you find it so hard and unbariable and like there is not any hope for you and there is no one out there…pray to the lord. and ask people for help. My mom says that a lot. it never hurts to ask for help. There is always someone out there who can help you, but you need to ask. and pray. I know life is harder for adults and i don’t really fully understand. but you have a choice to be happy and except thing or be miserable, grouchy and mean. I like being happy. not sure if maybe adult like to be happy and prefer to be unhappy. And if you don’t like people at work that is ok. you don’t have to like everyone. It is not a reason to be mean though, again you got a choice to make it work or to not. I make it work. school is the same way. you just can’t be friends with them all, thats life.
but you can choose to be a mean person or not. thats all i have to say. I am not trying to sound mean. I just think adults need to not complain just like kids. “
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Of course, I sometimes wonder if it really was written by the parents. Or maybe the parents coached the kids which is incredibly likely. Anyway, it is comments like these that I find even more annoying than the original post. (Again, I am not fixing the spelling).
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“Well said. I try to post only positive stuff and pretty landscape pictures to lighten up someone’s day;”
“Sometimes you don’t have a chose you have no idea what’s it’s like to be so depressed and unhappy I hope you never have to go through it this is a bad sickness and very very hard to deal with;”
Or, this insightful one.
“This is very keen observation. Thanks for sharing.”
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Gag me with a spoon!!! Put me down in the haters camp. Is it really just me or do other people resent it when know-it-all kids try to tell adults how to act. It must really be nice to be completely unaware of all the things you don’t know and spout all these platitudes about “positivity” like “I’m for education and children.” I have a theory about these types of positive people (and how they are responsible for the mess we are in).
The most egregious bone-headed optimist move was when in 1999, the U.S. government squandered the surplus which would have mitigated the disastrous effects of 9/11. But no, nothing could ever go wrong like a recession. “We gotta give this money back to the American people!” Did that $300 refund check change your life? Didn’t think so. Another thing I hate about positivity is the whole “we should just get in touch with our feelings and learn to love ourselves the way we are.” Actually I think that if someone weighs 400 lbs. they should make an effort to lose weight and we should tax the shit out of soda. These are the people who feel they have the inalienable right to drive SUVs because nothing can go wrong. We will never run out of oil and our children’s children will invent a magical solution to climate change or we can all just move to Mars.
And because I am such a suspicious pessimist, I know I will wind up on some terrorist watch list if I post the following reply to Little Miss Sunshine on her Facebook page. But here it goes anyway:
“First off Virginia, I would like to point out that there is no Santa Claus. His entire workshop has been outsourced to China. The Elves, who were laid off and rehired as part-time temporary workers, decided it was no longer worth the low pay to deliver all that cheap junk which you are better off without. Besides, the North Pole is melting.
You may be too busy running your lemonade stand to realize this but it doesn’t matter how hard you work. By the time you get to the real workforce, 30 will be considered old and you will be put out to pasture. Of course, I am part of that lucky generation for whom 50 is the new 65. Although our government and medical science would like us all to live to 100, they don’t seem to want us to have jobs after the age of 40. Many, articles on the Internet are written by millennials who wish the boomers would hurry and die already so that we can make room in the workforce for them, neglecting to mention that when we were starting out, fifty-year-olds were not really expected to voluntarily exit the workforce when 65 was the actual age to collect Social Security (just look at all those old shows like Hazel. The reason I was able to hang on so long was I was able to pass for a much younger citizen until I was about 49. That was when the data mining sites like Intellius broadcast my age on the internet for the world to see without even having to pay a dime. So, between having an unusual name which is easy to find, and actually being over fifty, I have been underemployed ever since.
The last job that I had that I even liked ended in 1999. However, I know I am up against candidates like the commenters on your Facebook post who can barely spell cat and dog, but are bright eyed and positive like you. I hate interviewing with the intensity of 1,000 suns and I have been doing a fair amount of it since then. One time I knew more about the position than the owner of the company interviewing me. But as I looked around the room and saw nothing but “newbies” hunched over computer screens, I knew I did not have an ice cube’s chance in Hell. The biggest question I wish to ask on a job interview is “I’m not sure why you called me in for this interview since you are clearly looking for Miss America? Did you even read my resume?”
And yes, people like you who think I am being a drama queen are people who have not actually had to look for a job since before about 2004, and really are quite clueless as to how bad the process has become. I would rather walk through a swimming pool of mayonnaise to get a job than to have to interview for it. It is the most humiliating, degrading and frustrating process ever devised. Why aren’t all these insane QAnon nuts targeting the HR departments of major companies with all their first amendment solutions.
I am not sure why the other people on your mommy’s Facebook page are so mean, but that’s why I am so mean! So STFU, sit down and report back to me in about 30 years”
My rant for the day which was written in about 2016. FYI, it has gotten exponentially worse now, but I don’t care anymore.