Mandatory Fun at Work: Or Why the 90s Were Better...

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Honestly, after getting harangued for the 9th time this six month stretch about not having a Facebook that details my personal details, my job details, photos of myself wearing degrading cleanroom suits that is entirely unflattering to everyone but are kind of necessary in sterile lab enviroments, makes me contactable, and just gives me a public avenue for really transphobic family members to be publicly transphobic and have to deal with that at work and in my private life... can anybody else see why this is a problem?

When the hell did things get this way for once really private careers?

See, nobody likes their job and hasn't since Reagan. Even if you do like your job, you're probably competing with people who would also like your job and would likely do so for less money than you're comfortable already earning so you had best always seem happy at your job. But I don't want to go into a gigantic spiel about why capitalism is bad. Rather, why the fuck is post-millenial capitalism is so fucking tragic?

See, I spent my formative years in the 90s... basically becoming an adult at the turn of this new century. So I grew up with that 90s apathy that basically celebrated the fact that, yes--99% of us have a job we don't like--but at least you can publicly hate your job and nobody should take that right away from you.

I can basically count on one hand the jobs I like that I've had since I was 11. And my resume is pretty long. Stablehand, horse trainer, waitperson, soldier, postal worker (both postie and nightsorter while studying), complaints 'mediator' (for about three days), nightclub manager, highschool teacher, and more... And that's just the first 2 and a half decades of my life.

Now the university is on my case of being 'always accessible', and 'being public and creating a friendly workplace'... literally demanding I be publicly happy at work, despite public relations being nowhere near my job description and the only reason I work is because I'm bored. It sure as shit isn't the pay cheque.

I don't even have it that bad. The increase of the 'commercial teambuilding seminar and training' sector for lack of a better word I don't have has been a growth sector for the last two decades.

The thing is I don't remember the 90s and early naughties being like this.

At Australia Post the closest thing we came to 'mandatory fun' as a corporate policy was the company giving us a Christmas present. That was it. With teaching the closest thing to teambuilding was offering to cover a class on an off-period, or gathering for a rundown of the latest DEC guidelines or talk about a curriculum. You were allowed to not like your job. Nobody expected you to be a radiant beacon of sunshine at staff dev meetings. Basically you turned up if you didn't have a decent excuse to be elsewhere.

That was basically the bread and butter of television shows and movies of the 90s. That's the culture my entire generation grew up with; "Your job sucks, but at least no one cares if you seem unhappy and you get to die at 70-85."

It was the peak age of the cubicle where office work was considered a death sentence, but nowadays are pretty coveted employment. Only now they've taken away your fucking cubicle, so you've got nowhere to privately eat your canned minestrone in peace and quiet. And I've actually been in a staff room while this was debated/enforced... "If we pull down the dividers of our desks and push the desks together we can have a more direct relatioship with our colleagues, and an open, more personable work environment."

Like, fuck off? No air conditioning, the ceiling fan is garbage, the standing fans will waft ten different odours on our lunchbreak... and why the hell do we want to watch eachother mark student papers and write reports? Being a teacher is messy... mess doesn't improve by simply bringing it out in the open. Teachers have books, millions of photocopied sheets, class study plans, notes, and private student information that will occasionally be lying out in the open rather than in our drawers.

It's a veritable whirlwind of paper. Plus the dividers are useful for sticky notes and calendar schedules. That and students visit the staff rooms. Having dividers is good for containing the chaos of information that perpetually surrounds teachers.

It was like an unspoken contract... We were allowed to be reclusive and unhappy at work in traditionally non-community interaction jobs. Hell, even with community engagement jobs you were still allowed to be somewhat apathetic. Now I'm a fairly extroverted person, but work energy is different from non-work vibes... I want to compartmentalize my professional and private life. But it seems like that's getting harder and harder to do.

So anybody else feel this way, or have any shock and horror stories of corporate-mandated fun/publicness at work?
 

Something Amyss

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In the 90s, I could legally be murdered for being trans without the police even taking a look at the case, but now I might have to worry about social media.

Granted, social media can suuuuuuck, but where I'm sitting, I'll take transphobia on social media over being put in the hospital by transphobic thugs again. One of these things upsets me sometimes. The other causes me to tremble and hyperventilate until I vomit in fear.
 

Xprimentyl

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Believe you me, you are preaching to the choir.

I can?t really speak to the difference between the 90s and now; I did grow up in the 90s, but my work experience then and into the late naughts was largely in blue collar positions. I worked in warehouses until my early 20s when I got my first supervisory role at 23. I stayed at that level of employ for the next 7 years at a few different companies when I was offered my first ?office? position 1,100 miles away at my current employer?s corporate office (to this day, not sure what they saw in my directing a bunch of young-to-middle aged guys moving boxes and forklifts around that they felt merited a significant promotion and relocation package.)

That was 9 years ago, and I still don?t ?get it;? I still don?t fit in with the contradictions in ethics and morals that is the corporate environment. They love to claim to embrace diversity whilst quite overtly demanding lockstep conformity to whatever tenets someone who?s making a 6-figure salary and likely out of touch with the experience of those beneath him/her claims to champion, i.e.: walk like us, talk like us and laugh when we laugh lest you?re labeled ?not a team player? and thusly a pariah.

A couple of years ago, they made one of the more hurtful decisions when we went to the open air office format in lieu of traditional cubicles, and yes, for the same reasons you cite: to encourage collaboration because studies show [insert successful company name here] did, and look at them. Some feigned excitement, others optimistic reticence, but NO ONE spoke out against it, diplomatically or otherwise. When asked privately, NO ONE likes it, NO ONE ever has (and in an even sharper stab to the gut, the company we mimicked has since gone back to traditional office structures because the open air format actually DECREASED engagement and productivity?) But ?GO TEAM!? Right?

Atop that, the company wants you to ?love? it. We take something every year they call the ?associate engagement survey? which is little more than a thinly veiled Union avoidance index. Every question is a softball with the typical range of answers from ?strongly agree? to ?strongly disagree;? ?I feel [this] is a great place to work? and ?Some of my best friends work here.? It?s offered to every associate from the janitor to the CEO. The first year I took it (as a supervisor) I was told plainly to encourage my associates to be honest and candid, but I, as a lower tier manager, ?should consider? pencil-whipping the superlative positive responses, y?know, to offset any negativity from the honest answers I was expected to push for form those beneath me?

After several years and myriad rounds of layoffs and losing so many people I genuinely liked (who ironically walked the company party line like good, obedient sheep and ?loved their jobs,) ?the company? has shown that it has no such touchy-feely, warm appreciation for us; we are numbers that affect the bottom line, and the moment a good culling can put more in coffers, one?s dedication to the company is worth about as much as a nickel on Neptune. Make too much? Gone. Can someone else under our employ do your job for less money? G?bye. They call it ?right-sizing;? they call it ?streamlining;? they call it ?increasing efficiencies,? but it?s essentially ?the guy making millions a year has decided we?re not making enough; your salary is expendable; his isn?t, and as a show of our appreciation for all the ?love? and team player-ness,? here?s a boot? in the ass. Good luck; it?s rough out there.? Allegiances and loyalties are fickle on both sides; why the charade?

I won?t say I ?hate? my job (as in my assigned duties,) but like you, there is a BOLD delineation between my home and work life. I bring no emotion to work whatsoever; I know I am but a cog in the soulless machine and have made the choice to accept that and simply do my job without the shallow (and frankly demeaning) pretense that anyone here gives two shits about me. I don?t hang out socially with people from my job anymore (I?ve literally lost all the ones I liked to one or another form of attrition, so am left with nothing but shills) and I don?t talk about my personal life at work; no one knows how old I am, that I?m in a nearly 3-year-long relationship with a girlfriend (probably the biggest shock they?d get since I?m so ?mechanical? at work,) or where I?m from. I get it; they don?t.

And it?s that, the pretense. Why?? Why do they demand our souls? Why do they [pretend to] care if we?re happy when they?re more than happy to make us miserable the moment it suits them to cut you loose? Why is it the norm that atop the effort of actually doing the work, we also have to work to make others believe the work is GREAT? In my now privileged position, I?ve been in too many meetings where a director or VP was quick to drop a dozen ?F? bombs in talking about our enterprise, then step out of the meeting to a crowd of sheep, put on a smile and talk about how great things are going. Hypocrites the lot of them.

Sorry, that got pretty ranty, but I?m passionate about my dispassion when it comes to the corporate environment.
 

Squilookle

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I just really miss being out and about for the whole day back in the 90s, coming home, and returning all my missed calls in one go without anybody batting an eyelid. As soon as mobile phones arrived, you were expected to be reachable all day every day for work, regardless of where you were, what you were doing, and what godforsaken hour it was.

I think I liked the internet better back when it was just on the horizon- a magical entity of infinite possibility.
 

Elvis Starburst

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Addendum_Forthcoming said:
Xprimentyl said:
Snip-yikes
Jeez, I'm only 25 and this thread is 4 posts long, and it already makes me feel more miserable about my work life. I've had 18 jobs in my life already, no idea what the hell I wanna get into for a longer, more sustainable long term job, or even a career I'd at least be semi-ok with. Nothing I wanna be, or get into (Besides IT, I guess), or anything of the sort. And this kind of thing only seems to fuel the crisis I'm having. My work life has almost never really been happy for a lengthy period of time. Stuff is such a damned mess. And yay, the idea I gotta fake loving everything can be added in too? Fun times!
 

Trunkage

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Squilookle said:
I just really miss being out and about for the whole day back in the 90s, coming home, and returning all my missed calls in one go without anybody batting an eyelid. As soon as mobile phones arrived, you were expected to be reachable all day every day for work, regardless of where you were, what you were doing, and what godforsaken hour it was.

I think I liked the internet better back when it was just on the horizon- a magical entity of infinite possibility.
Who takes calls nowadays. If it's important, you text
 

Squilookle

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trunkage said:
Squilookle said:
I just really miss being out and about for the whole day back in the 90s, coming home, and returning all my missed calls in one go without anybody batting an eyelid. As soon as mobile phones arrived, you were expected to be reachable all day every day for work, regardless of where you were, what you were doing, and what godforsaken hour it was.

I think I liked the internet better back when it was just on the horizon- a magical entity of infinite possibility.
Who takes calls nowadays. If it's important, you text
You've missed my point entirely
 

Kyrian007

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I've got a "fun" job, and I don't have fun at work. At least, when I tell people what I do (talk radio producer, journalist, on-air talent) they always say something like "that must be fun." Why? Why would that be fun? Nothing is fun when it is your JOB. I like watching movies. If I had to watch every movie and review it for a living... I would HATE watching movies. The fact that something is your job... makes it impossible to be fun anymore. I like driving, but when I worked for a road maintenance crew or driving for an auto auction... I hated driving.

And it may not be very "company" these days, but I refuse to fake enjoyment. I don't go to the "rah rah" corporate meetings and retreats my company has all the time. I have 4 saved "performance reviews" that my company makes us do twice a year and I just change the date on the oldest one and turn it in. No one has noticed I'm just reusing them, I doubt anybody even reads those things.

I remember an episode of Scrubs. The story involved the hospital administrator (can't remember his name) forgetting all his cares and troubles the second his foot hits the ground outside the hospital. That's me. I don't even want to think about my job outside of actually being there.
 

bluegate

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It's just more fun having a positive attitude in life 🙃
 

Vanilla ISIS

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Something Amyss said:
In the 90s, I could legally be murdered for being trans without the police even taking a look at the case
Can I see that legal loophole from the 90's, according to which murder becomes legal if the victim is trans?
 

Drathnoxis

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If you don't like your job and you don't need the money you should just quit. Seems silly to do something you don't like for no reason.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Drathnoxis said:
If you don't like your job and you don't need the money you should just quit. Seems silly to do something you don't like for no reason.
I do like my job. It's just that the world seems to be conspiring to make me unenjoy it. Not only that but most people who work need to work, so it's kind of a double-point of why are jobs making it somehow more tedious for no point? Like literally no point.

I needed to work when I first started teaching, and I noticed firsthand discussions of mandatory fun/publicness at work for literally no point. Now they are telling me to get a whole suite of social media for a job which requires me spending hours two/three levels underground.

It would have been like if GPs didn't have offices and rather just public patient consultancy lounges. People, patients and doctors, wouldn't put up with that. It would hurt operations themselves. Why the fuck do people think this is a good dea elsewhere?
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Xprimentyl said:
Believe you me, you are preaching to the choir.

I can?t really speak to the difference between the 90s and now; I did grow up in the 90s, but my work experience then and into the late naughts was largely in blue collar positions. I worked in warehouses until my early 20s when I got my first supervisory role at 23. I stayed at that level of employ for the next 7 years at a few different companies when I was offered my first ?office? position 1,100 miles away at my current employer?s corporate office (to this day, not sure what they saw in my directing a bunch of young-to-middle aged guys moving boxes and forklifts around that they felt merited a significant promotion and relocation package.)

That was 9 years ago, and I still don?t ?get it;? I still don?t fit in with the contradictions in ethics and morals that is the corporate environment. They love to claim to embrace diversity whilst quite overtly demanding lockstep conformity to whatever tenets someone who?s making a 6-figure salary and likely out of touch with the experience of those beneath him/her claims to champion, i.e.: walk like us, talk like us and laugh when we laugh lest you?re labeled ?not a team player? and thusly a pariah.

A couple of years ago, they made one of the more hurtful decisions when we went to the open air office format in lieu of traditional cubicles, and yes, for the same reasons you cite: to encourage collaboration because studies show [insert successful company name here] did, and look at them. Some feigned excitement, others optimistic reticence, but NO ONE spoke out against it, diplomatically or otherwise. When asked privately, NO ONE likes it, NO ONE ever has (and in an even sharper stab to the gut, the company we mimicked has since gone back to traditional office structures because the open air format actually DECREASED engagement and productivity?) But ?GO TEAM!? Right?

Atop that, the company wants you to ?love? it. We take something every year they call the ?associate engagement survey? which is little more than a thinly veiled Union avoidance index. Every question is a softball with the typical range of answers from ?strongly agree? to ?strongly disagree;? ?I feel [this] is a great place to work? and ?Some of my best friends work here.? It?s offered to every associate from the janitor to the CEO. The first year I took it (as a supervisor) I was told plainly to encourage my associates to be honest and candid, but I, as a lower tier manager, ?should consider? pencil-whipping the superlative positive responses, y?know, to offset any negativity from the honest answers I was expected to push for form those beneath me?

After several years and myriad rounds of layoffs and losing so many people I genuinely liked (who ironically walked the company party line like good, obedient sheep and ?loved their jobs,) ?the company? has shown that it has no such touchy-feely, warm appreciation for us; we are numbers that affect the bottom line, and the moment a good culling can put more in coffers, one?s dedication to the company is worth about as much as a nickel on Neptune. Make too much? Gone. Can someone else under our employ do your job for less money? G?bye. They call it ?right-sizing;? they call it ?streamlining;? they call it ?increasing efficiencies,? but it?s essentially ?the guy making millions a year has decided we?re not making enough; your salary is expendable; his isn?t, and as a show of our appreciation for all the ?love? and team player-ness,? here?s a boot? in the ass. Good luck; it?s rough out there.? Allegiances and loyalties are fickle on both sides; why the charade?

I won?t say I ?hate? my job (as in my assigned duties,) but like you, there is a BOLD delineation between my home and work life. I bring no emotion to work whatsoever; I know I am but a cog in the soulless machine and have made the choice to accept that and simply do my job without the shallow (and frankly demeaning) pretense that anyone here gives two shits about me. I don?t hang out socially with people from my job anymore (I?ve literally lost all the ones I liked to one or another form of attrition, so am left with nothing but shills) and I don?t talk about my personal life at work; no one knows how old I am, that I?m in a nearly 3-year-long relationship with a girlfriend (probably the biggest shock they?d get since I?m so ?mechanical? at work,) or where I?m from. I get it; they don?t.

And it?s that, the pretense. Why?? Why do they demand our souls? Why do they [pretend to] care if we?re happy when they?re more than happy to make us miserable the moment it suits them to cut you loose? Why is it the norm that atop the effort of actually doing the work, we also have to work to make others believe the work is GREAT? In my now privileged position, I?ve been in too many meetings where a director or VP was quick to drop a dozen ?F? bombs in talking about our enterprise, then step out of the meeting to a crowd of sheep, put on a smile and talk about how great things are going. Hypocrites the lot of them.

Sorry, that got pretty ranty, but I?m passionate about my dispassion when it comes to the corporate environment.
Nah, not ranty at all... pm sums up my experiences as well, only more so private vs. public sector roles. Middle management is kind of hell as well, because while shit rolls downhill, it sort of bounces once it picks up enough steam and slams into you on occasion. Like having to call in a person juggling an elderly parent with MND for being late to their nightshift. The ground floor hates you (with good reason as a mouthpiece for corporate), corporate hates you when numbers on a chart somehow don't align to material reality (i.e. for not good reasons), and all too often the pay increase simply isn't worth it. When you yourself do unpaid overtime to simply get through the mail loads and runs because a computer decided beat times by mail volume rather than processing how people still need to stop anyways. Particularly with things like M/H density housing.

Or at least the pay cheque increase wasn't worth it in my case... subjective as that is.

When people say 'management' they often never delineate between low and middle, and corporate.

Heh... I still remember the biohazard protocols were for day shift. And it basically just sums up Orwellian dystopia. Turn off A/C and fans... Cordon off V-Sorts and postal workers visibly dusted and those around them with possible anthrax... increase surveillance ... rest of the DC keep working, regardless.

That being said, a job was just a job. It didn't try to own your life--merely your waking hours on a weekday. It asked for your labour, not your happiness.
 

Something Amyss

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Vanilla ISIS said:
Can I see that legal loophole from the 90's, according to which murder becomes legal if the victim is trans?

Yes, the important part isn't the dying, but pedantically hanging on the concept of a legal "loophole."

I guess that makes it all okay to kill people with impunity.

-EDIT- but thank god nobody was mean to me on social media. The 90s were so much better.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Something Amyss said:
Vanilla ISIS said:
Can I see that legal loophole from the 90's, according to which murder becomes legal if the victim is trans?

Yes, the important part isn't the dying, but pedantically hanging on the concept of a legal "loophole."

I guess that makes it all okay to kill people with impunity.

-EDIT- but thank god nobody was mean to me on social media. The 90s were so much better.
So, you're not concerned with the fact that a supposedly enlightened academic institution pushing an agenda that outs trans people and forces them to deal with socially still extant transphobia in the workplace solely under a misguided protocol of creating an 'open workplace environment'?

Where instead of being a person hired to do a job, a person is going to be measured by their social media accessibility regardless of their job description and inevitably come under scrutiny by those seeking to endanger their employment? We live in a world of Sheila Jefreys in Australian academia. Why the fuck should people have to deal with that in an underground lab? Sheila Jeffreys openly spent millions on government and student streams of the University of Melbourne's finances to buy up Germaine Greer's garbage correspondence.

Why exactly do I have to deal with that sort of garbage as per something like a university-mandated Twitter account? I've dealt with enough shitheads questioning my existence, I don't need to bring it into my professional and private life.

Facebook is dangerous to trans people precisely for the reasons you put forward. It outs you, it outs where you work, and now I'm supposed to deal with all that for the simple fact the university wishes 'people have direct community engagement both within and without the university'...

The fact of the matter is this sort of garbage affects eveyone, albeit in different ways, and none of them good. As if the commodification of fun and 'publicness' where it's yet just a concession of people for literally no point. Why, exactly, do we even have to pretend this concession is somehow even good to begin with?

I want a job no one gives a shit I go to work wearing denim shorts and a pop culture t-shirt. My employer does not pay me enough to give a shit about my social media presence. Researchers earn fuck all. I'm happy with that... I don't also want to be imposed upon by the fact that even academia is becoming a far-right shithole. If the university legitimately gave a shit about my personal 'accessibility' within it, they can also give me a proper office and an AP's salary.

Moreover, even if you are not trans, this is still at best a nuisance--at worst a vehicle for the worst possible type of professional imposition for no real reason. Telling you to be happy and public at work. You're not even allowed to just do your assignments. No, you need to be seen as happy even if it makes you unhappier. And in what sort of world does that make sense?

I'm not arguing the 90s were good in every regard. Clearly they weren't... but in this case of social media infecting our jobs, and making even our private lives an extension of work, as if colonizing every aspect of our being. This is clearly a transgression of the social contract that at least in the 90s, you were allowed to not like your job.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Squilookle said:
I just really miss being out and about for the whole day back in the 90s, coming home, and returning all my missed calls in one go without anybody batting an eyelid. As soon as mobile phones arrived, you were expected to be reachable all day every day for work, regardless of where you were, what you were doing, and what godforsaken hour it was.

I think I liked the internet better back when it was just on the horizon- a magical entity of infinite possibility.
Argh, yes. The promise of the multi-networked corporate environment was infinitely superior to the nightmare it's becoming. When it was a tool, not a thing that has attached itself to you and tarnished your private moments everytime you pick up the phone. Fixed phone line services have also become so expensive in tandem with the lifestyle leech that is the mobile, so neither you nor your friends can enjoy some form of barrier to the tools of work and the tools of your leisure.

I still remember all those shows on tv how the internet will mean all of us can work from home, do less work in our day job, standard Jetsons utopia sort of dialogue. Honestly, I reckon the multi-networked nature of the workplace and all those promises unfulfilled has cast a pall over automation and driverless cars when the reality is worsening working conditions and people not being able to afford the taxes and pricetags for ineffectual nationalized technologies.

Technologies that guarantee if there is an accident of any sort (animal, suicide, drunken person stumbling into traffic) that happens within a ten kilometer radius around the grid every car has to stop.

So far they can get a car to navigate a largely straight piece of road with minor obstacle avoidance... congrats. Guess who can also navigate a car across a straight piece of road with minor obstacles? A well-trained Labrador in a dog modified seat. TBF if a Labrador can do it, they can truly go sci-fi and use Kelpies. Though Kelpies are kind of manic and might get bored too easily.

Driverless cars are kind of the 'clean coal' crowd vs people simply asking for better public transport options.

Whole 'fool me once', thing...
 

Thaluikhain

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Vanilla ISIS said:
Can I see that legal loophole from the 90's, according to which murder becomes legal if the victim is trans?
I think Something Amyss is refering to the "trans panic" defense, where you say you were so freaked out by finding out someone was trans you aren't responsible for killing them.

Not officially a legal defense nowdays, but still a useful one, unless you get a jury that's against that sort of thing.

There's the gay panic defense as well, but I think that one is fading away slowly.
 

Pyrian

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Sheesh. When my job required that I be always on-call, they gave me additional pay and a company phone.

Still remember the site manager calling me on vacation: "I know you're on vacation, but we really need you to come in today." Dude, I'm in London. If I somehow magically hopped on a plane right now I wouldn't make it back today.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Pyrian said:
Sheesh. When my job required that I be always on-call, they gave me additional pay and a company phone.

Still remember the site manager calling me on vacation: "I know you're on vacation, but we really need you to come in today." Dude, I'm in London. If I somehow magically hopped on a plane right now I wouldn't make it back today.
Ha! Yeah. Not as bad, but I've had someone do that to me. As an AM our DC manager rang me up at 5AM due to time zone difference asking me to fill in a form while I was on the otherside of the continent, lounging about in Fremantle. I reminded them I was on my company mandated holiday visiting a friend. They told me 'just find a printer, print out the form, fill it out to the best of my memory, sign it, and fax it.'

I spent two hours of that day doing just that, report got flagged anyways due to inconsistencies (as I was writing a two week old incident report from memory), had to do it again when I got back.
 

Addendum_Forthcoming

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Elvis Starburst said:
Jeez, I'm only 25 and this thread is 4 posts long, and it already makes me feel more miserable about my work life. I've had 18 jobs in my life already, no idea what the hell I wanna get into for a longer, more sustainable long term job, or even a career I'd at least be semi-ok with. Nothing I wanna be, or get into (Besides IT, I guess), or anything of the sort. And this kind of thing only seems to fuel the crisis I'm having. My work life has almost never really been happy for a lengthy period of time. Stuff is such a damned mess. And yay, the idea I gotta fake loving everything can be added in too? Fun times!
I missed this post. Ehhh, job security is kind of a thing that no longer exists. You'll hopefully do fine. I think it's more a case of remembering every job has bullshit dripping off it, the trick is finding a job where there are amazing moments to fixate on that mean more than the otherwise malaise of nonsense you have to deal with. If you remember that, you might find a job you can at least live with.