baboon2004
Darned cockwombles.
I was shocked and appalled to (i) return to work at my office job today; and (ii) be told by two different people that they thought the break over Xmas had been 'too long', and that they were glad to be back at work. Given that said break had been between 10 to 14 days for all concerned (along with the fact that annual leave where i work is at the legal minimum level for the UK) I can only conclude that I have passed into some horrific twilight world. And I don't like it.
The job I do is not the worst in the world, and it has its perks, but as with most jobs of its type it is suffocatingly filled with (often mindless) bureaucratic tasks, and there has been but a handful of instances of actual fun that I have observed during the year that I have been there. The idea that anyone would elect to be there for 40 hours a week, if they weren't getting paid for it, is frankly chilling. (And also profoundly sad.)
To be honest, I've never experienced quite such lunacy at any previous job I've had, where there has always been a healthy degree of clockwatching and cynicism about the perils of work. And that's what encourages bonding, after all. How can you bond with people who actively like being in an office?
From where I'm sitting at the moment (thankfully not still at work) it seems that the affective labour that began in service-type roles is creeping in everywhere, as many people's financial situation becomes increasingly insecure. I can't explain such naked, disgraceful and unprompted enthusiasm for office work in any other way.
Which is all a long-winded way of asking people for their thoughts and reading recommendations on the phenomenon of work, particularly in its most modern form (by which I guess I mean after the introduction of email as an everyday work task).
I read a book by Frederic Lordon on the basis that 'Why do workers work for capital rather than for their own liberation?' is an endlessly fascinating question. I found it difficult though, and maybe a little pretentious. 24/7 by Jonathan Crary was good, but suffered from the same drawbacks.
And going back a ways, this quote from Marcuse seems eerily prescient to me in explaining that old chestnut of why the fuck we're not now working 3-hour days:
“the closer the real possibility of liberating the individual from the constraints once justified by scarcity and immaturity, the greater the need for maintaining and streamlining these constraints lest the established order of domination dissolve. Civilisation has to defend itself against the specter of a world which could be free. If society cannot use its growing productivity for reducing repression (because such usage would upset the hierarchy of the status quo), productivity must be turned against the individuals, it becomes itself an instrument of universal control.”
The job I do is not the worst in the world, and it has its perks, but as with most jobs of its type it is suffocatingly filled with (often mindless) bureaucratic tasks, and there has been but a handful of instances of actual fun that I have observed during the year that I have been there. The idea that anyone would elect to be there for 40 hours a week, if they weren't getting paid for it, is frankly chilling. (And also profoundly sad.)
To be honest, I've never experienced quite such lunacy at any previous job I've had, where there has always been a healthy degree of clockwatching and cynicism about the perils of work. And that's what encourages bonding, after all. How can you bond with people who actively like being in an office?
From where I'm sitting at the moment (thankfully not still at work) it seems that the affective labour that began in service-type roles is creeping in everywhere, as many people's financial situation becomes increasingly insecure. I can't explain such naked, disgraceful and unprompted enthusiasm for office work in any other way.
Which is all a long-winded way of asking people for their thoughts and reading recommendations on the phenomenon of work, particularly in its most modern form (by which I guess I mean after the introduction of email as an everyday work task).
I read a book by Frederic Lordon on the basis that 'Why do workers work for capital rather than for their own liberation?' is an endlessly fascinating question. I found it difficult though, and maybe a little pretentious. 24/7 by Jonathan Crary was good, but suffered from the same drawbacks.
And going back a ways, this quote from Marcuse seems eerily prescient to me in explaining that old chestnut of why the fuck we're not now working 3-hour days:
“the closer the real possibility of liberating the individual from the constraints once justified by scarcity and immaturity, the greater the need for maintaining and streamlining these constraints lest the established order of domination dissolve. Civilisation has to defend itself against the specter of a world which could be free. If society cannot use its growing productivity for reducing repression (because such usage would upset the hierarchy of the status quo), productivity must be turned against the individuals, it becomes itself an instrument of universal control.”
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