suicidal
My workplace feels like quicksand. I watch it gobble up and break people. I watch as others feel similarly destroyed by the monotony of work and the difficult people around us.
My coworker, who feels the same way, said “I’m scared I’ll become someone like Marion.” Marion being someone bad at work who keeps pestering others to do work for her and is very incompetent. That stuck with me. It really does seem like the longer you stay in this monotonous pit of weaponized incompetence and learned helplessness, the more it transforms you. Motivated people leave because they aren’t accommodated here and they’re used and abused. Either they make the jump and leave, like so many others I have known here did, or they stay and become like the others.
We both feel bad. We both feel like we ought to be grateful to have a job at all when others have none or a job that’s physically much harder and more horrible. But certain office jobs eat away at you in a way you can barely describe.
I definitely feel like my autism makes this harder for me. A lot of aspects about the daily work drain me in ways that are difficult to explain; the emptiness, the sameness, having no control or stake in the output, the office environment … causes me physical and mental pain.
It’s like a zoo animal. Yes there might be space, shelter, and food and they are privileged to receive healthcare and not needing to hunt - but then you look at them and they seem sad, and they cope by repetitive motions like shaking their head or walking in circles. That’s me. I know what I should be grateful for, but I feel caged and bored out of my mind, forced to work with a sea of people I can’t connect with, and the only other person who gets me feels the same way and will leave this place, too.
I wish I could get a sick leave for 3 months, but that’s short term gratification. It doesn’t help me find a new job, find new expertise, new projects, a new position in another department at least. I need to endure it for the experience, the consistency, to not miss out on opportunities.
But I am definitely quiet quitting. I just cannot be arsed to do a lot of the things anymore. I can’t even force myself to, it’s that bad. It can be a 3 minute task and I just freeze and cannot get myself to do it. Almost every task feels that way now but I manage to break through for the truly necessary ones. The rest, though…
The boreout danger. I should have left earlier.