Anonymous 5m 1,151 #cubicle
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
Working Class Hero, was a song by John Lennon, where he sang about being born and being made to feel small and being given no time at all, being in so much pain, you start to feel nothing at all, striving to be something, going to school, dealing with the abuse there, being tortured, and then being expected to pick a career, pressure of family life at home.. being asked, “What do you want to be? What college do you plan to study at?” while you’re still in high school, still trying to have fun with your life. Why do we have to make a choice so young? Yet we do, because we must follow the norm. Yes, a working class hero was something to be, where there’s room at the top, they keep lying to you, still. Yes, if you want to be a working class hero, just follow me.
I also thought they pretty much took my life and made a movie about it when I saw Office Space for the first time. It was the perfect setting to explain the corporate world, life in a cubicle. I would almost think that jail might be better.
When you’re in a cubicle, you’re working for the man, to pay your bills and ensure that the man, the corporate men, receives his / their profit. When you’re in a prison cell, you’re working for no man, and the man is ensuring he pays his taxes so you can remain alive. Either way, where is the freedom?
An 8+ hour work day, only to return home, fix supper, spend what little time you have with the kids before they go to sleep, and live in a sexless marriage with a woman you call your wife, but is almost as estranged to you as you are to her.
And the little sex that you do have is out of spite, out of obligation, and to try and save what little bit of marriage, dignity, and manhood you have left, remembering the days when you would masturbate to your fantasies ten times a day, because at least then, you could be the man in your fantasies, and roll over and fall asleep afterwards without the guilt of cumming too quickly, not because you are selfish, but because you are just too tired, stressed, and too depressed to fuck a woman you’ve been married to for years who has called you every name in the book, fought with you, acted immature, and belittled you to the point where you just don’t care anymore, and you are expected to still find this woman attractive, acting as if you can just forget and forgive all her tantrums, outbursts, and snude comments she’s made at you throughout your entire marriage, whether she was “joking” or not. Raise a fist to her or talk some sense into her, however, and you are a terrible verbally or physically abusive weak man, to be shunned from society. Sit there and take it, and you are a weak pussy of a man. And yet, you still must act like a man and treat this woman with dignity and respect because she is the mother of your children.
As if trying to pay the bills, being a loving father and a loving affectionate husband was not enough. The fact is, women are never happy and will never be happy no matter what you give them, no matter what you do for them. If you’re miserable, it gives them a slight comfort knowing that you are never going to be happy. Why even bother? The single life almost seemed better. Then again, I don’t think anyone is ever happy. When you’re single, you want to be with someone and when you’re with someone, you want to be single. The human psyche is just in a never ending chaotic state of wanting what it cannot have and there is the belief that the grass is always greener on the other side.
And I’m not saying that prison is the place to be, definitely not. The alternative is much better than a life of being alone, or worse off, in a jail cell. I love my kids and I love my wife so I would never give them up for anything in the world. Sometimes though, I feel like it all happened too quick. Once upon a time, I was always going out with friends, coming home to an empty apartment and feeling like a bachelor, even sometimes bringing girlfriends back to my pad, knowing they would be gone the next morning for work.
I never thought that going to college and searching for a job would land me in an American corporate office, in a cubicle, where the entire floor is just cubicles, where every cubicle has just a slight hint of personality of the person occupying it, some messier than others, some very neat and organized, giving you a slight insight into the life of the person occupying the cubicle, where you can hear people talking on their work phones, gossiping across the way, and a never ending supply of personalities that you know deal with the same issues, the same false hopes and dreams that you do. Everyone working towards the same thing: a paycheck to keep their houses and their miserable lives in order.
Wake up, work, go home, eat, sleep, rinse, and repeat until the weekend comes where you get just a tiny taste of freedom away from the corporate world. And before you know it, you’re too old and too tired to enjoy those things you used to when you had the time on the weekends. Even Friday, which had its magic when I was younger, has lost most of its excitement, because weekends no longer mean relaxation, but rather doing all those things that you couldn’t do on the weekdays because of your job. So all week, you’re just plagued with thinking about what you’re going to do during the weekend, and it hardly seems like fun anymore, but rather, just a bunch more chores and more work to do.
There are many who would kill to be in my position right now, to have a family with a house and a job. It may seem like I am complaining, but I would never give it up for anything in the world and I do appreciate all that I have and all that I have worked for. This is what everyone is working towards, and once you’ve got it, even then, the human psyche wants something else, and never seems to just be content with what it has. And that is what we call freedom…. the fact that we have so much, we struggle to be comfortable with all that we have.
Welcome to the American Dream.
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