[pobreinvestidor]

The evil Back Office machine is still slowly draining people`s life away

[Kid Strangelove]

I HAD to contribute to this thread.

As a New Yorker, i constantly see the damage corporate culture is doing to our everyday lives (shameless plug of my own blog here).

However, there is another thing im starting to notice - if you don't subscribe to that life, people go out of their way to shame you as if you're doing something wrong.

I'm 28, i live with a roomate, I love video games, picking up girls in various ways, sometimes coding when the urge strikes me, and I work a job that pays me enough to live that lifestyle - and my day consists of mostly strolling in the office around 10:30, maybe doing about 20 minutes worth of real work a day, browsing the internet the whole time, or doing my own thing (coding, reading, taking 2 hour lunches).
Sometimes I watch pro wrestling, sometimes I attend hipster parties, sometimes I spend hours getting better at Tekken and Street Fighter, sometimes I get drunk at art shows, sometimes I spend a few hours in the Russian bath house on 10th st.


I am genuinely happy. And that seems to throw off a lot of people. People simply can't accept that I am happy with my lifestyle. They tell me that I am wasting my potential, and yet they turn around and work their constant 10-12 hour days and go home to their sub par girlfriends and wives, with no hobbies to speak of, while I, just minutes earlier, scheduled a date for next Saturday with a 6'2 skinny 19 year old Russian chick... no exaggeration. Yet I'm the bad guy

People thing being miserable is the standard, and I am starting to see hate for the mere fact that I am not miserable. I sometimes draw nude models on weekends (PLUG), while my roomate has been telling me for about a year now how he wants to try a fencing class. And fencing is cool as shit, why wouldn't you want to do that at least once? He has yet to fence, he just works, drinks, and takes care of his unattractive girlfriend (who he is now moving in with).

And yet I'm the bad guy thats wasting my potential.


PS: @TheCaptainPower - cool username, for a good part of my childhood I wanted to be Hawk, but since I was a chubby kid I got to be Tank a lot

[Exactaking]

Help with the downpayment! Cripes, no wonder real estate prices where I live (DC) are still high. I'm lucky: my parents are broke as shit! Renters, no home equity, can never afford to gift me 200k to make a downpayment on a million dollar house. Looks like I have good reason to MGTOW.

[Pappy]

Man I can relate so much to this thread. I been in office work for a few years. The people are insane. During summer, only 10% of the entire building take walks. They sit on their fat ass 7 hours a day and they don't even want to take some fresh air during lunch.

The men there are fucking hard to watch. They're wife-wipped to the point of having no testicles left. They openly admit that their wives make the decisions in the couple. One boss there had an "old wise man to young man" kind of talk with me once. He was explaining to me that in order to get sex from his wife, he had to cook dinner, and clean, otherwise, he doesn't get any. He was talking to me like he was giving me advice.

The other boss, mr beta, married his first girl friend from high school. Yeah... she was getting fucked by another dude, while mr beta was giving her gifts and patiently waiting for her to love him. One day the other guy dumped her and she went with mr. beta. So he married the first girl he ever touched and had kids with her. He told me that story himself... without shame.

Some women just got out of high school with their diploma and think they<re all that. Once one of them looked insulted because I was'nt giving a shit about her diploma. Bitch had 2 chins and wondered why.

I could go on... some stories that would make Chateau Heartiste cringe. But there are some good people there and I try to talk to them instead.

[bacon]

several years ago i worked in an office. one night i left work to go to my car in the parking garage. as i was walking to my car i saw one of my bosses (mid 40s, married w/ 2 kids) just sitting in his car staring ahead. i stopped walking and watched him. it felt like an hour but for the next few minutes all he did was sit and stare while sitting in his car. i don't know what was going on in his life, as far as i could tell nothing serious as i would have heard, but just watching him do that was a wake up call for what office life does to a man. i wondered what was going through his head as he sat and stared while sitting in his car? thoughts of a shitty homelife? the futility of his existence? how miserable his life had become?

the funny thing was this boss didn´t give off a depressed vibe at work, it took me seeing him in a honest moment to get a glimpse into the sadness of his existence. yea, im glad i no longer work in an office..

[TheCaptainPower]

The worst is you get these guys who move out to the suburbs and they take the fukin 5:30am train into work every day, and they get there around 7:45am...

Then they go "hey, what time did you get in?" "I got in at 7:45, ha ha ha"

Then the month before bonus time the managers get into a competition who can stay at the office the longest and surf the internet...


Best part is when these married guys from the suburbs get laid off they commit suicide or go crazy because they cant afford their long island $15k a year real estate taxes...

My rule of thumb is this, take a look at your managers and decide if you want to become them...If the answer is a definite "NO" then it is not a life long career for you.

[Vitriol]

(01-26-2013 02:25 AM)SnakeEyes Wrote:  

The trick to office jobs is staying shape, using all the amenities when traveling, get out of the office during the day (DO NOT EAT AT YOUR DESK), and prioritize spending for cool shit.

It takes ten minutes to walk from the front of my office to the beach, and I think I'm the only person in the entire company who goes to the beach almost every day on my lunch hour. The rest of them would rather sit inside and talk about retarded TV shows all day.

I'm lucky that I have a pretty easy job and it pays me well enough to do all the things that I enjoy, but constantly being around people who you don't like and who have no motivation is really draining after awhile. You can get really limited by the people you keep around you and the environment you live in if you're not careful.

As for the original point, considering how much my coworkers talk about lame TV shows and movies that I've never even heard of, I know they have pretty much no life aside from television. After the first few months I realized hanging out with them outside of work is a total waste of time.

[Matt3B]

(01-26-2013 08:29 PM)TheCaptainPower Wrote:  

My rule of thumb is this, take a look at your managers and decide if you want to become them...If the answer is a definite "NO" then it is not a life long career for you.

This is one of the reasons I quit university. Looking at the people taking my lectures and classes, who'd done these courses, admitted they hadn't got into the industry and ended up teaching it on a really shitty wage instead, I asked myself "why I am I here?"

Unfortunately for most, they lack that foresight.

[lavidaloca]

MattC the problem is you need a capital to invest and make more money. In reality, a university degree is usually advantageous in that process assuming not overly debt filled. A high school degree by contrast is quite likely to lead to terrible job prospects and poor pay which never allows you to invest and get ahead. Guys who struggle it out in the office and save a few hundred g's are then in a position to invest and make more money and get out of that lifestyle. I'm not sure quitting university is a very good response to the criticisms in this thread.

[Matt3B]

(01-26-2013 10:16 PM)lavidaloca Wrote:  

MattC the problem is you need a capital to invest and make more money. In reality, a university degree is usually advantageous in that process assuming not overly debt filled. A high school degree by contrast is quite likely to lead to terrible job prospects and poor pay which never allows you to invest and get ahead. Guys who struggle it out in the office and save a few hundred g's are then in a position to invest and make more money and get out of that lifestyle. I'm not sure quitting university is a very good response to the criticisms in this thread.

Just saying, mate.

[StarcraftGG]

delete

[TheCaptainPower]

@Starcraft What neighborhoods are you looking in? I was looking at seaside heights with my cousin since NJ has been foreclosure city, but only found a couple properties remotely interesting....

I've been working since 21, so pretty much I saved 10-15K per year with interest for 12 years in a row. About half is cash, half in 401K.

[Icarus]

Obligatory Jon Lajoie:

Nine to Five! Nine to Five!!! Or, if you're an investment banker: Eight to Midnight!

[cibo]

Honestly, outside of one dude who thinks a bit like me and my boss who lets me slide on BS work and plays video games on his ipad during meetings, most of the people there are just boring as fuck and are massive fucking pussies. I asked one person how he was doing and all he could talk about was how he's glad he's not fired yet.

The main thing I hate about office life is that 80%-90% of the "work" done is meaningless. You see people walk around fast heading nowhere just to seem busy; people always scheduling shitty meetings that don't do anything; people having useless conversations about shit that doesn't matter. If I'm there to work, I just want to finish up my shit and leave. Thing is if you cut out the BS, there really isn't that much work.

That and working from home means I can take a break without having to justify it and I can go down to Camden market to eat lunch at one of the best places for visiting London. I can then pick up a coffee, hit on a few girls that are there who are probably students or lazy bitches since its during the work day, and then head back to my flat to bang out some more work and finish work early. I just had a really good performance review last week despite doing so little work (or maybe because of it?).

[StarcraftGG]

delete

[HotLava]

I can completely relate to these comments and I see them ring true everyday. I work in an Engineering office in the NYC suburbs. To start off, there are basically no women in the office. The guys are basically risk averse, conservative duds.

The comment about people with long commutes is right on the money. There are several people who commute 1.5 hours (3 hr total per day) from Pennsylvania just so that they can save a little bit of money on taxes. They seem completely miserable. They are always worried about losing their jobs despite the fact that business is good and they've been working for the company for 20 years+.

In a revealing conversation one time, I asked one of these guys what he had planned for the weekend. His big plan was to mow the lawn.

The "lessons learned" here are:
1. Go out, have a good time, have an interesting lifestyle
2. Save a good amount of money so that you are never dependent on your employer

[TheCaptainPower]

@Hotlava My employees are either "mowing" the lawn, or "taking my kids to baseball".

I have 3-4 people in my office who commute from the Pocono's to Wall st on some insane 5am bus.

The cafeteria thing bothers the shit out of me. Everyday about 95 percent of my company eat's cheeseburgers, fries, and a diet coke from the employee cafeteria like sheep.

Then when I try to take my daily 2pm dump, they go in there and start ripping ass and you can just tell their digestive system is completely poisoned...

[xsplat]

I've always been overconfident that regardless of how many years of entrepreneurial struggle I had behind me, somehow the pattern was sure to change and that if I just stuck it out I could make up within a few years a lifetime of not saving any money.

More or less that's how it's working out.

So while it's a high risk strategy that probably wouldn't always work, if you don't like the corporate grind you could always relocate to a place where you spend $75/month in rent and not much more in food and plug away at making your own income, until you find your stride.

Or people have given other non-corporate options on this site.

It's easy to diss how people trade life satisfaction for security, but having spent many years on the insecure side, I can see why. Being late with rent payments or having to dig into the coin stash for the evenings pad thai leads to high cortisol levels.

But with a little bit of overconfidence to see you through, it's pretty hard not to stumble upon making more than a good hourly wage, eventually. And by eventually I mean over many years or decades.

If there wasn't a trade off, everyone would be doing it. It really does take a willingness to take risks, and to live risk. But I'd never live any other way. No fucking way would I ever be in an office - I don't care if the pay was a guaranteed three times what I now earn. With entrepreneurship your future is wide open, and it's all up to you. It's like a game. With a job it's more of a grind and a matter of slow careful investment. One is process oriented, the other is results oriented. Entrepreneurs are into their work - they enjoy it because they are deeply invested in it. They work on their own projects.

It's not all good - sometimes the stress can be too high, and it takes a while to learn to not go up and down emotionally along with your finances. Even now I can lose 50% of my income with no warning. Or have it go up 50%. But no ones going to fire me, there is no alarm clock, and at any time I can move anywhere.

I'm coming to realize that people are willing to complain about the constraints of a salaried job, but very few of those are willing to make the very large lifestyle changes that enable them to get out from under that system, and to create their own system. Maybe 5% of people? One percent? Less?

[theIVth]

Get a job in sales and you don't have to be in the office all day. You fly around or drive around the city to visit your accounts which gives you plenty of opportunities to meet women during the day while your suited and booted without having to look like your trying too hard by wearing a suit at night.

And fuck a bonus. Your commissions off of what you sale is your "bonus". Couple that with a base salary and it gets no better.

If your working in some ultra conservative department or for in an ultra conservative industry, then yea, I can see how some of this could be true. But trust, all office or corporate jobs are not like this.

[Blackmagic]

While it is true that people in sales tend to have more personality, my last corporate gig was inside sales for a big life insurance company. 80% of the people in my department were in the 23-30 age group and TheCaptainPower's 90% rule held true. A lot of the guys that weren't married had serious girlfriends or were engaged. Even though a few of them raged a bit on the weekend with their college friends, you could tell they were headed straight for that boring existence of mowing the lawn, taking care of kids, etc within a few years. 35 dudes in that department and maybe 2 of them were interesting enough to hang out with on weekends.

[HotLava]

How about some of the terrible dating advice these married duds give me? "You need to buy girls drinks to get with them". The worst advice I've ever got was from a co-worker: "You should not date good looking girls. Go for average girls, because they won't cheat on you."

As for my office behavior, I use the consistency rule in my office. Basically, as long as you're consistent, you can pretty much get away with anything. I take longer lunch breaks than anyone, and go out to eat everyday. I'm consistent about it. So nobody has the guts to call me out on it. I finish all of my work and do a good job. So they can't complain during my annual review.

Remember to set the tone for your job. Take long lunch breaks, browse the internet on your phone, take lots of breaks. Just make sure you're consistent about it.

[Wool Suit]

(01-27-2013 03:38 PM)HotLava Wrote:  

How about some of the terrible dating advice these married duds give me? "You need to buy girls drinks to get with them". The worst advice I've ever got was from a co-worker: "You should not date good looking girls. Go for average girls, because they won't cheat on you."

I got "she's way out of our league" the other day when discussing an attractive, 7ish female colleague. I just stared at him and told him to never say that again. Think I'm going to slowly being him into the red pill fold starting this month.

[UrbanNerd]

Well...since I didn't attend and Ivy or psuedo-Ivy, I knew high-finance was pretty much out of reach for me (add on just a B- GPA), but...

I love the ease of the INTEL federal contracting world in the DC area. No it doesn't pay high-finance salary, but you can still get Top-5% income which allows you to live near the federal agency in Maryland with a 7 minute commute.

...and allows me to take several "weekend warrior" trips a year. No I cannot do the weeks/months stay like some of you...but I get to make my rounds.

[Captain Ahab]

Freedom.

That is what I want.

I don't care how much money you make. If you work under external command you are slave.

Corporations are private tyrannies. They control when you wake up, when you go to sleep, what you can and cannot say at work, online, and your private life.

It is funny how Americans champion freedom yet 99% of them work for someone else.

America has created the greatest form of national control known to mankind. Consumerism, not religion, is the opiate of the masses. And as long as these fuckers keep creating shit to buy, the workers will keep enslaving themselves with debt and consumption.

Fight Club was so fucking right....

[freshcream]

Would you guys say teachers are slaves as well?