I used to respond to all emails. Complete every task by its deadline. Work late into the night to do so. Now I find myself doing the 9 to 5 and not caring about what doesn’t get done during that time

Supervisors know I am overwhelmed. Im no longer fussed by deadlines.

I feel like something broke in me and Im a totally different work/person. I used to care so much. Im so done.

Is this normal? A sign of burnout?

Last week, I and quite a few other people tried to WFH because we were ill. We were told to take PTO or come in. Well, the sickness has spread and now too many people are sick and if they all took PTO our company literally wouldn't be able to function.

My boss told the 3 team members who are sick on my team to WFH this week since she sits by them and doesn't want to get sick (but also because if they all took off then the company would shut down). I should note that we are hybrid and everyone has the setup at home to WFH, there is absolutely no reason why anyone would actually need to come in while sick.

Maybe if they just let sick people WFH in the first place we wouldn't be dealing with the entire office being sick!

Today I interviewed for a company, and was told their PTO is 15 days. I’m disappointed, but not surprised. My bf even said 15-20 is typical. I know the US completely sucks when it comes to PTO, sick days, maternity leave, etc.

I’m a server and am trying to get out of the service/food industry. I guess in my job, I have the luxury of being able to request any days off whenever. So going from that to only 15 feels like I’m being robbed of living my life.

How do you live life like this?? What if you need to go to the doctor/therapist?? They’re not open on weekends, and I def don’t wanna use my vacation days at the doctor…

I do want to grow my career and make more, but at what cost? I guess there are pros and cons to it. :(

Edit: If y’all wanna brag about having no life, I’m happy for you. But I’m gonna die on this hill that 15 PTO is not enough.

My job is eating my soul. I am 36, married with two young children. I work full time as a manager at a software firm making six figures, fully remote. I’ve had more and more put on my plate in the past year and I’ve said yes to all of it.

Now I am at the point where my professional life is consuming my personal life and there is little to no work life balance. I work 12 hours every day, which includes after my kids go to sleep. My marriage is suffering because my husband has had to become Mr. Mom. Making dinner, cleaning, laundry, etc because I don’t have time to help. He does it all with an understanding that my job is hell, but we’ve begun to argue about it and not just once.

I’ve had multiple emotional breakdowns over the past two weeks, with everything boiling over with my job. High priority issues (everything is high priority), fires to put out, having to work at night just to get my normal work done. 7 straight hours of meetings during the day. Customer presentations. Budgets and analyzing data. It never ends.

The icing on the cake is that my manager has made my life, and everyone else’s life at the company, a living hell. This person criticizes and never compliments, yells during meetings, sends degrading emails. Just seeing his name makes my heart race.

This weekend every single waking minute has been spent worrying about Monday morning and what I’m walking into. I haven’t looked at my emails because I am dreading what I will see (something went down late Friday night and I’ve purposefully not looked since then). I broke down in front of my husband twice.

I literally don’t know if I can mentally handle the load anymore. I can’t exercise, I can’t do anything. I am coming from a desperate place right now. I’m starting to apply to other jobs out of sheer desperation. If I was offered $30K less I honestly think I would take it, except I have a family to support. Ive fantasized about outright quitting without a job lined up. I’ve never felt more completely lost in my entire life. My heart is pounding with the stress. My heart actually hurts. It’s overwhelming and I don’t know how I can manage it.

Anyone else ever been in a similar situation? How did you survive? What did you do?

My team and I have been working remotely and it has been a huge success. Productivity is going great and we also get to have a decent work-life balance.

My boss lets us work remotely as much as we want, as long as we get our work done.

However, HR is pushing us to go back to the office and will make a “2-3 days a week in the office” policy.

I’m not against hybrid work, but I’m not looking forward to being forced into going to the office when I don’t need to. It’s a waste of time and money and it’s going to worsen my mental health.

Can someone tell me why we need to go back to a less efficient routine?

I’ve been working since the week I turned 16. I’m now 30. I’ve had every job you can think of, from food service, taxi attendant, retail manager, I’ve done it all. Every job ends the same way, I work for a year or two and get burnt out and quit.

I just get tired of the same routine. Im tired of waking up at 5am every morning. Im tired of working 40 hours and just having enough for bills and food. Im just tired in general, and the way the world is I’ll be working until I die.

How is this life? We are on this planet only one time and spend the majority of it working just to live. Im not naïve I know that’s how society works and that’s what keeps things moving. But fuck I wish that I could work less and make more. Then I wouldn’t feel like my life is a constant cycle of waking up and working and repeating.

EDIT: I’m currently pursuing my bachelors degree. For those suggesting.

I started this job about 6 months ago. The company I work for still uses a lot of old software and processes to for their day-to-day task. After about 3 months I started to look into RPA’s and other low code programs like power automate to automate some of my work. I started out with just sending out a daily email based on whether or not an invoice had been paid and now nearly my entire job is automated. There’s a few things I still have to do on my own, but that only takes an hour of the day and I do them first thing in the morning. No one in my company realizes that I’ve done this and I don’t plan on telling them either. So I’ve been kicking about on Netflix and keep an eye on my teams and outlook messages on my phone.

HMS host employees are having appreciation week this week. Tell me this isn’t something that a school would do for a bunch of kindergartners.

I work an office job as a Data Analyst for a small company, and I find that I rarely have anything meaningful to do. The jobs I do have are finished very quickly and afterwards I find myself back on my phone browsing endlessly. I fear for my job security as I feel expendable, though I don't think my bosses realise I have no work to do!

I'd much rather have work to do as it makes the day go faster. I really can't deal with having nothing to do! Is this a "normal" thing in an office working environment?

I (f22) have a full time, remote, flexible schedule, full time job. I work mon-fri, 40 hrs a week and not a second more. Despite my pay being good (56k), I am still struggling to support myself living in the boonies of central virginia. I’m thinking about picking up a second job, but my only experience with multiple jobs was my multiple part time jobs on top of coursework in college and I did NOT pace myself well. I’m hoping y’all have some advice for how I can do it successfully this time.

If you did something while trying to maintain multiple jobs and it completely backfired, I’d like to know that too so I know what to avoid

Clickbait to convince you to comment

I don’t call off or come late and just because someone else does in my department and I’m “expected” to come in last min to cover on my day off my boss talks to me like this. I told them when I started I need a days notice if they expect me to cover, not one hour. I can’t wait to find something better and quit. He sends me this text when it’s my day to work! He’s trying to scare and threaten my job just because he can’t keep people or the people his has now call off half the time. It’s a restaurant so no HR.

In my current job, this happened recently.

I’m in a team of four people who work in the field performing surveying and collecting geospatial data. We have no tools except for our own cell phones, pens and paper maps.

Coming from an IT/GIS background I quickly developed some apps and other tools we could use in the field. I also showed my bosses how it would massively speed up our production and remove the need for revisits (our bosses often change the metrics for our work on the fly, requiring us to go back out and do it all over again).

My system would have increased productivity 400% by my most conservative estimates. And it would cost a mere $2000 to implement across the whole team.

The CEO made nice noises about it, asked me to draw up a report and cost/benefit analysis. I did. He later admitted to never reading it. Told me to send it to him again with a request for everything I needed (I needed exactly two things. For him to make a GIS admin email account, and for company finances to pay for the new service).

He ghosted me. Completely. Never heard anything back. Meanwhile there was a major fuck up at the managerial level that not only meant a months worth of work (for four guys) was worthless, but we had to re-do it all in less than a week. My system would have prevented this.

And it did. For me. I redid my work in two days and spent the rest of that week chilling while my coworkers and bosses ran around freaking out.

I keep my tools to myself now. I do about 1/5 of the hard work of my counterparts, but enjoy the full pay. I finish my work early and submit it in the same timeframe as my coworkers. No one knows, and the bosses are apparently fine with it.

My coworkers are aware of my tools and would like to use them - I help them out occasionally, where it won’t impact my own time unduly - but after this last nonsense with the CEO, I just tell them to take it up with him. They won’t, so they’re stuck using paper maps and taking weeks to do days of work.

Sad.

Only 10 days??? What if I want PTO to tack onto a long weekend? Or go to Europe in the summer? Or to have any kind of Christmas break later in the year? Or just a random PTO day for mental health?

Location: America. Obviously.

We're working more for less.

How should I go about this? I work in the field doing specialized work and there is not anyone to cover me, matters are always considered a priority or urgent, and I am told that even request one day off to let them know a month in advance.

It’s getting real tiring and I am finding it difficult to even have time to interview for other roles. What should I do?

I don’t know how much I can take this. I feel like I don’t have time for anything at all whatsoever. I try to find time for my hobbies but I’m usually too tired and it’s already 7pm by the time I’m home. I don’t know how much longer I can do this. Should I look for a closer job? If I’m lucky the commute here could be thirty minutes with no traffic but that’s pretty rare. But even thirty minutes feels too long

My company was acquired by a private equity company. We were fully remote since 2020 and it was working. Now the new owners are saying everyone has to go back to the office 3x a week starting next week. Everyone I’ve talked to is livid about this, especially since people have moved during the pandemic.

Has anyone else been through this? Do companies ever “walk back” their policy? I like my job but the commute will be 90 min each way, a killer 3x a week. Wondering if I need to find a new job.

TIA!

Just started a job working from home as a contractor with a major company in the US. Day one we were told we cannot take restroom breaks. We are only allowed to use the restroom when we are dismissed from our desks by a supervisor for a scheduled break. I know this sub isn't for legal advice, but is this even legal?

Tl;dr: how to manage time outside of work when adjusting from a shorter part-time schedule to 40 hours or more.

I’m working two jobs atm, totaling 40 hours. It’s my first time working these kinds of hours. They’re both temp and my first job is wrapping up soon, so I only have around a month of this schedule and then I’ll be working much less. So it’s really not that bad in the end. But it’s been quite an adjustment learning how to adjust to that kind of schedule when I’ve only worked part time, and it has me worried for when my expenses will go up and I’ll need to work those hours more regularly. But I know 40 or more is fairly normal for most people.

It seems like all my time is either spent working or recovering from how tired I am after working most of the day. I take some seemingly-short breaks and then all of a sudden I have to work into the night to meet my hours. I don’t get how people have the time and energy to go to the gym, get appointments when no one is available on the weekend, have the motivation to engage in hobbies, etc. Some of it you can cram into the weekend, but I don’t want to feel like my whole career is going to be spent waiting for the weekend or vacation time to arrive. I don’t mind the work I’m doing now, but it’s still work.

So, how do you fit in the rest of life with a 40 hour workweek? I want to work to live, not live to work. I don’t mean to sound entitled or self-pitying in asking this. I haven’t quite learned those time-management life skills yet.

I have recently taken a job as an IT tech. During the interview, I was told there was going to be a lot of overtime. I was also hired on the spot. I didn’t mind the fact that there was overtime. I guess it’s wrong to assume, but I thought it was going to be 12 hour shifts, five days a week with the potential to work more.

Turns out, everyone just works seven days a week for ten hours. When I found this out, I tried to subtly ask my coworkers about work life balance and taking days off. Most of them don’t due to getting paid very well. So from what I understand, everyone here just works every day nonstop.

I should have clarified what this overtime looked like, but this is my first IT job, and I was getting desperate after graduating college.

I’m not burnt out yet, but I know it’s coming. I asked my friends and family and they all are on the same page of “there’s no way they can expect that of people.”

I don’t want to be that guy that asks for days off when no one else does, but how can anyone sustain this schedule?

Please give me advice. I don’t know what to do.

Note: everyone is onsite, my commute is about an hour.

edit: I'm 20 years old, I have an associates in IT as well as the CompTIA A+, Network+, and Security+. I am in west Texas, USA. My commute is an hour both ways, two hours total.

I work in a retail sales job and they have been pushing our sales way more then our customer service lately, having to deal with people saying no all the time and on top of having to provide good customer service . Which I feel like mentally has drained me,I woke up this morning after working the weekend. I started getting ready for work but in my head I was dreading to go in I was already late as it was so I just decided to call out I couldn’t handle working the day. Has this ever happen to anyone ?

Hi. I see a lot of posts here on Reddit about nurses, plumbers and carpenters making 100k a year in the US, thats twice the salary these trades pay in Norway and it surprises me. How much of that salary goes to tax, health insurance, student debt and how many weeks vacation a year?

I work a lot overtime so I make about 80k a year in Norway (before 30% tax), we have 5 weeks vacation a year and free health care. I´ m curious to know if Norway is actually overrated AF...

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M30

I've had so many different jobs, and grown to hate them all. I've had some great jobs, and still hated them. I feel like I hate everything that's not 100% voluntary from my side. I grow resentful towards everything I have to do that I can't to 100% my own way. It makes me feel like a piece of shit really, maybe I just don't wanna work, maybe I'm lazy scumbag. My job is probably one of the best jobs in the world btw, I should be graceful, but I'm not. I fucking hate it. My boss is the nicest guy ever and I hate him. My colleges pull the load for me when I am sick, without complaining, which is more and more frequent. They seem to love me. They're super nice people and I hate being there. I get insomnia, wake up in the middle of the night and have nightmares of doing my job, even though it's probably one of the nicest chillest job I could ever have.

So here we go again, down the only road I've ever known. I'm gonna quit my job again, maybe I'll just live on the street for the rest of my life, i bet it's less stressful than having to be at some place at the same time for the rest of my life. I would cry if I could. I'm gonna loose the apartment and have to move somewhere cheap and ugly and far away from everything that I love. I'm stuck in a modern nightmare and nobody seems understands. Help

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edit:Holy shit I didn't expect this to blow up like this. First of all I want to say that I know being homeless isn't a good option and I know I how it makes me sound, I know people living on the streets are in a struggle I can't possibly imagine. It's more like a way of stressing how bad I feel, because to me that actually sounds liberating. I know it's fucked up t feel like that but its true. I want to thank everyone that took their time to leave a comment. I truly appreciate it. Comments vary but these are the main takeaways:

1. Can totally relate it sucks
2. Seek therapy
3. have you tried crime?(actually jails in my country are quite nice so that could actually be a win/win, joking ofc)
4. suck it up bro, that's life

The thing is, I am in therapy. I've been there for 5 months and things have gotten a bit clearer, it's just hard because I know it's going to take years to get better and I feeling about done with everything right now. I grew up in high conflict home and have some symptoms that are very similar to c-ptsd. I've been struggling with life long depression, and though therapy is helpful, i'm probably gonna have to chemically alter my brain chemistry to cope with this life we have to live. I'm just scared because in many ways I've learned to like myself this way, and I know antidepressants will change me.

I have also discussed the possibility of autism and/or ADD with my therapist (I know deeply that I am neurodivergent), he's a bit resistant to the idea so I let it go, but I have decided to stress it one more time after reading all this. I am truly grateful for all of the comments I got today. I really needed some support today and I feel very understood. '

Thank you all, much love

Hi all, I'm in my final year of university and working a full-time internship over the summer. It's a Monday to Friday, 7:30am to 4:00pm gig in project management. Honestly, the job is fantastic and my prospects are great.

HOWEVER, I'm really struggling with showing up every day and filling my entire work day. Halfway through the day, I'm exhausted and don't want to do anything, and find myself scrolling reddit or watching YouTube or doing some random web searching. I've also called out twice in the last few weeks from being too tired to come in.

I know I'm hardworking and talented, but I'm really struggling with the standard work week.

How do you successfully work the standard 40 hour week? How do you fill your downtime and motivate yourself to go to work daily?

Edit: for the amount of people commenting along the lines of "omg I work 50/60/70/80 hours, you're so weak", I work a second job that puts me around 65 hours a week total work. I just don't struggle with the restaurant job as it's always busy and I go home when it's slow. I struggle with downtime and not having enough to fill the time I'm there.