No matter how much you enjoy your corporate job, you will have days when you’d rather be elsewhere than in the office. Every new email drains half of your energy, and it’s not even midday yet. And let’s not even get started with tomorrow’s 9 AM meeting.
Fortunately, there are platforms like The Office Hag Instagram page that express the plight of every employee. It’s an online community that shares memes about annoying coworkers (we’ve all had one), performance reviews, and your boss calling out your punctuation errors on a 200-slide deck.
For anyone who’s worked (or is still working) in an office, let these memes bring you some much-needed levity today.
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The "boring" and "pointless" lives that book characters go on quests to avoid are all lives I want
According to the American Institute of Stress, work-related stress has increased over the past few decades. Their statistics show that 47% of employees say their primary stressors come from work, while 77% believe their work-related difficulties have negatively impacted their mental health.
71% of employees have also claimed that the stresses brought on by their jobs have somehow caused personal relationships to end, whether through break-ups or divorce.
Agreed, I hate having to share irrelevant personal info about myself just because it's "polite" or "social" or "a basic part of society / human interaction", especially because answering anything other than "good" to "how was [thing]" will often start an unskippable cutscene of follow-up questions
That begs an important question: What aspects of work are the common sources of stress? According to the American Psychological Association (APA), it could be due to low salaries and excessive workloads, a job that isn’t challenging enough, a lack of social support and growth opportunities, and unclear expectations from superiors.
The APA notes that a stressful work environment may lead to physical symptoms like headaches, irritability, and high blood pressure, as well as mental issues like anxiety and depression.
I remember a bar I managed when I hit 35 😂 my 19-25 yr old staff took me to holy moley golf and I had maybe two or three cocktails (I don’t drink), aparently I drank with the youngings in another bar after and I don’t remember how I got home and I had so much trouble working the next day. It just can’t be done. I used to rock up to shifts when I was young on acid still and function well 😂 alcohol killed me
Managing work-related stress requires complete detachment from it. An article by Harvard Business Review notes that the mere thought of work prevents you from fully recovering from it.
HBR emphasizes the importance of dedicating a fixed time each day to devote all your attention and energy to activities unrelated to your job. Mindfulness activities also allow for the recognition of stress triggers and, therefore, enable effective detachment.
Isn't it funny how the next generation always seems to be disenfranchised? Remember how the boomers became hippies? And before them the silent generation became beatniks? And now it's gen z "following their passion". Seems lik e gen x was the only one that battened down the hatches and did the work.😐
Speaking of mindfulness activities, the APA recommends tracking stressors through journaling. Journaling involves recording thoughts and feelings about stress triggers, including the people and circumstances that caused them.
Taking notes through journaling allows you to identify stress patterns and how you react to them. It then gives you a clear idea of the necessary coping methods.
I bring a sort of attitude of "We tried doing it that way 15 years ago, and it didn't work. Then we tried it again 12 years ago, and it didn't work. Then we tried it 8 years ago, and it didn't work. Why the ever-loving F*** are you telling me we have to do it that way AGAIN??" that supervisors really don't like.
We’d also like to hear from you, our readers. If you’re working a corporate job, what about it do you dislike the most? How do you handle work-related stress? Let us know in the comments!
"Work was more fun when I could wear my pyjama pants and have a cat on my lap" - my mum
OMG I've got one of those bosses who is always just overwhelmed. But he also spends hours every day chatting about non-work-related things with certain coworkers who also have incredibly poor time-management skills. So the other day he comes over to my workstation and tells me all the things we need to start doing for a certain project, and I keep trying to interject, but he won't let me interrupt for like 3 minutes until he finishes -- at which point I tell him that all the things he asked me to do were already done that morning, and "I _think_ you were CC'd on those emails, but maybe not..." (He definitely was.)
Every time I see this picture, I can’t help but think that Cillian Murphy needs to star in a David Byrne biopic.
I think I'm that "one annoying co-worker".. sorry to everyone who agrees with this post 👍
Or, as the person answering the phone when I called in "I'm calling in tired" after 3 weeks with no days off. "You can't DO that".."Just write it down"...my boss laughed the next day.
We give them the power and wealth they have. If you're annoyed by it, don't follow influencers. Do not like, do not subscribe.
I'm kinda old. When Windows first came out a friend was working for a company that insisted on installing it on all their machines. Unfortunately none of the computers had mice. For 6 months they ran Windows without a mouse. Even now he still does a lot of Windows navigation with keyboard shortcuts - and is faster than I am with the mouse.
My plant manager expected everyone in leadership to be connected to the plant 24/7 via Teams, no exceptions unless you were on planned pto. And even then he required you to notify him that you would not be replying while you were off.
I am doing a thing where I'm assigning everyone at work their own job profile number. Every job profile comes with a list of everything they should have access to, every email group they should be a part of, all software/websites they'll need, that jobs profiles home page on the company site that contains everything tey need to do their job, so when we hire or people switch jobs or they exit, I'm automating all the switches.
Like the single co-worker complaining to me about pay being too low after burning a no pay sick day and going to the casino.. to me, a head of household with 2 kids who works all the OT he can get..."Yes, it's very difficult".