The Millennial Generation’s Working Lifestyle. Hint: It Sucks!

There is one thing  that almost all Millennials would agree on: working sucks! What sucks, though, is not necessarily our jobs. Some of us love our jobs. What sucks is the fact that we must wake up from our sound sleep, using an annoying ass alarm clock buzzer, to get up to do our jobs for an average of forty hours per week, every week of our adult lives. And the majority of us Millennials have to be on the job site from the moment that we are scheduled to arrive at work on up to the second that we are scheduled to leave. We are commanded to have only a 30 minute lunch break, and if we are lucky we may be allowed to have two 15 minute rest breaks during the day, in addition to our lunch period. Otherwise, we must show that we are ”working” by showing that we are active, every other minute of our day regardless of our workload.

We have to earn our dying, so we’re forced to be at work, “working.” It doesn’t matter that we’d rather be on some social networking site checking in to the things that our friends were doing the previous night, or better yet, at home recovering from the previous night’s drinking binge. We must show up to earn a wage, else we will not be paid.

A little known secret, though,  is that in reality, we’re not really working to our fullest productive capacity the entire working day. It’s positively, absolutely absurd that anyone would even think this. We’re on our mobile phones checking our “news feed,” or on the Internet, or day-dreaming about the girl or guy we met the previous weekend. We’re focused on the things that we must do once we finally get to leave work: The annoying partner that we have to deal with, the house that we have to clean, the level of the video game that we must conquer next, or ours kids that we have to take to some sort of sporting event. We are thinking about where we should eat lunch or which bar is having the best happy hour. We are consumed by our thoughts, not by our work. Yet, our thoughts and things that we’d rather be doing are simply teases for the time that we are on the job. There is no escaping the “rat race,” unless we don’t want to get paid.

We continue “working” in our jobs, every working day for an average of eight and a half hours, so that we can earn a dying, even though there are so many other things that we’d rather do. Eventually, though, we are finally allowed to leave work, and that’s when the real fun begins: we get to commute home. Yep, the drastic traffic that we fight every morning is upon us once again. It already sucks that we are forced to be at work for eight and a half hours daily, but now we have to navigate through traffic and drive among the dangers of our fellow Millennials who text, talk, and eat while driving. More days than we’d like, we’re forced to sit in traffic because of a traffic accident that occurred but could have been avoided, all because some idiot wasn’t paying attention when he or she was driving and texting too damn close to the vehicle in front on him. And yep, the onlookers inevitably make such a commute worse.

If we were to calculate the time that we spent away from our homes, all in the name of going to work, we’ll find that we are away for an average of 10 hours per day. This may seem insignificant until we hone in on the fact that we only have 24 hours in each day, at least 8 of which should be spent sleeping.

Hours in the day – 24

Hours spent at work – 10

Hours spent sleeping – 8

Remaining hours in our working day to do other things, including eating, and doing common household chores: 6

Total hours remaining during an average working week to do the things that we like: 62 hrs.

Total hours during an average working week to do the things that we like when we also have other restrictions like children and a needy partner: Who fucking knows?

Out of the 168 hours per week that are given, we, Millennials,  can only really enjoy less than one-third of it. Forever. Practically our entire adult life.

Of course, we can always give and take, right? We don’t have to get 8 hours of sleep, or exercise, or cook. We’ll trade these things in for a less than ideal healthy lifestyle. Hence, we’ll just add to the obesity epidemic of our generation. Something has to give, right? We certainly don’t have the mind-set that we can just give up working, so the alternative is to work our fat asses off until we eventually get to the point where we can spend our measly Social Security entitlement that may or may not be available for us when we reach “retirement.”

This is our chosen lifestyle for 40+ years, regardless of how much we save in a 401(k), IRA, or whatever.  Giving up work is out of our control…or is it?

Are we really destined to be fucked for 40+ years? There’s no wonder why the Millennial argues, “screw saving!” Whether he saves or not, he won’t be any worse off than the person who maxes out a retirement account until 40 years later! What the fuck, right? Why shouldn’t we  simply live life to its fullest by purchasing what we want, when we want, and worry about age 60 when we get there? Again, who is going to care about having fun at the age of 60, when we’ll finally get to spend our five-bagillion dollars?

It has all come together for the Millennials. This is why the majority of us live by the mottos such as, “live it up”, “live in the moment”, and “you only live once”, etc.

It all makes so much sense once we are prescribed the bullshit that the standard financial planner and life coaches feed us, and voluntarily consume the “blue pill.”  The concept of “free-will”, the ability to make choices that are unconstrained by certain factors,  is only an idea…unless we strive to put ourselves in control from the onset of our working career.