As an office expert, I know better than anyone how hard work can sometimes be. But there are times when I think: you can also overdo it. I got that at the anti work movement – a movement you read more and more about.
They are people who refuse to let themselves be tormented at work any longer and prefer to quit their job altogether – work makes them unhappy.
They are also people who can no longer work full-time. They see work as a capitalist conspiracy of pointless bullshit jobs that benefits only the shareholder and that leaves the people who make the system possible destitute and emaciated.
They only work the number of hours with which they can pay their rent and sandwich. They spend the rest of their time on things that are important to them. Pooh hey.
When I first read about it, early this year on the website from the BBC, I understood the basics very well. People who are allowed to take no more than one week of paid leave once a year. People who don’t get money when they are sick. People who have to lie to customers from their boss – it makes sense that you stop doing that. No one should tolerate exploitation.
But halfway through the piece I thought: this isn’t about ‘anti work’, this is about ‘anti bad bosses† If you are squeezed somewhere, you don’t immediately have to get into an existential crisis about all the work, do you? If your job makes you unhappy, don’t stop working, but look for another job, or better yet, a different boss.
Who is crazy enough to work 40 hours a week?
What I also don’t understand: who is stupid enough to work 40 hours or more a week? The number of part-timers is growing steadily in the Netherlands. Would those people know that no full-timers work full-time?
Yes, we do, of course, and so do I, of course. We work 40 hours or more a week, but we are the exception. The rest of the full-timers really don’t make it.
Especially in such a fool job as agile transformation coach, pension investor, CEO, education director or publisher. Driving your Tesla a bit, having lunch a bit, discussing a bit and half the time an ‘outside appointment’ and then to the golf course – that’s all it really is.
A full-time contract is a conspiracy that anyone who has a full-time contract knows about. If I had to estimate, I’d say that at most 30 percent of people who get paid full-time actually work full-time.
Part-timers are crazy hunks who get half the salary for the same work – and often more. Just get more handy and learn to outrun your boss.
Put a few extra plants at work to hide behind every now and then and you’re already there. Or say you can only work three hours today because you have to go to a scrum master course – has been working for me for a year. Everyone has a full-time contract!
Say ‘no’ to your boss more often
And say ‘no’ to your boss more often! You don’t have to swallow everything at work, do you? Yes, maybe in America, where they still live in the 1930s in terms of working conditions. But here, in our overstrained labor market?
Read more on this topic: The anti-work movement: stopping work because it makes you deeply unhappy
Join a trade union or join the works council. Or better yet: work for a trade union or in politics and commit yourself to people who are really being exploited – the baggage tugs at Schiphol, the people in the parcel sorting centers or in horticulture – instead of whining about the anti-work movement.
Go and whine a little less anyway, that would be very nice too. Most recently, on Twitter. I saw someone complain that it takes three hours to get to Groningen due to temporary work.
Then I think: oh, what a cry. In the nineties we walked to Groningen with 100 kilos of potatoes under our coats. When we got there, we could go back – you didn’t think about that.
If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s coaches
I read about people from the anti-work movement who had quit their job and became coaches. Something with breathwork. Real?
Do you think bullshit jobs are stupid and then you become a coach?! I had to laugh really hard at that. If there’s one thing we don’t need, it’s even more coaches in the Netherlands.
Rather do something useful with your time. There are shortages everywhere. Classes without teachers. Trains that can’t run without air traffic controllers, the elderly who can’t take a shower for days – and then you complain that you don’t have enough time to drink lattes with your friends and read existential novels? Shame on you couple snowflakes†
If you just go to work, you don’t have time for the anti-work movement.
How was your week? Tips for Japke-d. Bouma through @Japked on Twitter.
A version of this article also appeared in the newspaper of May 18, 2022