Either excited or exhausted: Why no one has a normal relationship with work anymore

A scene from A Bronx Tale (1993) goes viral every few months. In it, Lorenzo, a humble bus driver portrayed by Robert De Niro, confronts Sonny, a mob boss. Sonny has started using Lorenzo’s nine-year-old son, Calogero, as an errand boy, prompting the outraged father to demand that the mobster leave his son alone. Lorenzo then explains to Calogero that true bravery lies not in succumbing to the allure of a criminal lifestyle but in waking up early every day to earn a living through honest work. “The working man is the tough guy,” says De Niro’s character. Set in the 1960s, the film reflects a working-class pride typical of the era, when labor provided both identity and meaning to workers’ lives.

However, a few minutes later, as the narrative advances several years, we see Calogero fully integrated into Sonny’s gang. Despite his father’s efforts, the boy has not followed his example. “The son doesn’t want to be a tough guy who gets up early; he doesn’t want to be exploited. Is this necessarily bad? It’s unfortunate because the alternative is the mafia, but the motivations driving him are not bad. It’s a similar situation with neoliberalism,” explains Jorge Moruno, sociologist and author of No tengo tiempo: geografías de la precariedad (I Don’t Have Time: Geographies of Precariousness).

Since the concept of the Great Resignation emerged in July 2020, there has been considerable discussion about why conventional work no longer provides incentives for young people. Like Calogero, an increasing number of young individuals are opting for alternatives (not necessarily criminal) to what was once viewed as the pathway to the elusive and never-fully-defined middle class. In these situations, willpower is often mistaken for necessity. When precariousness and uncertainty loom, all alternatives appear appealing: from the most viable options, such as pursuing self-employment by leveraging a talent or artistic vocation, to the more dubious prospects, like trusting people who claim that one can escape the system through questionable investments.

The problem is not entirely new. Sociologist Richard Sennett warned in his book The Corrosion of Character (1998) about how the labor flexibility imposed by late 20th-century capitalism was affecting the character of those working under such conditions. While this corrosion was noticeable two decades ago, it has become far more serious today. The precariousness that drives it — and that often depletes employees’ psychological resilience to the point where they are just trying to survive — has intensified.

Simultaneously, novels and discussions surrounding this topic have proliferated. Remedios Zafra has analyzed the effects of precariousness on workers in cultural industries, David Graeber argued that many of our jobs consist of useless tasks, Mark Fisher denounced the bureaucratization of all occupations, and Elena Medel and Bibiana Collado have highlighted the exhaustion of working-class women. Beatriz Serrano from Madrid and Anna Wiener from Silicon Valley have also written about the almost inhumane dynamics within office environments.

Are we discussing work more than ever? Perhaps not, as work has always been a realm of conflict and politics. However, strategies have shifted. Decades ago, similar situations of exploitation and dispossession were addressed through unionism and collective struggle, while today we find ourselves in a climate of discouragement, where individuals resort to more or less imaginative alternatives, epitomizing a “every man for himself” mentality.

But is there any good way to make a living?

“Workers who might have assumed themselves middle-class start to understand that their relationship to power means they’re still workers. The video-game programmer might have more in common with the Uber driver than she previously thought,” writes Sarah Jaffe in her book Work Won’t Love You Back.

No sector is spared, not even those that offer higher salaries. Today, companies extract so much time and energy from their employees that many arrive home exhausted at the end of the day, with just enough strength to post a small complaint on social media: “My plants have dried up because I didn’t water them,” “My boss has written to me again in the middle of the night,” or “Another night without preparing tomorrow’s lunch.” These snippets encapsulate the disenchantment of what has been called the tired generation.

When feelings of exhaustion reach unbearable limits, it can lead to mental health issues, original solutions emerge — such as the Great Resignation, of which little remains today — and different fantasies that are supposedly anti-system. Sociologist Mariano Urraco, a professor at the Complutense University of Madrid, explains that we are navigating a social context in which “getting up early, in inverted commas, is of little importance, because the cards are dealt regardless of what time you wake up.” Therefore, “it is legitimate for young people to question and problematize these values related to self-denial and hard work, seeking alternative solutions or escape routes in response to the outdated discourse of ‘you have to make an effort.’”

“Many sociologists have described the current system as a ghost station where trains no longer stop; many people continue to buy tickets, make sacrifices, work hard, and study well into old age, but in reality, the trains are not coming,” Urraco adds.

And what do those who have grown weary of waiting in vain do — those for whom the challenges of precarious jobs or the struggle to find any work has become unbearable? They seek to escape from paid employment.

“The goal is to regain control over our lives during a time when everything feels like a whirlwind of uncertainty. This is what makes people fantasize, dream, or become intensely involved in studying for exams or pursuing alternatives like moving to the countryside to embrace a neo-rural lifestyle. Fundamentally, these choices are made to feel a sense of control over one’s life, something that paid work no longer affords,” explains the sociologist.

He adds: “This isn’t about nostalgia for the past; it has been demonstrated that many young people would love to have stable, linear, predictable lives and lifelong jobs like those their parents had.”

M. M. is a 24-year-old philosopher and political scientist applying for a secondary school teaching position (who prefers to use her initials to protect her anonymity in the application process). She is not very optimistic about the most common outlets young people seek to escape dissatisfaction with work.

“This consensus in dissatisfaction makes me dizzy, given that in most cases, grouping a jaded mass under the same slogan that something has to change, obscuring the diverse sectors and interests within that mass... has not worked very well,” she says.

In her view, escape routes are a trap: “Vocation is another ideological invention meant to convince you of a form of Stockholm Syndrome: we tell you to allow yourself to be exploited in what you enjoy, and you will come to love being exploited. Are we truly escaping if what we’re engaging in are merely new forms of self-exploitation, all under the false pretense that we are the ones in control? Does it cease to be a yoke if it’s one we willingly put on ourselves? The common trap for all of us lies in an unsustainable production model that is incompatible with the lives we lead. This model ranges from prestigious careers and platforms like OnlyFans to gambling addiction and betting houses,” reflects the young woman.

But what exactly do we want?

In his In Praise of Idleness, published in 1932, the philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell warned that, up until then, workers, businessmen, and rulers had been “foolish.” “But there is no reason to go on being foolish forever,” he added. The foolishness he referred to was the eight-hour workday. Russell’s optimism stemmed from his belief that, thanks to technology, it would be possible to “democratize free time” by instituting a workday of only four hours.

“There will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men will not be tired in their spare time, they will not demand only such amusements as are passive and vapid,” he argued. Like Russell, many intellectuals, including economist John Maynard Keynes — who predicted in the same decade that a 15-hour workweek would be established by 2030 — concluded that technological progress would lead to societies where free time would no longer be in short supply.

However, despite the ongoing digitalization of the world and the associated increase in productivity, the exact opposite seems to be occurring. “This phase of the neoliberal turn we are experiencing is not merely a turn; it is part of a longer trajectory. The system of goods production is also tied to the recent effort to speed up everything. I don’t believe there’s any going back, and I don’t think this is the final destination either. More stations will follow, and with them, we can expect more unrest and more mental health challenges,” says Urraco.

M., echoing the sentiments of many in her generation, sees only one viable option: “the abolition of wage labor,” which she clarifies, “does not imply a desire to stop doing things.”

So, what’s the plan in the meantime? “We will continue to look for alternatives or solutions from an individualistic point of view, because, if sociologists like Sennet have shown anything, it is that ties and identities are much stronger and more collectivist when they are based, precisely, on stable work than when they are based on more sporadic connections such as consumption patterns”, concludes Urraco.

So, without a collective response, phenomena such as cryptobros, investments that promise “financial freedom” and self-exploitation will only continue to grow and reinforce the same problems they claim to be solving.

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