I want to retire early, but I would still keep working because I find what I do stimulating and rewarding.

Retirement for me would be working small jobs that I want to do, and taking classes that I find interesting. I’d probably be taking jobs at small businesses and charities.

The year of Covid lockdown that I didn’t go to work was the most amazing time.

I work to live and not the other way around. As soon as I can afford not to work anymore, you can be assured that I won’t. The wife and I have plans to retire to SE Asia, so hopefully just a few more years or so.

A lot of folks have their work tied to their personality like that.

I do kind of get the idea of working into retirement - I actually really like my job, it’s not soul crushing, and I pretty much get paid to learn things and write about them. In that regard, I’d be okay to keep going for a long time because I fucking love learning. It’s a sweet gig, and super rare. Big difference vs. someone conditioned to toil to their detriment.

I will retire, but when I do, I intend to be active in other things related to what I do for work. Volunteerism, mentoring, etc.

Getting laid off during COVID was like a preview of retirement, on top of other benefits like showing how little of my personal identity was tied to my job and how little I actually care about it. “Career line go up forever” was one of many things I was SUPPOSED to care about, but did not ACTUALLY care about. And that helped me fast-forward figuring out what does matter to me.

It was amazing.

The “I’ll work forever” badge of honor garbage is just one of the many ways people get conditioned to go against their own best interests to help out the rich/political people that really matter. (/s and barf)

They also get a power trip out of it. Some people would do that for free

Hate my job? No. I actually love my job. It’s an amazing first step in my career and I plan on being here for many years. It’s engaging, it’s creative, it’s building my skills, it’s a casual environment, and I’m friends with my co-workers and my boss.

But I’m only at my job because I need to make money. I have lots and lots and lots of stuff to do with my free time. I want to travel, and play video games at the most base level, but I also have my own creative hobbies which, while I love my job, I would rather dedicate my days to. I only have so much free time in my life.

So the only reason I have this job that I love is because I need money to live. Sorry job, I’m just not that into you.

So, I’m a teacher, and I love my career. The fact that I get paid good money to hang out with teenagers and make a difference in so many lives is almost mind-boggling to me. But it’s still work. The job is exhausting, prep work and grading both suck, and I’m never happy to wake up at 7am. I’d never do it for free, and I’m always excited to have a day off.

The days off make me appreciate my job, and the shitty, boring parts of the job make me appreciate my time off. There’s a gap between “I love my job” and “my job isn’t even work,” and many people struggle to grasp that.

As an aside, the anti-work sentiment around here is less a rejection of engaging with a task that betters society, and more about the current system of work and pay, where our labour disproportionately benefits others. Most “anti-work” people want to have a task that adds value to the world, and despise aimless, soulless corporate tasks that benefit CEOs and share holders.

Love my job. Still wouldn’t spend a second doing it for zero pay.

I don’t hate the work, I tend to find it pretty interesting. I do hate being overworked though and handling way more responsibility than I should, which is typically the case. But even then I’m lucky that I at least enjoy the work at face value, I don’t think people like accountants and many other roles do. Honestly it sounds mean but there are so many fields that just feel like people just got into because they don’t have any interests

To add, I think theres a difference between ‘im here to work in exchange for money’ and ‘im just here for 8 hrs to collect a check’

I used to manage restaurants, usually with a pooled house (all tips get tallied together, and divided by percentage based on position, which always reminded me of the way it was done on old pirate ships)

In these pooled houses it was always extremely obvious- youd have some servers touching other server’s tables, helping bus / run food when appropriate, etc. (Which is what the system is meant to incentivize- if your help gets the other waiter a better tip, thats more money in your pocket as well)

And you’d have servers who did the bare minimum even for their own section, and saw it as ‘if i spend 8 hrs On the floor dokng the bare minimum to not sent home, I get my percentage of the pot, I dont even have to do a good job on my tables’

Right now im running a residential solar crew, and weve got a couple guys who have a similar attitude; the moment they aren’t under a direct task, they just stop working. (Its not a matter of not knowing whats next, and prepping for that, they’ve been here almost a year now, and theres almost always something obvious to be doing next, even if its just grabbing the next box of materials.)

I like my job.

But making a place an enjoyable place to work is up to management.

But they seem to think it’s something they can just mandate.

There’s a lot of young people on lemmy and I imagine lots of people with unfulfilling jobs.

Im self employed. My job is tough, and stressful. I wouldn’t do it for free, but I choose to do this job because i have the right skills and experience, and I genuinely enjoy “helping” people with my services.

I don’t hate my job but it is something I do exclusively to make money. It has no role in self actualisation for me.

I’m an artist with a day job in logistics. As I’m working on a collaborative project I took on an extra ~35 hours a week on top of my ~45 hours a week day job for the last month, for essentially pittance extra.

I dont hate my job but if I didn’t need to do it I wouldn’t and I would focus on making artistic works.

I don’t hate my job, but I sure sympathize with those who do

My job once gave us water coolers and coffee. At one point the coffee was a big all in one where you can make great drinks with it. Then they took it away because it cost to much. We then had kurigs. They then took away the pods because apparently we cant be trusted and people were stealing them. At least we could still bring ours in! Oh once they broke they refused to replace them so we had no more coffee. Then they took the water away as well once the company claimed it needed cutbacks because it is not doing well. Even the perks are all going away. I remember when I first started 20 years ago we got 2 holiday parties where the company rented a big venue and gave out 10, 15, 20 year anniversary gifts and bonuses and the other party was our department one. Those ended 10 years ago and not a word on anything ever coming back.

The only perk now is that they cutback so much they have no room for my department anymore and we became full remote a little over a year ago. Yay!

I hope people realize how amazing this response is.