Take this job and shove it.

August 16, 2012 12:58 PM

Where can I read online stories of day-to-day work drudgery? Looking for true stories involving the Sunday Evening Blues™, sick feeling in the stomach upon arriving at work, wardrobe anxiety, things like that.

Sometimes I need to remind myself just how good I have it as a self-employed person. I occasionally have a sick need to relive the psychological hell that is the 40-hour office job (rather like hitting yourself in the head with a hammer, because it feels so good when you stop, don'tcha know.)

Bonus if it's a low-ish level office employee who wears uncomfortable office clothes and hates her (or his) coworkers. Stories of revenge are great. Please keep in mind i'm looking for white-collar drudgery, not miners' or road crew tales.

Thanks, wage-slaves!

posted by BostonTerrier to Work & Money (10 answers total)

I'm sure it's less entertaining than it was in LiveJournal's heydey, but The Society for Librarians Who Say "Motherfucker" is still alive and kicking.
posted by jabes at 1:03 PM on August 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

I like Not Always Right when I start to romanticize my retail and customer service days.
posted by Ghostride The Whip at 1:26 PM on August 16, 2012 [3 favorites]

Meeting Boy. Not many stories, but the crushing of the spirit carries through just fine.
posted by skittlekicks at 1:38 PM on August 16, 2012

And then we came to the end is a great portrait of early 00's office angst and drudgery.
posted by cosmicbandito at 1:52 PM on August 16, 2012 [2 favorites]

As a wage slave who hates it all, I actively avoid reading any stories about happy self-employed people because they make me sick; thus, I fully appreciate your desire in reverse.

Not literature exactly, but may I recommend Customers Suck.
posted by epanalepsis at 4:03 PM on August 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

I really loved Microserfs, and I remember the characters being likeable and not being totally drudge drudge work work in it, but it did show some interesting insights about working for the man during the Silicon Valley tech boom days. It's also just a good read.
posted by shortyJBot at 5:13 PM on August 16, 2012

“Blue Collar, White Collar, No Collar: Stories of Work” looks promising. Linked review also includes this lovely and all-too-brief chart of writers and their day jobs. Kafka's office life: "Writing reports such as 'Measures for Preventing Accidents from Wood Planing Machines.'"
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:11 PM on August 16, 2012

Also: Stories of really bad bosses.
posted by MonkeyToes at 6:14 PM on August 16, 2012

Oh god, self promotion is the worst. But it's just so relevant!
The Sea Monster.

To make up for that I also offer The House of Wigs, by Josh Allen. A once anonymous blog about a new copywriting job. It is not outright horror at the experience of work, but I always feel a kind of lonely desperation bubbling underneath all the jokes.
posted by distorte at 1:14 AM on August 17, 2012

David Foster Wallace's The Pale King might fit the bill.
posted by prior at 9:27 AM on August 20, 2012