by Jemima Thick
Find yourself bored in the workplace, sitting at your desk and scrolling through your phone endlessly? You’re not the only one. A sharp rise in ‘workplace boredom’ has driven many Gen Z job-hoppers into despondency as they complain about the lack of fulfilling tasks in their corporate, white-collar office jobs, and a growing chorus of workers are crying out for a greater emphasis on more meaningful uses of their time at work.
That’s it. That’s the story. What, you wanted more? You wanted more from me? Let me tell you something, dear reader - right now, I’m the one who’s bored. That’s right. I’m bored of YOU.
Look - I’m a freelance journalist. I write for various newspapers, magazines and online blogs in my spare time, because I don’t consider time to be ‘spare’ at all. See, that’s the difference between you and me. I actually do things with the time I have away from my day job clerking at a stationery company, because I’m an industrious, hard-working and restless sort of person; in short, the complete opposite of whatever you are or could possibly become. I don’t get bored, because I consider boredom to simply be a failure to utilise one’s intelligence and creativity to occupy one’s time.
Let’s instead shift the narrative around ‘workplace boredom’ to something which I think is more apt - ‘creative failure’. Some might call Ted Kaczyinski a terrorist - and they’re right - but one thing you definitely cannot call him is ‘idle’. In his downtime, was he sitting there complaining online about his lack of fulfilment at work? No! He learned a new skill, honed it to a fine craft, and then mailed that skill to various important politicians and businessmen, only occasionally stopping to dribble over himself and smear the walls with faeces.
Was he also an interior decorator? No. Not at all. That’s not decoration, that’s just poo-smearing tomfoolery. I would never equate those two acts within the same category, as I know some very hard-working interior decorators and they’ve been very clear with me that none of their duties involve that kind of behaviour. But the point to illustrate here is that even the most mentally dispossessed people among us still find ways to fight boredom, and fight it effectively.
Complaining about being bored online is more or less the same as Ted Kaczyinski smearing faeces on the wall, just in a digital format. I have no desire to read the slew of faecal matter that’s been posted online about workplace boredom - YOU need to think about what YOU can do to address it.
I’ve gone through the trouble of writing some suggestions for the uber-complainers who just can’t think for themselves. These may vary depending on what occupation you have, so apply the ones which best fit your current working environment:
Bring a book to work.
Trim your fringe.
Empty the bins.
Learn a new skill.
Stand in the corner and face the wall until someone stops you.
Draw attention to flaws in the workplace and email it to your boss.
Place the kitchen mugs in an inconvenient location.
Moult.
Assign personalities to your stationery.
Declare your personal sovereignty from the government.
Monitor the workplace for signs of unionism.
Form an anti-union union.
Seat yourself on another’s desk.
Form a regular union.
Lock yourself inside the tea cupboard.
Amalgamate all known unions into one super-union.
Announce to your colleagues that ‘plans are in motion’.
Yoga.
You don’t necessarily have to do all these things - but for God’s sake, do SOMETHING. I warn you - the next time I see a tweet about how bored you are at work, I will personally hunt you down and rearrange your face. There will be no safe haven for you on this Earth, mark my words. I will call down holy thunder from on high to smite you and everyone you’ve ever loved. I will drain your life force and place it into a small bucket underneath my airing cupboard until it matures into a foetid chemical mixture of your hopes and dreams, which I will then pour into my neighbours downstairs toilet. You will know no peace as long as I live.
Take care, and stay creative. It's for your own good.
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