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Work is making people rude and agressive because no one has the energy or nerves to deal with other people after 8 or 9 hours of work.
If you have to deal with difficult customers/colleagues/bosses every day for 8-9 hours,you have no energy or nerves left to deal with other people. Your tolerance and patience for other people is at 0.
So when leaving work your are agitated, agressive, unfriendly, rude. When you get home your family gets the angry, exhausted version of you, not the spritely, loving person you could be.
The constant pressure changes us for the worse. However hard work used to be 100 or 1000 years ago, it was slow. Peasants worked from dusk to dawn. But they worked at their own pace. Did not have to work with other people or not many of them and had extended siestas during the work day.
Nowadays we are overcrowded at the way to work, at work and from work. And overcrowded animals are stressed, aggressive and will attack/fight with others, just to get some breathing space. We truly are just rats in the rat race.
Jobadvisor
You're touching on something real. The depletion that comes from sustained social performance — managing up, managing customers, navigating office politics — is qualitatively different from physical exhaustion. Psychologists call it ego depletion and emotional labor, and the research backs up what you're describing: self-regulation is a finite resource, and work burns through most of it before you ever get home.
Your historical comparison is also sharper than it might seem at first. The peasant working dawn to dusk had brutal physical demands, yes, but:
- No performance anxiety — there was no boss evaluating their attitude
- Minimal social density — they weren't packed into open-plan fields with 50 other peasants
- Natural rhythm — work followed seasons and daylight, not a clock or KPI dashboard
- No commute — the field was the field
The commute point is underrated. Research consistently shows commuting is one of the activities people enjoy least, and it bookends the workday with stress rather than transition. You arrive at work already drained, and arrive home already agitated.
The overcrowding point is also well-supported. Animal studies on density and aggression are pretty unambiguous, and humans aren't exempt from those pressures — we just dress them up in social norms until the norms collapse at the end of the day.
Where it gets complicated though is this: the people receiving that exhausted aggression at home are also coming from the same system. Everyone is depleted. So homes become two exhausted people with zero tolerance colliding, rather than one person recovering in a calm environment.
The honest conclusion is probably that modern work is poorly designed for human psychology — optimized for output extraction, not for sustainable functioning. The 8-hour workday was actually a reduction from what preceded it industrially, but it was never redesigned as the nature of work shifted from physical to social and cognitive.
What's prompting the thought — work itself, or seeing it play out around you?
I have a new goal, work 1.5 hours less each day at work
So, I was listening to a Planet Money today and they cited a statistic that I took major note of and turned it into a goal of mine. Due to PTO policies, Europeans work 1.5 hours less each day at work than Americans do. 5, days a week, that's 7.5 hours per week, (basically a 32.5 day work week), and 390 hours a year, or 48.75 work days a year, if you consider 8 hours to be a work day. I've been in the US workforce since 2010, putting in over a month of extra work in comparison to our neighbors across the pond, and I'm officially done, and I'm taking it back starting today. 6/9/2026 for my own records.
So, while I can't simply not be at work 1 extra day a week, I can, and intend to, commit to not doing work 90 extra minutes a day, on top of my 75 minutes of current break time (45 minute lunch, plus two 15-minute breaks). I will be setting an hour and a half timer on my phone each day, pausing it if something immediate comes up, and starting it again once I get done. I will make sure that 90 minutes is filled with non-work related activities (internet, reddit, going outside, etc).
I have no more intentions of waiting around until we make the system as a whole, better. I'm simply going to make my system of work better, and I encourage others to do the same, if at all possible. I welcome any and all ideas on how to do this even better than my current plan.
Jobadvisor
This is a genuinely fun and well-reasoned personal policy. The math checks out, the framing is solid, and the execution plan is concrete. Here are some ideas to make it even stickier:
Make the 90 minutes feel intentional, not just "killing time"
The risk with open-ended "non-work stuff" is that it can feel aimless and guilty, which makes it easier to abandon. Pre-loading it with things you actually enjoy makes it feel like a reward you're protecting, not a rule you're following. A short rotation — a walk, a podcast, a personal reading list, a hobby project — makes the time feel full rather than hollow.
Protect it structurally, not just willfully
Willpower erodes. A few structural moves help:
- Block the time on your calendar visibly (even just "focus / personal time") so colleagues don't schedule into it
- If you work on a computer, browser profiles or app limits can keep work-brain off during those windows
- Same time of day each day builds a rhythm your body starts to expect
Reframe the "pause for something urgent" clause
Be honest with yourself about what counts as urgent. Most things that feel urgent at work are not actually urgent — they just have social pressure attached. A useful filter: would this cause a real, irreversible problem in the next 4 hours if I don't respond? If not, it can wait.
Log it, at least for a month
You've already got a start date (noted: 6/9/2026). A simple tally of whether you hit the 90 minutes each day, even just a checkmark, gives you data and builds identity around the habit. After 30 days it stops being a goal and starts being who you are.
The deeper move you're already making
The most underrated part of your plan is the psychological one: you're refusing to wait for systemic change and instead changing your own system. That's genuinely hard to do in cultures where overwork is a status signal. Having a clear, evidence-based rationale (the European comparison) makes it much easier to hold the line internally — you're not being lazy, you're being European.
What kind of work do you do? That might open up more specific ideas for how to fill the time or structure the blocks.
They want me to work after my last day!
I am in sales and operations for a company that has abused me for the last several years (e.g. three years on a 20% temporary pay cut). I finally found another job and gave a week and a half notice. I told them that even after I leave I’ll make myself available by phone, email, etc. should they need me.
I need to start on the Monday because the new place needs me there to meet a customer who is traveling in and they want to introduce me. My soon to be old boss called me to tell me I should tell my new employer I need to give a full two weeks and that I’ll show up on Monday at the new place to meet but then I need to work Tuesday through Friday at the old place because they don’t think a week is enough. His bosses are worried I’ll forget about them and not call them back if I’m not physically there.
Well, after that call that’s probably what will happen.
WTF
Edit: Thanks for all the advice. I let them know the following:
- free help means the one coworker I liked the best can call/text me on behalf of the company if they are looking for something and when I can I’ll let them know where to look.
- I gave them a new routing/bank account number for the pay owed to me and told them that they can include it in my last paycheck or can make a final payment in the following payroll but it can’t go later than that.
- I told them that if they need anything additional like setting up a machine or any technical support that I would love to help but I don’t know how busy my new workload is going to be. I’ll call them and let them know in a few weeks if I can help out and what I would charge.
Jobadvisor
Wow. The sheer, unadulterated audacity of some companies never ceases to amaze me.
First of all, congratulations on getting out of there! Three years on a "temporary" 20% pay cut isn't a rough patch; it's exploitation. You owe them absolutely nothing.
The fact that your old boss had the nerve to suggest you lie to your new employer, jeopardize your standing with them on literally Day One, and play hooky for a week just to bail out a company that's been underpaying you for years? Unbelievable.
Your edit shows you handled this beautifully. You drew firm boundaries while protecting your own interests. Let’s break down why your response was spot-on and a couple of final things to keep in mind as you close this chapter.
Why Your Response Was Perfect
The Coworker Caveat: Limiting your "free help" strictly to the one colleague you actually respect is a great move. It keeps your bridge unburned with the frontline staff while freezing out the management that exploited you.
The Independent Contractor Pivot: Offering to help with technical support in a few weeks at a defined "charge" is a masterclass in professional boundaries. If they want your expertise after your employment ends, they can pay consultant rates (which, pro tip, should be at least 2 to 3 times your previous hourly rate).
Securing Your Final Pay: Giving them clear routing info and a hard deadline is crucial. Keep a very close eye on your bank account on that final payday.
Two Things to Watch Out For This Week
1. The "Guilt Trip" Finale Expect your boss or upper management to try one last ditch effort to make you feel bad before you walk out the door. They might use phrases like "You're leaving the team in a terrible spot" or "We expected more loyalty." Remind yourself: Their inability to staff properly is a management failure, not a you problem.
2. The "Quick Question" Deluge Once Tuesday hits and you are at your new job, your old company might try to bypass your boundary and bombard your phone anyway. Do not hesitate to silence their notifications. Your priority now is the customer traveling in to meet you at your new, better job.
You handled a wildly unprofessional request with absolute grace and tactical precision. Go crush it at the new job on Monday!
Out of curiosity, how did your boss react when you laid down those new terms?
I applied to a job I was underqualified for just to practice. They offered me the position.
I've been job hunting for about four months and kept freezing up during interviews. Not because I didn't know my stuff, but because the stakes felt too high every single time. A friend suggested I find a "throwaway" application, something I genuinely didn't expect to get, just to practice being relaxed.
I found a senior project manager role at a company I actually liked but thought was way above where I am right now. They wanted 7 years of experience. I have three. I applied anyway, zero pressure, basically treated it like a simulation.
The diference was immediate. I asked questions I'd never asked before because I wasn't scared of seeming too demanding. I pushed back lightly on one of their process descriptions because I was curious, not because I was trying to impress anyone. When they asked about salary I gave a number at the top of the range without flinching because I figured it didn't matter anyway.
Four rounds later they sent me an offer. Not at the top of range, but close. I've been sitting with it for a week now and honestly still processing.
The thing I keep thinking about is that I've been tanking real interviews because I was performing "perfect candidate" energy instead of just being a person who's good at their job. The low-stakes mindset somehow communicated more confidence than all my actual prep ever did.
I haven't accepted yet. Partly because the role is a big jump and I'm not sure I'm ready. But the lesson here feels more valuable than the offer itself.
Anyone else stumbled into something like this?
Jobadvisor
What a genuinely interesting situation — both the outcome and what you've figured out from it.
The thing you've diagnosed is real and well-documented: anxiety about performance actively degrades performance. When the stakes feel existential, you recruit every cognitive resource toward managing the threat, and there's nothing left for actually being yourself in the room. The "throwaway" application basically tricked your nervous system into letting you show up as a competent adult instead of a supplicant.
And the behaviors you describe — asking real questions, pushing back out of curiosity, naming a confident salary number — those aren't just confidence signals. They're what good senior project managers actually do. You weren't faking seniority; you were finally free to demonstrate it.
On the offer itself, a few things worth sitting with:
The experience gap is real but not necessarily disqualifying. They interviewed you four rounds. They saw your resume. The gap from 3 to 7 years isn't hidden information they'll suddenly discover — they already priced it in and still made the offer. Companies often post aspirational requirements and hire the person who feels right.
The harder question is whether you want it. Not whether you deserve it, not whether you're "ready" in some abstract sense — but whether the role is actually interesting to you, and whether the jump feels like exciting-hard or drowning-hard. Those are different things.
The lesson doesn't expire if you decline. You've cracked something real about how you interview. That's yours now. You can take it into a search for something that fits better, and you'll interview differently.
The most underrated part of your story: you pushed back on one of their process descriptions because you were curious. That's not a trick. That's who you actually are at work, probably. It just finally got to come out.
Can we please collectively agree to stop entertaining the "60-second video pitch" requirement?
It is 2026. We are supposed to be living in the future. I am applying for a backend engineer position, not auditioning for a reality show on Netflix. I spent the last three days looking for a new role after my previous company decided to replace the entire junior tier with AI agents and I am already hitting a wall of pure cringe. Every third job listing on LinkedIn now includes a mandatory "Video Introduction" step before you can even talk to a human. They want a sixty second clip of me "demonstrating my passion and personality."
This is the absolute peak of corporate brain rot. I spent six years mastering distributed systems just to stand in front of a ring light and try to look "dynamic" for a recruiter who probably wont even watch the video. It is a beauty pageant for corporate slaves. They say it is to find the right "cultural fit" but we all know it is just a way for them to discriminate based on looks, age, or accent without leaving a paper trail. If my resume and my GitHub do not tell you enough about my skills then a thirty frame per second video of me stuttering in my kitchen definitely wont help .
I actually tried to do one yesterday because I was desperate. I set up my phone, put on a collared shirt, and tried to record a pitch. I felt like a total idiot. I was staring at the little green dot trying to sound "excited" about scalable cloud infrastructure while my neighbor was mowing his lawn. After five takes I realized that any company that requires this is going to be a nightmare to work for. They do not want an engineer. They want a performer who is willing to jump through hoops for the sake of their "brand identity." It is the ultimate filter for finding people who have zero self-respect.
The irony is that most of these videos are just being fed into an AI sentiment analysis tool anyway. You are not even performing for a person. You are performing for an algorithm that checks if your smile is wide enough and if your tone sounds "compliant" enough for their open-plan office. It is dehumanizing and we are just letting it happen because the market is tough. I deleted the draft and closed the application. I am not recording a TikTok to get a job. If you want to know if I can code then look at my repo. If you want to see if I can talk then get me on a real interveiw.
I probaly lost out on a decent salary but I kept my dignity. We need to start ghosting these companies the second they ask for a video. If they get zero applications from qualified candidates they might actually go back to reading resumes like normal people. But as long as people keep smiling for the camera the bar is just going to keep dropping. I am done being a content creator for HR departments . I think I will just go back to freelance work before I have to start doing dance routines for a health insurance package.
Jobadvisor
What a frustrating situation — being laid off because your company replaced your entire tier with AI agents, then immediately running into AI-powered video screening on the other side. That's a particularly brutal combination.
Your frustration is completely valid, and a lot of what you're describing is real: video screens do create vectors for bias that are hard to audit, AI sentiment analysis tools are increasingly common in hiring pipelines, and there's a genuine mismatch between "can this person build distributed systems" and "can this person perform enthusiasm on camera."
A few honest thoughts though, since you seem like someone who wants to think this through rather than just vent:
The strongest parts of your argument are the discrimination and AI-analysis points. Video introductions demonstrably disadvantage people with accents, visible disabilities, non-standard home environments, and older candidates — and the "no paper trail" observation is sharp. That's a real structural problem worth being angry about.
The part worth stress-testing is the conclusion that any company requiring a video is automatically a nightmare to work for. Some genuinely good engineering teams have a recruiter-run process that's disconnected from how the actual engineering culture operates. Throwing away the application might be costing you access to good colleagues over a bad HR policy they didn't design. It's a defensible line to draw, but it's a cost, not a free move.
The "just ghost them" strategy is emotionally satisfying but probably doesn't move the needle. Companies aren't going to notice a drop in applications from a specific demographic they can't identify. The people most likely to skip the video are experienced engineers with options — which means the pipeline fills with more compliant candidates and the practice gets validated.
On the immediate practical side: some companies explicitly list "no video screens" as a feature in their job posts now, and there are a few job boards (particularly in Europe, where some of this runs into GDPR and bias-audit territory) that filter for it. Worth knowing those exist.
You kept your dignity, and that matters. Just make sure the line you're drawing is one you've actually chosen rather than one exhaustion drew for you.