Worker Feels 'Drained' From Making 'Stupid Money' By Pretending To Care At His Job — 'The Emotional Tax Is Brutal'
With this kind of money, why doesn't he build something he DOES want instead?
Elnur | Canva Pro The grass is always greener, as the old saying goes. In our current economy and work culture, even pulling down massive amounts of money can leave you a depleted shell of a person at the end of it all. That's how one worker on Reddit feels, anyway, as the "life-changing amount" of money he makes at work is taking a larger and larger toll.
The worker says he's 'drained' from making 'stupid money' by pretending to care at his job.
"I know this might sound like a 'good problem,' but it’s honestly draining," the man wrote in the understatement of the decade. Imagine, if you will, you have a job that pays heaps of money, but in exchange you have to be available round-the-clock for your overamped boss's constant demands and interruptions, even after hours and on weekends.
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That's the dilemma he's faced with at his job, where he makes "life-changing amounts" of money, but is chained to his work-obsessed, boundary-free boss' every whim.
He fields constant after-hours interruptions from his intrusive, overworking boss.
A good bit of his job involves "pretending to be inspired by a boss I can’t stand," he wrote in his post, and that includes fielding near-constant texts 24 hours a day, "early mornings, late nights, weekends, when I’m on vacation, etc."
His boss sounds like a veritable paragon of "hustle culture" toxicity. "He sends me all these stupid motivational videos to watch, books to read, podcasts to listen to" all day, every day, in addition to his constant demands.
But even worse, his boss has no life himself. "[He] isn’t just some checked-out exec," he wrote, "he owns the company and is probably worth around $500 million. He genuinely loves working, has no life outside of it, and thinks anyone not grinding 24/7 just doesn’t care." Those are, of course, completely unreasonable expectations, so this worker has found the perfect solution: Faking it.
He fakes working from home and automates email responses 24/7.
This guy has basically created a one-man show like a modern-day version of Ferris Bueller's elaborate sick-faking ruse. "I’ve gamed the system just to maintain the illusion," he admitted. He schedules emails at all hours, "so it looks like I'm grinding." He fills his schedule with early morning calls so he can slack off "working from home" until noon.
He even hired a freelancer online to find business-related social media content for him to send to his boss all the time, so he can "match his energy" in texts and emails.
"I basically run a one-man theater company, and the performance is 24/7," he wrote. "It’s the only way to keep the paycheck coming — because if I dropped the act, I don’t think the money would last." But it is rapidly eating away at his soul.
He loves the money, but the 'emotional tax is brutal.'
If you're the type of person who's always struggling to make ends meet, this probably sounds insane to you. But even with the "life-changing" money, this guy is falling apart. "I can’t relax," he writes. "I get anxious whenever I see his name pop up. Even when I’m doing nothing, I feel on call."
You can't automate away the notifications, of course, and studies have shown that the constant pinging of our emails, texts, and social media platforms is legitimately stressful on our brains.
Faking your way through anything is emotionally draining, too. It takes a lot of energy to keep up a lie this intricate for this long, and the stress of it all is "bleeding into the rest of my life in ways I didn’t expect." He is also wracked with guilt for lying to his boss.
He feels trapped, but he could be using all of this money to create a different future.
In his post, he went on to say that he feels "stuck in a job that pays way too well to leave but slowly kills your soul," and he asked his fellow Redditors how they "keep the mask on without losing your mind?"
Those who've had similar experiences readily identified with his situation. "Eventually you just wanna be true to yourself more than you want the money," one commenter wrote, which resonated with this worker. "At a certain point, the money stops buying peace of mind — it starts renting your personality," he wrote back. "I’m not there yet, but I can definitely feel the cracks forming."
It's a pretty stinging commentary on modern capitalism that he is "trapped" in a way despite making "life-changing money." Our economy is so uncertain that it's hard to blame him for sticking in. But of course, on the other hand, is the harsh reality that many people would kill to be in this "brutal" situation. As one commenter put it, "A lot of people would actually HAVE to work nights and weekends to make life-changing money. You have to respond to a few texts."
But the real answer to his quandary isn't either side of the debate of whether he should quit or just be grateful and swallow it. It's that he is the very opposite of "stuck" — he could take that "life-changing money" and start using it to build something he DOES want, even if it's just a nest egg he can live off of while doing nothing.
He has so many options from that "life-changing money" that, from the sounds of it, he isn't seizing. That isn't "stuck," but rather being ruled by fear, and he has the kind of money where being ruled by fear is a choice. It may not necessarily feel like it, but he could just as easily make a different one, before his soul really is broken.
John Sundholm is a writer, editor, and video personality with 20 years of experience in media and entertainment. He covers culture, mental health, and human interest topics.
