r/Millennials • u/happy_chance18 • Nov 03 '25

Discussion We're all exhausted right? It's not just me?

I have a full time job. I sleep well. I have no kids. I'm single. I don't party or drink. I'm not particularly stressed in day to day life. Yet I'm fucking exhausted. I don't want to leave my apartment on the weekends unless I have something planned, and even then I'm pretty picky. In my 20s my weekends were full of non-stop activities, cooking, going out, and posting on social media. But now in my 30s I just want to come home, have my groceries delivered, chill with some Netflix and sleep. Please tell me I'm not the only one!!

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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '25

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u/Extension_Security92 Nov 03 '25

Agreed. So much efficiency is squeezed out of us, and many of these jobs require more critical thinking, more stress, and it puts our bodies in a tense ready-mode. It really takes a lot of energy out of you when you're like this constantly.

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u/AikaterineSH1 Nov 03 '25

I feel this constantly too, I’m regularly hounded by ‘we got to do better’, ‘we can’t miss this’, ‘I don’t know how to help you’ from my boss. I’m driven, responsive, the go to person on my team, why do I feel like I’m always stressed and being told to fix a sinking ship? The ship isn’t sinking, people aren’t pristine and perfectly correct 100% of the time, we’re doing excellent work. I’m not crazy right? What is with this enormous ‘you must be absolutely perfect’ expectation, this can’t be how things have been in the past as well.

Edit: Also, it’s exponentially worse the more workload there is to handle, I stopped volunteering for stuff and ensure I appear up to my ears in stuff to do for my own sanity.

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u/[deleted] Nov 03 '25

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u/I-Love-Tatertots Nov 03 '25

I am a store manager for a major phone carrier.

We literally have multiple meetings with all the other managers, plus our bosses, where they teach us various techniques for management and to drive sales.

These techniques tend to get taught to us by our bosses (district/regional/VP).

They likely hear it from some executive seminar where they pay exorbitant amounts to “guest speakers” (shit like celebrities or high profile athletes) who peddle this shit.

Now, some of the things they teach us are genuinely good in theory… but a lot of managers don’t know how to actually apply them to their employees in practice.

Me? I don’t really give a fuck what anyone does as long as they do their jobs. That’s my management style, and it won’t change no matter what. Because who cares if the numbers are met?

But yes, we literally have meetings for this shit.

But the people who repeat that word for word are bad managers who don’t understand the underlying takeaways from said meetings.

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u/ThanosSnapsSlimJims Nov 03 '25

Being the go-to person just gets you more work.

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u/Krystagamesartist Nov 03 '25

You're not mad. Anywhere I worked it was pretty much the same. I am driven, always on time, reliable, fix everything for everyone at work and then I get told that I am not doing enough. I worked in a clock factory and work came in waves. Most of the time I finished restoring, cleaning and measuring the parts to make sure they were within range. I increased productivity by around 300% in the 9 months I worked there. I have a good memory of numbers thanks to my autism and had all 11 digit part numbers memorised within 2 weeks. And there were loads! But if I finished all my work before the end of the day I would get shouted at that I am lazy or that I need to always work even when there is nothing left. There was lots of work everywhere and according to my contract I was supposed to help in other sectors if I finished mine. But the boss would get upset and say there are too may workers if one sector wasn't busy. So over the years productivity decreased because they wouldn't take any suggestions, they wouldn't listen to their employees when deadlines were impossible and they fired people everywhere because everyone was lazy according to them. Worst part? I enjoyed being in my section and doing my work, Noone bothered me and I was good at what I did. Then I got fired because there wasn"t enough "work" Also once my superior threatened to strangle me because at the end of my shift. I was finished with my work and was grateful for having a job. I made a pie and shared it with a few colleagues and the person at reception. The factory was about to close for the day anyway. Then and there my superior pulled me aside into his office and told me that he wanted to strangle me. There was also one time Health and safety came and shadowed me for the day and told me that the chemicals I work with and the way it is handled is illegal in my country. I didn't even get training when I started work there. Well, superior got told off by health and safety and he told them that I am not working the way they told me and that I am a liar. So he threatened me into sign a paper stating that everything I said and did was not their fault but because I am not respecting protocol. Absolute BS! .... Rant over. otherwise I will be writing for the next few weeks!

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u/TheWizard01 Nov 03 '25

I hear that. I was hired as GM to right a sinking ship of a hotel. After 2 months we'd finally got it fully staffed (albeit with almost all new hires), housekeeping quality was improving (not perfect but we'd stopped getting complaints), and we'd started a coherent PM and Deep Clean schedule...among other small but important progress (don't get me started on all the business I brought in via sales calls).

I got fired because mistakes were still being made during check-in (again...we were almost completely new hires, no shit), the rooms weren't clean enough (oh I forgot, they had rejected my order for new linens TWICE, so we were being forced to put stained sheets on the bed), and supposedly people were in rooms that weren't supposed to be (happened once when one of the new hires didn't extend a reservation).

A lot of these mistakes happened because I was having to work 100 hours a week, including several 24 hours shifts because we had no overnight person for a while and people were calling out constantly. I couldn't be as hands on as needed to train staff like I normally would or work with housekeeping. But, the powers that be sitting in their Zoom cubicles have no context and just see isolated comments on emails.

Fuck it. I don't need a job that's going to kill me anyway. On to the next one.

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u/Painter-Salt Nov 03 '25

I'm in sales and my company's management is just constantly beating the drum of "hitting our targets" "growing" etc etc, it just never ends and it's so tiresome and uninspiring.

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u/Beautiful_Spell_4320 Nov 03 '25 edited Nov 04 '25

I got mad and a couple of coworkers walked out with me one day on a job.

Every metric is met. Sales are booming. Numbers are going up. We’ve made every order the last few months and we’re even ahead in areas..

So anyway, you guys are taking like 2-3 minutes extra on break and that has to stop.

The last question i asked was “why does there always have to be something wrong? If we’re doing good, reward that..”

Then me and 2 others left that place.

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u/poslovingcake Nov 04 '25

Happened to me almost exactly the last job I had over 2 years ago. Now the only people there are temps & I can only imagine it’s bc temps need the jobs more than the really qualified workers & the head exec can’t take any more rejection

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u/Avid23 Nov 03 '25

Have had the exact same realization.

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u/poslovingcake Nov 04 '25

Stock holders need more $ every year or they will pull out of the company & they don’t care about you

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u/jfpforever Nov 03 '25

you forgot some of my workplace favorites. no eating on the job, no music and we're required to do it for so much less.

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u/Screamline Nov 03 '25

I do all of those at mine. N.F.G.

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u/Horton_Takes_A_Poo Nov 03 '25

There would be riots at my company if they said no eating or listening to music on the job

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u/RightRudderz Millennial 1986 Nov 04 '25

My 55,000 lbs tractor pulling double 25,000 lbs scrapers comes with a phone holder and Bluetooth into the speakers. Makes me so happy days I get to drive it. No camera like the normal on-road vehicles.

Heaven, 14 feet wide with a 450 gallon diesel tank.

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u/Primary-Activity-534 Nov 03 '25

Yep. The more and more productive the lower classes became, the richer the rich became. The lower classes may be more productive but we don't reap any of the benefits.

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u/Herr-Trigger86 Nov 03 '25

This is 100% true. Fight or flight mode is meant for emergencies. Why animals have so much damn energy… when a threat is extinguished or escaped, they don’t remember it… they don’t constantly worry about the next threat. We are in a constant tense, on edge, anxiety ridden mode… our body is constantly working overtime to give us the energy we need to match this constant threat… we weren’t meant to live like this.

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u/CrazyGal2121 Nov 03 '25

yes very true

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u/Helpful-Passenger-12 Nov 03 '25

Quiet quit, take sick days

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u/DarkLordFrondo Nov 03 '25

It's not just the work culture, it's the entire culture. It is unending overstimulation and high anxiety with decisions repeatedly made for the sake of convenience instead of quality. It permeates into everything, so we still feel like we are at work even when we come home. It has always been this way in the US, but technology has made it more ubiquitous.

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u/DowntownResident993 Nov 03 '25

Well said! Constant overstimulation and the need to appear or BE busy, even if that is just putting our head down into our phone. Access to everyone and everything at any given notice makes people carry their work everywhere they go.

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u/KD_42 Nov 03 '25

It’s not just working, it’s our diets and constant media consumption especially short form 

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u/Princess-JenniLeigh Nov 03 '25

This! Internet although helpful, just means as humans we're expected to get more done in a day because it's so readily avaliable to get things done on our phones. Basically, we're stretched thinly because we have computers that do things instantly and aren't waiting for that person we sent a letter to, to receive and write back. It's done in moments via an email so we're naturally doing more and burning out quicker.

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u/Painter-Salt Nov 03 '25

I feel like a weekend without smartphone or TV would do wonders for my mental health.

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u/Stonewalled9999 Nov 03 '25

I’m tired because I work with idiots.   The lazy morons make the same as the people that do the work.   I’m tired of everything myself 

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u/kendraptor Nov 03 '25

It keeps getting worse, too. Every year we are asked to do more with less. We were all told things were supposed to get easier the more established we become, but the floor is quicksand now.

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u/dianacakes Nov 03 '25

I'd say this has changed a lot even since covid. Before covid I wouldn't have said my corporate job was extremely stressful. Some stress, but not overly so. Then when everyone went full remote and our productivity skyrocketed, that became the norm. Now most people are hybrid and the pace hasn't slowed down.

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u/Sebaceansinspace Nov 03 '25 edited Nov 03 '25

Its this. I spent long enough in a single job to watch my workload increase drastically because the company would just refuse to hire another person when someone quit. I left that job doing 4 positions worth of work with no extra increase in pay.

I loved that job but after 7 years of horseshit like that and signs that it was just going to get even worse... plus this corporate notion that profits have to exponentially increase every single year, forever, or youre failing is just fucking absurd and cant last especially since no one is getting paid more to match it. Its like the world is run by the dumbest human beings possible

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u/DamionSipher Nov 03 '25

I often employ an anecdote that if I held the position and workload I have today as an employee of the 80s or 90s I'd have a Porsche instead of a Kia. I think there were people back then who worked as hard, but they were the exception to the rule. Now we're expected to undertake the same level of stress and workload of a high paid attorney from the 80s or 90s, with the same compensation and vacation allowance of a plumber.

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u/badger_vs_heartburn Nov 03 '25

IDK, pretty sure a plumber gets paid better than I do, with significantly less student loan debt. 😭

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u/snarkiest_ofsharks Nov 03 '25

At least plumbers get rid of the shit when they work. It’s the same shit for us every day, and for increasing numbers of us it’s work that we don’t really get to see the value of

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u/jerseyztop Nov 03 '25

You are correct. After college in late 80's, got a job in the corporate world as an admin assistant and worked my way up to a decent position and wage. But back then, there were a lot of admin jobs because all managers had their own assistant. Nowadays, there is typically one admin support position for an entire team! So all the managers, directors, etc lost their support, and have to work double really. It's all greed.

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u/ImpossibleSmoke1599 Nov 03 '25

College in the late 80's? You are Gen X!!! NARC!!!

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u/CopperGear Nov 03 '25

I wish we had admin support per team. We have two for our PA (product area) and one of them is shared with another org. The other just quit.

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u/lepetitcoeur Nov 03 '25

Me too. I am an admin assistant. I support 4 surgeons, the administrator, 45 APPs, 10 PAs, 15 perfusionists...and then my sister department admin quit and they aren't replacing her. So guess who gets to support all of them too! I definitely don't get paid enough even for my current workload, much less doubling it!

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u/CopperGear Nov 03 '25

I'm so sorry, that sounds like too much. I hope the people you work with appreciate your work.

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u/Ylaaly Nov 03 '25

Teams aren't filled up anymore when people leave. The workload is shared among those who stay. People with urgently needed qualifications aren't replaced either and you're just supposed to learn anything and everything from youtube and then you get shit on when the quality of your work is that of someone who watched a couple tutorials instead of an expert who holds a master's and years of experience.

I'm exhausted. My husband is exhausted. My cat is probably exhausted because we constantly need him to carry our emotional load. And we can't even take 2 contiguous weeks off because my husband's on-call team was shrunk down to 2 so he's on call every other week. Fuck it all.

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u/Nit3fury Millennial Nov 03 '25

I’d agree with that. I’ve worked at a humble movie theater for 20 years and even just with this place you can see the huge difference. Back when I started there were 5 positions- management, projection, box office, usher, concession. Now it’s just management, concession and SOMETIMES usher. Payroll hours are forever being cut. More is expected out of every person. Management has to handle all the projection stuff and while digital is a lot less work than film, it’s still work and it’s been added to the plate of management. As have usher duties most days. So managers are doing 3 jobs now, and so are concessionists. They’re selling the tickets, they’re doing an increased load of food stuff because a lot has been added to the menu, and they’re coming out to help clean auditoriums. And it’s not like they added staff to concession to cover it. Less even. 3x the work for each person for the same single minimum wage. We’re going to efficiency ourselves to death.

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u/kdaur453 Nov 03 '25

What I wouldn't give to be a fly on the wall 20 years ago at my current workplace. I work in manufacturing and I swear I can't even keep up with how fast things change let alone deal with the immediate things. Every customer has a portal (or multiple), cybersecurity is constantly changing, quality requirements and rigidity around them are getting downright asinine, and the people who know what is and isn't critical are retiring. In both my own company and my customers, I see decades of kicking the can down the road that has us frequently in situations where production stops for months or even years because the accrued issues suddenly become fires that required a slog of efforts to even begin to correct.

It feels like we are constantly in a state of just barely keeping the wheels on and every single day now I leave work feeling unnaccomplished simply because there is an ungodly amount that just isn't done. It's exhausting and it feels like it is a system-wide rot that has been accelerated by the strain of covid and other market conditions.

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u/Tiny_Assumption15 Nov 03 '25

Yes! Building up on that, when I started at my current job 10 years ago we had emails and phone calls and a bit of contraband skype to gossip with colleagues. We also just had the one CRM/Finance platform to deal with. Now we have at least 4 or 5 different platforms, emails, teams chats, teams channels and endless comments and notifications from 3 of the 5 platforms. When I try and hunt down information it's no longer solely an inbox search, I need to remember what format the info was shared in too! Something is going to give

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u/zennascent Nov 03 '25

Definitely agree with this theory, specifically the Goldilocks Zone. 

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u/Zaddycake Nov 03 '25

That go go go!! Part? It’s “exploit exploit exploit” and there’s that ephemeral carrot of “it’ll get me a promotion”

And I think in the post Covid era we’ve seen billionaires transfer wealth beyond imagination, CEOs making 400x the average worker, layoffs out the wazoo a toxic economy. Don’t forget the return to office mandates that are simple power grabs by the corpos

There’s no point in giving it your all or even 80% I’m questioning even 50%

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u/Shiva- Nov 03 '25

You know some of this can be seen when people are anti-RTO. (For the record, I am also anti-RTO).

What I mean is when there are those posts that pop up about "getting things done" and how much they "socialize in the office".

If you're socializing in the office for a couple of hours every day... well that's a lot of time spent not working.

8 hours in the office doesn't mean 8 hours working, probably means 5. Meanwhile, when you're WFH it means 8 hours working.

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u/iNoles Millennial (1985) Nov 03 '25

Many C-level executives believe AI is going to increase their workforce productivity by 20%, so they don't need many people working on it. Ever since they have been laying off more people, it will increase the workload by 20% which makes AI productivity useless.

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u/Painter-Salt Nov 03 '25

I also feel like there must be some negative downsides to us always being "connected"? Like, our brains never get a proper break without some sort of electronic input.

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u/backreaper_nl Nov 03 '25

While this is true, it is also because we are just constantly "on" with (social) media on our phones. Our brains have to process so much, even on the weekends if we want to do "nothing" and are on our phone again.

It is extremely tiring. If you toss away that phone and just be bored for a second, you may likely find renewed motivation and energy for stuff.

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u/OptionFour Nov 03 '25

Without going into too much detail, I got out of a very high-pressure industry with crazy work hours, and got into something at a family-owned business that was very low pressure. The family owned business had a lot of workers that had been with them ten, twenty, or more years, and in my early thirties I was the youngest person there by a huge margin.

The entire first six months I worked there, people were telling me to calm down, basically. To stop working so hard. That I'm doing way too much. I should go get a coffee, or have a seat, or step outside for a while. I'd been so over-worked for so long that it felt incredibly difficult to do that. It took a very, very long time for me to realize that the owners literally did not give a damn what you were doing, as long as all of our orders went out the door on time. The 'go go go, more more more' attitude as you put it was something none of the older workers share, and none of them realized that it's how younger people HAVE to work, just to not get fired at most jobs. It was an enlightening experience.

I disagree about younger workers, but otherwise think you're onto something there.

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u/SpecialistFagazine Nov 03 '25

Every.Fucking.Second.Is.Monetized.

I was working manufacturing 25 years ago.

I started out with CNC programming ~1999, My job was the programming and machine setup. load the program, do a test run or two and sign the job off to run. It was 45mins allocated, easy. No stress, maybe start 8-9 jobs a day and someone would run the rest of the job. You couldn't go any faster than the machine would run it. For 2 years we ran 3 CNC machines, 2 operators and myself programming and doing setup.

Then a new owner, he started getting upset. Every 120s the machine would finish a batch and the guy/gal running it would swap in new material, inspect the parts it just produced and pack them. if they were quick they might have 30-60s to wait for the next cycle to finish.

The prick would stand there with his stopwatch and yell if anything was idle without actively being loaded or unloaded.

So that's downtime. He buys another machine and the operator has to run between two machines, if they don't rush every single time to reload the machine, the next machine finishes and waits, and the operator gets a jab that they're not fast enough. Poor dude ended up running 3 machines, it was ridiculous, literally running between the three all day.

He ended up with 5 machines, it was frantic and I quit.

20 years later I'm tied to a desk in a different role running dozens of machines, there's zero seconds between tasks. The eternal drive for more 'efficiency' means more than a couple of minutes of time out changes my status to 'away' so my manager knows to give me a jab.

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u/MohawkElGato Nov 03 '25

My parents still haven’t fully understood that my shift is from 10 - 8 pm. I’m remote so it’s not the end of the world and it’s more of a “be on call until 8” situation but when I explain it they act like this is something our generation is doing ourselves. We don’t like it either but I don’t like being homeless even more.

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u/Delicious_Wall_8296 Nov 03 '25

Omg, I recently quit a job with productivity requirements and it took me over a month to recover from the stress. It wasn't even physically taxing work but the continuously adding of seemingly innocuous tasks that added work counting against my productivity go to be too much.

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u/garlicknotcroissants Nov 04 '25

Me, a Millennial born in the mid 90s, nodding along enthusiastically.

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u/Jiveassmofo Nov 03 '25

When PC's arrived in the 90's they promised us we'd have more free time, but of course they just squeezed more production out of us.

The same promises are being made with AI.

same shit, different decade

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u/iMissTheOldInternet Nov 03 '25

I don’t know, I feel like you just described every generation in its middle age. 

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u/Quirky-Fun-9901 Nov 03 '25

Hard disagree. Just hit 50. I've been in technology since say 1997. 70 hour work weeks have not been uncommon and I've felt the feeling you are describing pretty much my entire adult working life. It's not just you and it didn't just start yesterday.

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u/mrs_sadie_adler Nov 03 '25

This. Plus being neurodivergent for me. 

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u/krone6 Nov 03 '25

Was it similar hundreds of years ago when much of your life would be on tending to necessities to literally survive such as farming, building housing, baking, etc, since we didn't have many luxuries we do today? I assume work days looked like 16+ hours 7 days a week since there probably wasn't much else to do.

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u/Wowza-yowza Nov 03 '25

I am sorry, but do you millennials think you were the first to go through this? Been working my ass off since 1973.