History Main / SoulCrushingDeskJob

* Series/HimitsuNoHanazono2007'': What Natsuyo does for a living, though this is because she's too blind to realize that for her own good, she needs to step down and downscale her workload. Even her boss Ryoko isn't as serious as her, and encourages Natsuyo to put herself first.

* Sam Lowry from the British sci-fi comedy ''Film/{{Brazil}}'' has eluded capture by State agents, and tries to earn a living working for Mister Warrenn. Sam is taken through a bleak and dingy building to a narrow office with minimal furnishings, and is welcomed thusly: "There you are: your own number on your very own door. And behind that door, your very own office. Welcome to the team, DZ-015!" Oddly, Sam is never told exactly what he's supposed to ''do'' in that office, and the only reason this job doesn't become a mindless tedium is that Sam finds himself in a tug-of-war for desk space with the neighboring office.

Your boss will be a [[MeanBoss demanding, mean manager]] and/or an incompetent PointyHairedBoss. Wisecracking bosses who are too jovial and too friendly are not popular with the team either. While {{Benevolent Boss}}es exist in real life, they are rare in fiction about office jobs. Senior management might be outright tyrannical. You are very likely to be yelled at. To top it off, you are all cogs in a [[ObstructiveBureaucrat huge bureaucracy filled with complex, Byzantine rules and procedures.]]

* In the ''WebComic/SluggyFreelance'' story "The Isle of the Ployees", Torg is about to get an office job (after previously working freelance and whatnot), and Riff tells him a weird satirical story about a magical island where you have to do mindless work by stupid and ineffective means. In the end, though, he claims it's not actually satire of this trope, just a dream he had.

* One of the viewpoint characters in ''WebOriginal/GetsuyoubiNoTawawa'' appears to work in this sort of job, though we don't see much of his workplace and his story began with the end result of his time there (he was considering killing himself before meeting Ai at the train station). Kiseki Himura wrote that he partly based it off [[WriteWhatYouKnow his own time as a salaryman]] before he quit to pursue his art career, and the series itself started as Twitter posts to cheer up those salarymen that had to get up for work on Monday morning.

The white-collar equivalent of SoulSuckingRetailJob, though Soul-Crushing Desk Job has a slightly better reputation in fiction -- you have to have at least some skills and a decent education, and the wages might be better, though still nothing to write home about. This is often paired with the drab uniformity of the StandardOfficeSetting, although the WackyStartupWorkplace might induce this as well.

* ''WesternAnimation/TheSimpsons'': Homer Simpsons is well established as hating his job as a safety director at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. In "And Maggie Makes Three", when he and Marge only have two children, he figures a way to support his family with a job he will enjoy more -- [[HappinessInMinimumWage he wants to work in a bowling alley]]. Funny that Homer happily trades his cushy job with a place where he has to work manually or deal with dirty shoes. Homer ecstatically quits, making sure Mr. Burns, the owner of the plant, knows how much Homer hated it. Then Marge realizes she's pregnant and Homer has to beg for his old, higher-paying job back. Mr. Burns re-hires him, but has a plaque mounted in Homer's small office that reads "Don't forget: You're here forever." Homer uses pictures of Maggie to cover letters in such a way that the plaque now reads: "Do it for her."

[[folder: Comic Books ]]

* The ending of ''Comicbook/IHateFairyland'' has [[spoiler:the now-adult Gertrude working as an office drone in a largely miserable job that's bad enough to make her consider finding a way back to Fairyland]]. The revival shows that she's lost this job (among many others) due to her unstable nature.

[[folder: Comic Strips]]

* ''ComicStrip/CalvinAndHobbes'': Calvin's Dad works as a patent clerk in an office, and several strips shows him lamenting that he spends so much time working he doesn't have much left over to enjoy life. Usually, he's then exposed to what dealing with Calvin all day is like for his wife, and he goes to the office with a smile.

[[folder:Films -- Animated]]

[[folder:Films -- Live-Action]]

* In ''Film/{{Wanted}}'', Wesley's life was a crappy one with this crappy job and a boss who was a total bitch, and whose coworker and best friend is cheating with his girlfriend. That was before his life was turned upside down when he joins an elite international assassins group.
* In ''Film/AmericanBeauty'', Lester Burnham works a boring desk job that, along with his troubled marriage, he believes is killing him. As part of his midlife crisis, he blackmails his boss, quits his job, and goes back to flipping burgers, [[HappinessInMinimumWage which he finds far more satisfying]].
* The narrator of ''Film/FightClub'' works in a corporate job that he finds extremely unfulfilling and meaningless.

* Tom Hansen of ''Film/FiveHundredDaysOfSummer'' wants to be an architect, but he ends up at a greeting card company. Although there is no hostility in the office, Tom feels that his job is monotonous, boring, and he has no passion for it. The upside is meeting Summer. By the time Tom and Summer break up, Tom undergoes a downward spiral, and the final straw for him that drives him to quit this job is a boardroom meeting with ranting about inspirational quotes on love.

* This is the background of the film ''Film/NineToFive''. It centers around three women who revolt from this and take revenge on their boss, while simultaneously improving things at their job.

[[folder: Literature]]

* in ''Literature/TheHouseInTheCeruleanSea'', The [[DepartmentOfChildDisservices Department in Charge of Magical Youths]], "DICOMY" is ''not'' a [[BigBrotherIsEmployingYou pleasant place to work]]. It has a demerits system where employees are dinged for having photos on their desks and getting lunch stains on their clothes, the supervisors are authoritarian monsters, everyone is in fear of Extremely Upper Management, and the layers of bureaucracy in the actual job is noted to crush the hope in new employees. Even the weak attempts at raising morale only serve to be more depressing (such as the mandatory celebrations held by Extremely Upper Management that require employees to eat the lumpy potatoes and dry ham they serve).

[[folder: Live-Action TV ]]

* ''Series/BetterOffTed'': Linda (the only member of the main cast who is neither a manager nor a researcher) is constantly trying to avoid the boredom by engaging in small, safe acts of rebellion, such as stealing all the creamer from the coffee stations (her desk is full of it) or throwing donuts into the ventilation system (which she eventually turns into a competitive sport).
* In the finale of ''Series/TheShield'', Vic is put in such a position (see also DeskJockey), and he finds it extremely boring and insulting. Vic wants to be out on the streets, in the thick of the action, busting asses, and barking orders. Instead, he gets placed in the exact opposite position (no fame, no action, no authority, and no loopholes) to satisfy a contractual obligation with the Feds.
* ''Series/DispatchesFromElsewhere'': Peter's programming job for an online music streaming service that is totally not Spotify; he doesn't actually get to listen to a lot of music on the job. In the first episode, a co-worker approaches him to talk, but [[ImagineSpot all Peter can apparently hear]] is [[BlahBlahBlah "Work stuff. Work stuff. Work work work. Work stuff."]] When Simone comes to visit, he's embarrassed -- not to see her there, but rather that she can see how lame his job is.

* In ''Series/{{Fargo}}'' Season 2, one of the characters gets one of these. [[spoiler:It's Mike Milligan's [[LaserGuidedKarma reward]] for his successes in Fargo. He wanted to be a high-ranking criminal kingpin, and succeeded, but his crime syndicate is pivoting to WhiteCollarCrime. His superiors intend it as a genuine reward, but for the CulturedBadass Milligan, who excels in violent situations, it's a terribly ironic fate.]]
* Core to ''Series/TheOfficeUS'' is that many of the characters have been slowly ground down by the drudgery of life at Dunder Mifflin. None more so than Jim, who came to Dunder Mifflin intending to spend a couple of years at the company before moving onto something more exciting only to find himself stuck and acting out through juvenile pranks to amuse himself. Dwight, on the other hand, flourishes in such an environment.

* ''Series/That70sShow'':
** In Season 1's "Career Day", Kelso's father is shown to have this kind of job, and no matter how much he tries to explain what his actual work consists of, Kelso can't wrap his mind around it. Driven to the brink of sanity, Kelso finally gives up and just lies that his father is a farmer when writing his report for school.
** When Hyde meets his birth father William Bernett in a later season, he ends up getting a job at William's music store, only to find that his new job consists of sitting in a tiny office and filling out endless mountains of paper work. His father teaches him the secret of succeeding at this task; dumping it all on someone else, then going home early.

[[folder: Music ]]

[[folder: Tabletop Games]]

[[folder: Theatre ]]

[[folder: Video Games ]]

* In the adult BaraGenre game ''Strange Flesh'', Joe works at one, and he goes to [[DrowningMySorrows drown his sorrows]] every night. On one certain night, he stumbles upon the titular gay bar, and his life changes forever...

* Working at [[MegaCorp Chalfont, Chalfont and Chalfont Inc.]] in ''VideoGame/MouthSweet'' is an exercise in drudgery, degradation and dehumanization, as you're stripped of your identity and assigned a series of increasingly bizarre and unsettling tasks, all while having to contend with the [[InvisibleMonsters invisible bugs]] wandering the halls. Fail to protect yourself and you'll be mauled to death, with your corpse regarded as nothing more than a minor inconvenience for the janitors to take care of.

[[folder: Webcomics ]]

* ''Webcomic/{{xkcd}}'' strip [[http://xkcd.com/664/ Academia vs. Business]] contrasts academia and business with their reaction to solving a seemingly impossible programming problem; the professor is amazed and sees this as a revolution in queuing theory, the boss just gives the programmer another issue that is insultingly easy in comparison.

[[folder: Western Animation ]]

* ''WesternAnimation/DanVs:'' In "Dan vs. The Boss", Dan and Chris get hired to work in cubicles at some vaguely-defined office. Dan avoids his work as much as possible by hiding in the bathroom for hours every day--and somehow the boss decides to promote him to management. Then it turns out [[spoiler:the boss is literally a demon]].
* ''WesternAnimation/SpongeBobSquarePants'' has a brief cutaway gag showing a montage of an unhappy fish's daily life, in which he drives, in heavy traffic, to and from his cubicle job, leaving his house early in the morning and coming home late at night. The last snapshot has him looking out the window of his bedroom, as if thinking about how unhappy he is with his life.
-->'''Fish's wife:''' ''[offscreen]'' Coming to bed, honey?\\
'''Fish:''' [[HenpeckedHusband Yes, dear.]]
* In ''WesternAnimation/OKKOLetsBeHeroes'', major villain [[EvilutionaryBiologist Professor Venomous]] managed to [[CutLexLuthorACheck become independently wealthy by patenting his scientific breakthroughs and selling them to other villains]]. However, he's also bored to tears by the bureaucratic mundanity of running a criminal enterprise and the endless, tedious conference calls with corporate suits for whom he clearly has no respect whatsoever.
-->'''Professor Venomous:''' I've been ''so bored'' for ''so long.'' The villainy I've gotten involved in is ''pure dreck.'' All I do is answer emails, make calls...

* ''Manga/The100GirlfriendsWhoReallyReallyReallyReallyReallyLoveYou'': Tama Nekonari was worn down and burned out by her office job to the point she did nothing but go to work, go home, go to work, go home, rinse, repeat. She started to think she'd prefer to be a cat in her next life, and the only thing that stopped Tama from killing herself to expedite that process was the thought that she might just reincarnate as a human instead of a cat and go through the same hell all over again. Rather than risk it, Tama decided "Fine, then. I'll just become a cat ''in this life...''", donned cat ears and a jacket with cat paws, quit her job, and lazed about until she ran out of money. Until Rentarou found her and she became one of his girlfriends, she was perfectly prepared to risk starving on the streets as a stray cat than go back to being a human in the workforce. She's willing to seek work only to not be a burden on Rentarou.

* ''Manga/The100GirlfriendsWhoReallyReallyReallyReallyReallyLoveYou'': Tama Nekonari was worn down and burned out by her office job to the point she did nothing but go to work, go home, go to work, go home, rinse, repeat. She started to think she'd prefer to be a cat in her next life, and the only thing that stopped Tama from killing herself to expedite that process was the thought that she might just reincarnate as a human instead of a cat and go through the same hell all over again. Rather than risk it, Tama decided "Fine, then. I'll just become a cat ''in this life...'', donned cat ears and a jacket with cat paws, quit her job, and lazed about until she ran out of money. Until Rentarou found her and she became one of his girlfriends, she was perfectly prepared to risk starving on the streets as a stray cat than go back to being a human in the workforce. She's willing to seek work only to not be a burden on Rentarou.

* ''Music/DollyParton'' has [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbxUSsFXYo4&ab_channel=DollyPartonVEVO "9 to 5,"]] which is the catchiest, bounciest tune you'll ever hear about how much it sucks to work a dead-end job.

* The ending of ''Comicbook/IHateFairyland'' has [[spoiler:the now-adult Gertrude working as an office drone in a largely miserable job that's bad enough to make her consider finding a way back to Fairyland]].

* Bob Parr of Creator/{{Pixar}}'s feature ''WesternAnimation/TheIncredibles'' used to be a superhero, until litigation reduced him to being an insurance adjuster in a soulless cube farm. Bob's only relief comes from helping claimants outwit the bureaucracy, which results in Bob's heartless boss roaring his name like an expletive.

The work [[OfficeDrone your character]] is required to do is often meaningless, repetitive and annoying. In customer service, you have to deal with disgruntled customers. Your colleagues are either a real pain, like the WeaselCoWorker or the ProfessionalSlacker, who you always have to cover for, making your life even worse, or if you're lucky, they may be your companions in the week-long suffering.

-->-- '''Jim Halpert''', ''Series/TheOfficeUS'', "Health Care"