Basic Trope: A crappy white-collar job
- Straight: Alice works in a call center. It's noisy, the carpets and cubicle walls are drab and grey, and (of course) Alice is dealing with rude, crabby Jerkass customers for 8 hours a day, in addition to her boss (and everyone in the Adminisphere) listening in on her calls and critiquing them harshly. Plus, her pay is fairly low. This causes a lot of stress for Alice, in addition to stress at home.
- Exaggerated: Alice is Driven to Suicide by the stresses of her job.
- Downplayed: Alice's job as an accountant alternates between stressful and boring, but her co-workers and immediate superiors are at least basically competent and decent.
- Justified:
- Call centers really are stressful places to work. All day long, Alice is dealing with criticism from the higher-ups, who expect her to do more and more with less and less each day, the rules and policies are constantly changing, she's dealing with crabby customers who feel entitled to yell at her even though none of their problems are her fault, that she has to try and appease and pretend to be nice to. The environment doesn't help, either: Alice is quite literally chained to her desk thanks to her headset's cord, and sitting for hours a day in an environment that (no matter how much she decorates her cubicle) is drab and grey. Plus, she's constantly monitored, and will get in trouble if she leaves her desk too long or too often, or takes too long on a call. Alice knows she is easily replaceable, and doesn't have much (if any) job security. And it doesn't help that most people have No Sympathy for the stresses she faces, either because it's work that doesn't require even a High School diploma (let alone an advanced degree) and therefore "anyone can do it", or because "at least it's not back-breaking manual labor".
- Alice never wanted to do this kind of work. She ended up in the call-center when she got laid off from a higher-up position at Trope Co Inc., or when she graduated from college with a useful degree, and she couldn't get anything better because the economy was bad, but with student loans, she couldn't just "wait around" for something to open up in her field that she's qualified for. (And going Back to School, be it grad school or trade school, would most likely mean taking out more loans on top of the ones she already has.) Or after her husband Bob either died or left her, forcing her to return to a workforce she has few relevant skills for. Taking a survival job out of desperation doesn't make for job satisfaction.
- Inverted: Alice works in a call center, and she loves it. Every customer is pleasant, every problem easily resolvable without having to jump through a lot of hoops, there's never a Critical Staffing Shortage, the pay is enough that Alice can support the family and Bob can quit his job and stay home with the kids, and the higher-ups don't constantly monitor Alice or threaten to fire her.
- Subverted:
- Once Alice does well at her job, her bosses start praising her and she eventually gets promoted to a more agreeable position.
- Alice describes her job as being this sort of thing, but she's actually just exaggerating.
- Alice works from home. There's no dress code, she can watch TV while she works, she's with her family, she doesn't have to deal with annoying coworkers or office drama, and she doesn't even have to get out of bed to do her job!
- Double Subverted:
- Alice has a horrible call center job. She does well and gets promoted. The new promotion puts her in a much worse position for only a slight pay bump.
- Turns out Alice wasn't exaggerating.
- Working from home is not without its challenges. The kids bicker while she's on a Zoom call with clients, the dog has an accident on the carpet, and her boss is still breathing down her neck and monitoring everything she does.
- Parodied: Alice opens her desk drawer, pulls out a gun, and blasts her brains out. No one in the call center seems to notice or care.
- Zig Zagged: Some days, Alice's job is stressful, other times it's easy.
- Averted: Alice has a low-paying office job she likes, and the stress level is low to nonexistent.
- Lampshaded: "Our department is a laughing stock and my job is a joke. I feel like I'm in a bad sitcom."
- Invoked: Alice loses her job at Trope Co. The economy is bad, and she can't find anything similar to what she was doing there. Alice can't afford to go Back to School, and her unemployment benefits are going to be running out soon. She still has kids to take care of, a mortgage and bills to pay, etc. She asks Bob to employ her as an assistant. It will be a stressful work at a corporation, but a girl's gotta eat and feed her family.
- Exploited: Incompetence, Inc. sees its employees as liabilities, not assets. So it keeps the working conditions and pay at minimum standards, so that people will leave voluntarily, or else fire them for even the tiniest infractions (and therefore they don't have to pay unemployment.)
- Defied: Alice decides to wait a bit longer and just keep putting her resume out there and interviewing. She gets in touch with the unemployment office to explain her situation (and let them know she is looking for work and not sitting around watching Soap Operas and trashy Talk Shows all day.), and they give her an extension. She enlists the help of a career coach or a recruiter, and maybe finds a way to go back to school. Eventually, she gets a job just like her old one that she liked, only with better pay and benefits.
- Discussed: "Man, poor Alice. She's the only one in our gang who hates her job. If I had to work for a huge, evil corporation, I'd feel like killing myself all the time."
- Conversed: "I'm sick of all those Work Com characters who complain that they have crappy office jobs. I would kill to have a job like that," says Alice.
- Deconstructed: Due to the extreme stress of the job, Alice becomes ill, takes to drinking or takes it out on her spouse and kids.
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