In the process of taking apart yet another idiotic David Brooks column, Matt Taibbi completely nails what work is like for most people:
Most of the work in this world completely sucks balls and the only reward most people get for their work is just barely enough money to survive, if that. The 95% of people out there who spend all day long shoveling the dogshit of life for subsistence wages are basically keeping things running just well enough so that David Brooks, me and the rest of that lucky 5% of mostly college-educated yuppies can live embarrassingly rewarding and interesting lives in which society throws gobs of money at us for pushing ideas around on paper (frequently, not even good ideas) and taking mutual-admiration-society business lunches in London and Paris and Las Vegas with our overpaid peers.
Most work isn’t fun, isn’t rewarding and most people would trade their job for a lifelong pension in a heartbeat. But you wouldn’t know it from the media; in discussions on e.g. pension age the examples you get are almost always the doctor or lawyer angry about being “forced” to retire at seventyfive, never the garbage collector with a broken back and blown knees who would love to retire at fifty, but can’t. We’re being forcefed this idea of work and our job as what gives our lives meaning, then feel guilty when we don’t actually enjoy it or don’t care about it. But the truth is that even interesting jobs are still just things you do to make enough money to survive, not because you like the idea of going to work every day.