It’s really quite unfathomable, the expectations of an employer when considering that, in addition to your daily lack of duties during which you must come equipped with your embalming kit, you’re also expected to come into work with something resembling vitality and gusto. But this tacit assumption on the part of one’s master should really warrant an added fee as a supplement to an already minimal salary.
What’s wrong with simply going through the motions so long as the task is completed at a rudimentary or even satisfactory level? Why all this pressure to “be happy”–to whistle while you work, so to speak? One supposes it all goes hand in hand with the suppression and denial it takes to be an office worker in the long-term. That your “bad attitude” might infect the others and shatter any delicately cultivated illusions they have about this day-to-day not being a miserable existence. So while everyone else receives accolades for mediocre work simply because they’ve plastered shit-eating grins on their faces, you’re pegged as the rotten egg polluting the entire batch. But hey, you did the fucking work.