Office work attracts more and more people every year, because it provides a lot of opportunities and is quite comfortable. At the beginning of the last century, office workers were unofficially called "white collars", and a hundred years later they began to be disparagingly called "office plankton".
Office mass
The transition to a post-industrial society has brought to the first place not production, but the service sector, significantly increasing the number of jobs in this area. The growth of corporations, new requirements for workflow and reporting, the use of computers in office work - all this has led to the emergence of many positions in offices related to intellectual, but not creative work. These positions include, for example, secretaries, office managers, lower-level managers, financiers, accountants, lawyers. They are often called representatives of office plankton.
This happens not because such work, as a rule, does not require special mental costs, but the main requirements for the performers are attention and accuracy. Moreover, salaries in such positions do not depend on the actual work done, and employees are forced to stay in the office for a full working day. They generally take much less time to complete their duties, so they spend the rest of it on social media and entertainment sites, sometimes taking coffee breaks. One of the most characteristic features of office plankton is traditionally considered the absence of other goals than material ones. Buying a new car or phone, a vacation at a foreign resort, dinner at a restaurant, a wide-screen TV are the main priorities in the life of the average office clerk. As a rule, such people do not strive for self-development or career growth, preferring stability and a minimum of professional stress.
How to avoid becoming plankton?
Of course, life dictates its own conditions, and working in an office is indeed one of the most comfortable ways to secure a steady income, but there are many options for avoiding becoming a part of the plankton. You can get a job in an office that involves creativity. This does not always require special skills: for example, sales staff in most cases do not receive special education, but their activities, nevertheless, are far enough from the dull shifting of papers and filling out tables.
However, even working as a clerk, you can use your free time usefully: instead of communicating on social networks, it is better to find an interesting online course and gain additional knowledge, learn a foreign language or learn programming. Sedentary work and lack of exertion often lead to the fact that the physical form of representatives of office plankton is far from ideal. If you don't want to be like them, sign up for a gym, martial arts courses, or a hobby of physical activity.
Finally, you always have the opportunity not to get an office job at all, but instead open your own business, get additional education in a creative specialty, or become a freelancer. Naturally, all of these options are by no means as stable as office activities, but your life is likely to be much more interesting and brighter than those who preferred the absence of stress and risks.
