Similar to my experience but my professional life was on phones mostly and then government so a bit different. My coworkers when I worked phones were usually also students (in college) so phones (smartphones) were a huge and central part of their life anyway. My other job for the state government often actually becomes the employee’s life. 8am until 5pm everyday for the rest of your life. Serving the public. The union makes any employment decisions for you.
Breaks are scheduled and on the calendar for all of society. Once someone works the job for 5 years they become “vested” and the job is pretty much for life.
Also public servants are contracted to be there rain or shine under any circumstance.
Regardless Some people make their job their entire life. That’s how you keep a job!
But certainly little things become triggers or points of association sometimes in an otherwise mundane existence.
My friend rationalized how boring his job was by always knocking twice before entering any building. It gave him something to be comfortable around/distracted by.
It always always fun when he would knock on an automatic sliding door. Little habits to keep us sane. His focus was the doors opening for everyone

I'm aware of it 24/7. Every time I go to eat something I bought in a store wondering how much it's processed and how it's packed and stored, etc. I sense plastic in yogurt and think about how I consciously made the decision to buy this instead of yogurt sold in glass. I think about the abundance of cheap thematic kitch in stores like Flying Tiger, Kik or Pepco and how there's no chance people will buy it all up and what's going to happen with the rest. I wonder why the hell there are only available eggs from UK in a store I visited when we have our own farms or could at least import from neighbouring countries.... Honestly, there's so much BS all around, every day, at every step.

I was fortunate to work at a couple places that made very relatable products, wanted to own, and was easy to be a fan. Unfortunately, the corp BS tainted things. In some respects, I actually now appreciate working for a place with a service I don't much care about.

It’s the things we do to keep from being useless, which in this day and age is becoming more and more likely. We have our jobs and our family (hopefully) but you aren’t wrong, it can seem absurd .

I often think about the absurdity of our modern economy in general. We manufacture, buy, throw out, and buy it again.
And if we don't do this endlessly the whole world goes into a tailspin.

Ummm every minute of every day

🙋🏻‍♂