Agreed completely. As soul sucking as corporate software can be, we are very fortunate to be able to earn a great living for doing something (often) mentally stimulating and physically easy.

I’m sure many a barista fantasy has been crushed the first time having to deal with an unruly or argumentative customer, clean diarrhea off the bathroom walls, etc. Yeah, you have less to worry about once your shift is over, but your shift might really suck.

In our culture it sounds cringe/like bragging to make these kinds of comparisons punching down (to which I retort that the “back to blue collar” fantasy started it) but at this point in my life I don’t think I’ll ever have to put up with crap like that for money in the future, and I don’t plan to. Why would I do that?? We get paid several multiples just to tell computers to send little packets of data formatted just so from here to there.

All you need to do to be happy is what you’d be doing at your barista job anyway - stop giving a crap about your job after regular working hours, and stop trying to find an existential purpose in repetitive, draining tasks. Once you can do that, you reap all the benefits of higher pay with less bullshit