On Toil

 In On Having and Being Had by Eula Biss:

Toil is the word Galbraith uses for work that is fatiguing and monotonous and a source of no particular pleasure. Like many people whose preferred work is not physical, he assumes most toil to be physical labor. In the 1998 edition of his 1958 book, he writes optimistically about "the continuing revolution in job quality being wrought by the computer," but he does not mention the toil introduced by the computer. The endless filling of little boxes, the esoteric software systems, the repetitive stress, the physical toll of sitting all day staring at a screen. And he does not foresee the unique drudgery of email, the electronic demands spiling out of the workday. In France, a law now requires large companies not to expect their employees to send or respond to emails after work hours. The "right to disconnect" it's called, an effort to reclaim the limits on a workweek hard won by labor protests of the past.