Many jobs involve doing the same thing day after day. While mental repetition can leave you feeling bored and unstimulated, physical repetition can do actual bodily harm.
As humans, we are not evolved to do the same limited range of actions repeatedly. No respectable hunter-gatherer would spend their whole day standing in one position doing the same thing over and over again. They’d have either died of starvation or been crushed in the jaws of a predatory animal.
Humans were designed to move and do a lot of different tasks, and when they do not, it can damage their bodies.
Is repetition really even efficient?
Assembly lines have been the standard way of working in many industrial settings for a long time. While proponents claim it increases efficiency, allowing them to turn out goods faster and cheaper, it comes at a human cost, one that workers pay with their health.
Standing on a factory line, whether in a meat packing plant, an Amazon warehouse, a car manufacturing plant or somewhere else, can lead to repetitive strain injuries (RSIs) because you perform a limited set of movements over and over again. That puts too much wear and tear on joints and ligaments involved in the particular movements.
For instance, if you use a knife on a meat-packing line, you could end up with wrist damage from performing the same cutting motion all the time.
Assembly lines are unlikely to disappear anytime soon. If you suffer an RSI due to working on one, you may, however, be able to claim worker’s compensation. Consider legal help to find out more.