The rat race is an endless, pointless, self-defeating process of repeating certain actions, much like the life of some employees.

Most often, employees wake up in the morning, have a quick breakfast, rush-feed the kids if they have any, drop them off at school quickly, then dash quickly to work to arrive at 9 a.m., grabbing their morning coffee. Then they work two to three hours, keep looking at their watches to count the minutes until lunch time, sometimes stretching their hour lunch to 90 or 120 minutes. They return to work for a couple of hours, chat with colleagues, work a bit more, then spend the rest of the time planning when to leave work.