For me personally, I never had an issue with the work progress for 2 reasons:
1) newbie unaware of game consequences terrified of "YOU MISSED WORK TODAY" message and if it actually DID have consequences.
2) many of the events were at work, so if anything I was eager to go everyday and check out new scenes.
that's not to say others couldnt have legitmate gripes, that's just my take. The strip club can get a little boring, but that's mostly once you exhaust all the events and that should get better with future updates and more stuff to do there.
This is a pretty accurate description of how I feel about working in the game. I've never found it to be an issue, most likely because of the way I play the game. I've posted before about how I run the early game in a brisk routine to maximize the initial events and plough through the promotions and would recommend starting at the office to new players simply because there is very little to do during weekdays between 9am and 4pm, meaning its more efficient to just work all day. There are consequences to missing work, I believe its a -3 performance hit, so it's worth doing just to circumvent that but the avoidance of such harsh information might also be my inner strategy gamer having a viceral hatred for minuses.
A few tips I might give to those people finding the work progress hard are thus:
1. There is no rush. Nothing in the game is on a timer so don't feel obligated to use all your energy every day. I've posted previously about how quick running the early game will set you up nicely later on so never be afraid to just sleep the day away and the only necessity every week is paying the rent to avoid the massive love and lust hit with Jen.
2. I would recommend working the office job above muling drugs in the beginning as you can only work it 4 days a week where as the strip club can be worked every day, therefore the quicker you start the quicker you'll get to the promotions, but as always it's players choice.
3. Once you're promoted as manager, which should be around Wednesday of week 5, you can immediately take the break room upgrade for +10 morale cap. Morale effects the performance cap so if your performance reads 10 (20), it's because your morale is currently at 20 and this number cannot be exceeded. You'll want to increase both simultaneously but always try to keep morale around 3 points ahead of performance until you reach the first cap of 40 points otherwise those performance points will be wasted.
4. Once both morale and performance are at 40 just keep running funds until you can take terminal upgrades for another +10 morale cap. While the instinct will be to offer Jen the assistant job right away I personally wouldn't recommend this simply because it takes 2 days to integrate Jen into the office and you'll also miss out on some weekly events that only happen while she is working at the diner. I tend to only offer her the job once I'm close to the 40 cap and often have Lydia working at the office before Jen.
Usually, I finish both Mom and Lydia (main routes) before I can make any significant progress in the job (or the job related girl), going to work every day excepted when there is an event I can do at that time instead (but it's rare). But maybe it's just me doing something wrong, we'd need feedback from other players. Also, I always restart from the begining when playing a new update, which might be why it is an issue for me and not for others.
I included a save (R11.5, no cheat or save edit) to show you my progress.
I do exactly the same thing and start a new game on reach release but I've never had problems balancing work and play. It might behoove you to do what I do and focus on working and gyming in the early game rather than running events as it only takes about 5 minutes to smash through the first 6 weeks or so using the weekdays to work/sleep and the weekends to run events. Also the quicker you get through the office the quicker you'll unlock all of the girls.