Oh I'm actually quite happy with my own job in the public sector. It's varied and at times challenging work that benefits society as a whole. The pay isn't all that much, but we're talking about fulfillment here not salaries. Unfortunately for my peace of mind, I posess empathy and the knowledge that most aren't as lucky. Companies either grow or die, so massive faceless corporations provide a large and growing share of all employment. And it doesn't even need to be a big corp for the job to be a bs job.

How is that a strawman? Sure life could be worse as you said, but life could also be a lot better. The meme takes no shots at the former claim, instead making fun of people who fail to imagine the latter. Talking about how we already live in relative luxury is also a very common deflection from arguments for why we should improve society, without actually countering said arguments.

It's not just the convenience of running water, it's all of the infrastructure around making sure that water is clean and safe, which involves government regulation and audits, massive engineering projects, a lot of maintenance effort and a considerable amount of tax dollars.

Just as an example, leptospirosis is a common bacterial contaminant in untreated water:

Signs and symptoms can range from none to mild (headaches, muscle pains, and fevers) to severe (bleeding in the lungs or meningitis). Weil's disease (/ˈvaɪlz/ VILES), the acute, severe form of leptospirosis, causes the infected individual to become jaundiced (skin and eyes become yellow), develop kidney failure, and bleed. Bleeding from the lungs associated with leptospirosis is known as severe pulmonary haemorrhage syndrome.

If you go hiking in places like Hawaii (where the government gives a shit about public health) you'll see warning signs about lepto around pools and streams because people have this delusional fantasy about tropical paradises with clean flowing streams. If you go hiking in other places the lepto will still be there but the warning sign won't. Untreated, uncontrolled water is a hazard.

Everyone can't be an expert on water sanitation. Employing some experts to provide that service for thousands or millions of people is a fantastic solution. It's probably impossible to overstate how much benefit water infrastructure provides for society.

So I disagree with you. "Running water" (centrally managed water sanitation and delivery) is one of the best things human society has ever done. The benefit to public health is incalculable.

The only reason you might discount how much benefit you gain from this system is that you've grown up with it as normal. You've never had to worry about groundwater contamination, about boiling every cup of water before you drink it, about filtration or desalinization or testing for lead. Which is why I describe having access to this as a privilege - because we take it for granted.

How much experience do you have with third world conditions? I would tend to assume from what you are saying that you've never seen what a lack of sanitation does to a society.
But you might be well familiar with all of this ... and just like it?

Problems like infant mortality, disease, manual labour, the human species evolved to deal with those. That's why exercise releases endorphins. Your body is rewarding you for doing what you need to survive. It has strategies to soften those blows and keep you going. Because you have to.

There are no biological coping mechanisms for cars, city noise, pollution, and financial anxiety. These problems didn't exist in the ancestral environment. Evolution hasn't had time to protect us from them. They might not hit as hard in the moment, but we can't heal from the losses they cause us. That's why chronic stress, suicide, depression and anxiety are so common nowadays. This is worse. Maybe not in objective germs, but it's worse for a human being. It hits us in our weak points.