What is a thoroughly institutioanlized life like?

The other day I heard an Englishwoman who works for the BBC say in a videoclip "I am thoroughly institutioanlized".
In what other work settings do you describe a person as "thoroughly institutioanlized"? Public servants? College teachers? Office workers?

What is a thoroughly institutioanlized life like?

To be "institionalised" usually means being confined to any kind of institution, such as a prison. People who are held in a prison for any length of time eventually become resigned to a way of life in which they are subjected to the same routine from one day's end to the next....with very little difference between one day and another. They have their meals at set times, their recreational or educational periods at set times, and very long periods of time locked up in their cells staring at four walls.

They become very used to all this, life in an institution.....all initiative and sense of responsibility is gradually drained away from them, there nothing more than a number, literally.

In a way it's the same with hospitals, especially for people who are confined to a hospital for any long period of time.....a hospital is an institution, and so such patients also become "institutionalised" by the routine which has to be followed while they are patients remain there. A ward becomes their prison cell, in effect.

You could say the BBC is an "institution" - ever since its inception way back in 1922 it has been referred to as "Aunty" by all those employed in its hallowed halls - either in a jocund way, either fondly or sarcastically, it depends on circumstance for the individuals concerned. I suppose you will become "institutionalised" if you remain with any organistion for a long time - you become part of the furniture in a way, a cog in the wheel of all its operations, which I reckon is the case with that Englishwoman. She's probably become a typical BBC clone now, strictly adhering to all of Aunty's Rules.

Of course schools, colleges and business organisations are "institutions" in their own way.....stay with them long enough and you will become a sort of clone, too......bound by the relative "way of life" - therefore "institionalised".

That public school in which the schoolmaster Mr Chipping taught, as featured in the book and the film "Goodbye Mr Chips" was very much an institiution, typical of many in the England of the early 20th century (Chips being the abbreviation of his name affectionately bestowed on him by the three generations of schoolboys he had taught as well as by his colleagues). In time old man Chips became an institution in his own right after teaching in that school for over 40 years or so.

Shocking typo: "there nothing more than a number, literally"
- should of course be "they're".

<<To be "institionalised" usually means being confined to any kind of institution, such as a prison. People who are held in a prison for any length of time eventually become resigned to a way of life in which they are subjected to the same routine from one day's end to the next....with very little difference between one day and another. They have their meals at set times, their recreational or educational periods at set times, and very long periods of time locked up in their cells staring at four walls.

They become very used to all this, life in an institution.....all initiative and sense of responsibility is gradually drained away from them, there nothing more than a number, literally.

In a way it's the same with hospitals, especially for people who are confined to a hospital for any long period of time.....a hospital is an institution, and so such patients also become "institutionalised" by the routine which has to be followed while they are patients remain there. A ward becomes their prison cell, in effect.>>

This is inhumane and even worse than death penalty.

[They're nothing more than a number, literally]

It seems unlikely.