Quote 7
"Oh God," he thought, "what a grueling job I've picked! […] I've got the torture of traveling, worrying about changing trains, eating miserable food at all hours, constantly seeing new faces, no relationships that last or get more intimate." (1.4)
The life of a traveling salesman should look awfully good to someone who just got turned into a vermin, but that's not the case for Gregor. Gregor views the transient life of a traveling salesman as, well, dehumanizing. It's an asocial and physically grueling lifestyle.
Quote 8
"A man might find for a moment that he was unable to work, but that's exactly the right time to remember his past accomplishments and to consider that later on, when the obstacle has been removed, he's bound to work all the harder and more efficiently […] the traveling salesman, who is out of the office practically the whole year round, can so easily become the victim of gossip, contingencies, and unfounded accusations, against which he's completely unable to defend himself." (1.27)
In his eagerness to defend himself to the office manager, who's waiting outside his bedroom door unaware of what's happened, Gregor rattles off a great little speech about hard work. The speech is quite ironic because 1) it's hard to imagine what lessons can be learned from overcoming vermin-hood, and 2) the rumors about Gregor's delinquency really can't compare to the fantastic reality of what's happened to him.