Things That Grind My Gears #1: Grinding!

Hello again, dear internet!

Today, I thought I'd start yet-another article type thing.
This one is about my gripes about games, gaming, and gamers.

The topic this time:
GRINDING!

To begin - I LOVE JRPGs. And dungeon crawlers. And pretty much any sort of video game that has RPG elements.

However, something that bothers me about most of those games is
HOW.
MUCH.
GRINDING.
THEY.
REQUIRE.

I recently bought Xenoblade Chronicles on my 3DS.
And made it through a good portion of the game without having to grind.

But then, around level 70, I encountered a boss at level 75.
For those of you that aren't aware of the math/combat of Xenoblade, that much of a level difference means I would hit that boss once in a blue moon.

Not hitting at reduced damage.
Just not hitting.

So, I decided to try to do some grinding to gain some levels and even the playing field.

It took me two weeks, gaming for about one hour for each of those days, to gain one level.

Suffice to say, I will not be completing Xenoblade.
I give up.
I refuse to invest that much of my time in just leveling up a couple of characters to advance a story that is fairly typical of the genre.

But why grind at all?

What drives game designers to continue to use this mechanism to "increase play time?"

Anyway, that's just my most recent complaint about this practice.
What sorts of experiences do you all have with grinding?
Do any of you enjoy it? Hate it as much as I do?

That's the end of that rant. Stay tuned for more fun sometime next week :)
Until then, may the dice (virtual or physical) fall in your favor!