Loving the Job you Hate

The alarm rings. You open your eyes. You are in a happy haze until you realize it’s only Wednesday, and you have 3 more days in purgatory this week. You have to go to work. For whatever reason, you still work there. You make too much money to quit. You have been unable to find another job. Your spouse is currently unemployed, and yours is the only income. There are all kinds of reasons people stay in jobs they would rather leave. Whatever your reason, there is hope!

Think outside the box for a moment. The people who hired you wanted you because they thought you were the person they were looking for. Interviewing is stressful, and most people (on either side of the desk) are not very good at it. They were relieved to find you, and you were relieved to be offered the job. You accepted the offer because you thought it was the job you were looking for. You now realize that somebody goofed! There are any number of reasons for this disconnect. Only some of these are:

They didn’t know what they wanted. They hired you, but had no idea who they were looking for, or what you bring to the table.
You didn’t know what you wanted. You accepted the job because the pay was right and you thought it would work.
The performance expectations were never clearly established, so you don’t really know what you are supposed to be doing.
No one has any idea what your strengths and talents are, and you are frustrated because you aren’t doing what you do best.
You know what you are supposed to be doing, you are capable of doing it, and you stubbornly refuse to comply.

Well, there actually is hope here, except, of course for the last situation! Seriously, almost all the time, both parties (employee and manager) really want this to work. For some reason they are stuck, and it’s usually some variation of the first four reasons listed. So how do you fix this? The irony is that you already know. Communication. Please keep reading---I’m not kidding!

When employers offer jobs, they have a need. There simply are not companies which can hire extra, redundant employees on a whim in this economy and in this business climate. The employer genuinely needs help. They need work done. They need someone who can do that work. But let’s say they fall into the first category in our list. They didn’t know what they wanted. And as a result, you are misdirected, frustrated, underutilized, or wrongly utilized. What now?

Well, you’ve been there long enough to recognize the disconnect. Intuitively, it seems to be the company’s role to fix this! But it isn’t happening. You have the choice to remain where you are (unhappy). Or you have the choice to do something. What do you have to lose, frankly?

Go to Part 2: Loving the Job you Hate

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