“Oh, you hate your job? Why didn’t you say so? There’s a support group for that. It’s called everybody, and they meet at the bar.”
-Drew Carey
Admit it, one of your favorite things to say is “I hate my job.” It’s not that you want to hate it. You’d like nothing more than to have a job that you love. But your job just makes it impossible. And so you have to vent just to survive. When someone cuts you off in traffic, or they’re rude to you at a store, you feel a need to tell someone about it just to make yourself feel better and to get over the shock.
The same is true about your experience at work. The difference is, you have to keep going back to work day after day and subjecting yourself to the same horror. But you might not feel like you have a choice. Everyone around you seems to be having the same problem, so it begins to feel normal, even though it’s bad – really bad. In fact, you might feel like your job is killing you, and you might just be right.
Basically, if you’re like most people, you don’t like being at work, or you really don’t like being at work. If you love your job, you’re a rare exception. But why is this happening? Why does everyone seem to hate work? Are we all just lazy? No. There are other forces at play.
Here are 10 reasons why almost everyone you know hates their job:
You’re not allowed to be creative.
Your job has certain red tape and requirements that you must abide by. Sure, there are times when rules and standards work. But there are also times when new ways of thinking would improve things tremendously. The problem is at your job, no one seems to know the difference. You work with brainless drones who follow protocol even if it makes no sense.
No one listens to you.
You’re the first to admit that you’re not always right. But sometimes you actually are, and if anyone was listening they would know that. It would be nice if you weren’t invisible.
You don’t like the people.
You’re pretty easy to get along with. But the people you work with? It’s hard to know where they found them. Needless to say, your personalities just don’t fit, and you’d love to find a job with people who think more like you do.
You don’t like your boss.
You’re not sure how your boss got the job. Either she is the Devil that wears Prada, or she can’t make a decision to save the whole Titanic. Either way, you want to strangle her, but of course, you can’t (and avoid a homicide charge).
You find your work boring.
Wait, what? Oh, sorry, I fell asleep there. . .
Your schedule isn’t flexible.
Forget about your kid’s soccer games. You’d be lucky to get there if your kid was being born. Ok, maybe even your work isn’t that bad. (If it is email me and I’ll feel bad for you personally.) But seriously, did these people ever hear of work/life balance?
You don’t feel like you’re making much of a difference.
At the end of a long, hard workday, if you don’t feel like you cared about what you did. You probably leave wondering what the point is. It makes it hard to be motivated to get up and do it all over again.
It doesn’t tap into your real talents and who you are.
Do you ever get the feeling that you could dress a random stranger up like you and send them in to do your job and no one would notice? If you feel like you’re completely interchangeable, your job probably doesn’t connect with the parts of you that make you YOU. How great would it be to have a job that really needed you everyday?
It’s out of your comfort zone – in a bad way.
Remember going up in front of the class with that sick feeling in your stomach because you didn’t know the answers? If your job feels like that everyday, you probably hate it. You might have somehow found yourself in a job that you don’t feel prepared for or feel particularly good at. If you’re feeling like a fraud, it’s not because you’re not good at anything, it’s because this job isn’t right for you.
You don’t like the company or its policies.
Maybe you don’t like what your company stands for or how it does business. Maybe you’d feel more at home in a smaller company or a place that has more flexible or family-friendly policies. If your company’s values and your own don’t align, you might feel like you’re being forced to compromise yourself in ways that don’t sit right.
Do these resonate?
If you said yes to one or more then you’re not alone. And, that’s bad. That’s bad for you. But it’s also bad for all of us in terms of economic costs and lost productivity. But there is good news. Even though most people don’t like their jobs, you don’t have to be one of them. You might want to consider making a change. Now that you know 10 things that will make you hate your job with a passion, you can find a better job next time.
Know someone who hates their job?(I’m guessing you do.) Please share this post with them!
Featured photo credit: B_Me via pixabay.com
