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Why Hating Your Shitty Job Only Makes It Worse

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Re: Why Hating Your Shitty Job Only Makes It Worse

#2
There should be a disclaimer here that, if you are involved with a shitty job that involves customer service, hating it and not doing a good job will almost certainly make it worse, because most people actually like being helpful. Helping someone out and noticeably making their day better is one of the most surefire ways to make yourself feel better, even if you currently have a job you absolutely detest.

Unfortunately, there are also a lot of jobs that really suck where you have absolutely no interaction with any customers or anyone whom you are indirectly helping. In this case, how much better you feel after doing your job properly depends largely on how shitty the job is. If your manager takes all the credit for everything you do, because, well, it's a shitty job, then doing your job well really won't make anything better at all.

Of course, in all cases, you should be trying to find a job that isn't shitty so you can stop hating 40 hours of your week. Maybe not your dream job, but at least one you don't absolutely hate.

Re: Why Hating Your Shitty Job Only Makes It Worse

#5
post #4

This might be a bit petty, but I find the frequent bold-text rather visually unpleasant and distracting.

No, it's not petty. I found I almost had a headache by the time I finished the article. If the blog makes money from those sponsor links on the side, I think she'll profit a lot more without the frequent boldface.

Re: Why Hating Your Shitty Job Only Makes It Worse

#7
My view is that if you focus on the things you like in your job, they become resources that you can build on. Not necessarily for a promotion in the job; not even in order to enjoy that job, but as building blocks of what is meaningful to you. A resource; an asset.

There was a conversation on reddit about this, with people expressing hopelessness about bad jobs - even saying that to find any worth in them was pathetic. This onion story was brought up, with people agreeing with it: http://www.theonion.com/articles/man-ashamed-of-own-joy-upon... I really think the attitude in that story, of hopelessness, is a terrible approach, and that the problem with it is it sees that world as fixed, with no unknowns, no progress or change possible, that everything you see is everything there is - that what you see of the world is the world.

I think it's simply mistaken; in reality, we see only a tiny part of the world, and all else - good, bad, neutral - is unknown to us. Looking out for and noticing what is good in ones opinion is a resource one can build on; a stepping stone to other things that are good. Often, things that did not exist in our world-view previously.

Re: Why Hating Your Shitty Job Only Makes It Worse

#10
tl;dr - "when life gives you lemons, make lemonade!"

I disagree with just about everything in that article and my rejoinder would be "when life gives you lemons, realize that you don't have to accept them. then go and plant a tree for something you prefer and years from now you will be having mangoes, or whatever it is you really wanted."

In answer to the question "What’s the greatest lesson that you learned from a job that you hate?" it's that working in a job for someone else is the least productive utilization of my time, skill and energy.

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