It’s Okay to Hate Your Job…

I have come to a realization today and though I am sure I am not the first to come this realization it brings some comfort to me with a problem that has been troubling me for some time now…I HATE MY JOB, but I don’t consider it a bad thing.

Let’s be realistic there are very few people who actually LOVE their job(s) and in most cases we are all doing what we need to do to get by at the time. For a long time I have tried to figure out why it is that initially I don’t mind the job but with in a time I learn to hate it. Well, while lost in my own thoughts this morning I had an awakening…hating my jobs has been what has driven me my whole life. Yes the need to succeed obviously is built into this, but initially it is the hate of my jobs that has motivated me to want to do more and become more successful. So yes, I think it is okay to hate your job…so long as you use it as a motivator.

I forget sometimes how young I still am in my professional career but thinking over the jobs that I have had I am finally able to pick out good from every single job I have ever had. Each time I being to truly despise my current job I get motivated again and make a leap forward professionally and personally.

As an example here is my progress over the last 11 years:

1998 – I graduated high school and unlike a good part of my friends and current co-workers I did not go to college right away. I worked for the department store that I had all the way through high school. At this point most of my high school friends were gone and didn’t work there anymore so I began to hate the job. So we jump to a year later in 1999 and I enrolled in college.

1999-2001- I graduate with two Associate Degrees, but decide that is not enough and enroll in my Bachelor Degree program . Because I am financially strapped and would not have been able to afford the rest of my education otherwise I take a job as Resident Director and get my classes paid for by the school.

2001-2005 – I continue taking classes to complete the requirements for my degree and in 2003 I leave the Resident Director position, after it nearly killed me and drove me insane, and took a job in the school’s Financial Aid Department. Not a huge advancement, but it was a set-up. By the fall of 2005 I have learned to hate that job so much I leave the school when I am offered a job as a Financial Consultant, major step-up in the game.

2006- While working as a private Financial Aid Consultant I complete the requirements and graduate with my Bachelor Degree. A few months later work decreases and I am left unemployed for six months. Let me tell you how much I hated that job! It was at this time that I began looking at Master Degrees. Luckily by the fall I am employed again by my current employer.

2006-2008 – Spend time working at my current position and at first love the job, but towards the year and a half mark – I was really starting to hate it. Go figure- so what did I do? I went back to school of course! I am now three quarters of the way through my Masters Degree.

I guess the bigger point that I am trying to express here is that had I not hated my jobs, I quite possibly would have become complacent where I was and not amounted to much more than my store clerk days of high school. So my advice to all of you out there who hate your jobs to – keep hating your job…but don’t just hate it, let it motivate you to do something better for yourself and make your own successful path in this world. The moment you choose to become complacent in your situation….well, you will know if you're there and what comes next.

“We shall have no better conditions in the future if we are satisfied with all those which we have at present.” Thomas Edison on Complacency