Not to be That Guy, but I like my job. I have been there long enough to be the go-to guy for lots of the systems, and I start an interesting-looking new project Tuesday.
My last job I lasted sixteen years and got told I did a good job, or Thank You, approximately twice. I switched to my current job. About three months in, my wife said “you know, you are a lot easier to live with since you changed jobs”, so apparently it sucked worse than I realized.
I can’t complain, although I do - I am currently on call, and it gives me a chance to gripe about how everyone else is doing things wrong and not following thru. And I even can get things changed. One of the advantages of being an old curmudgeon is that people get nervous when I growl. I did it in a meeting a couple of weeks back, and my goodness, has the subject of the growl cleaned up his act and started hitting his deadlines.
I like my job. Right now there’s not enough work, so it’s on the boring side, but the actual work is satisfying. I have a new boss who’s easy-going, but she doesn’t understand enough about what I do to want my help, and a new uber-boss who is the same. With my old boss and uber-boss, we’d troubleshot, with me through out different data sets to help ID problems. Now they ask for data after they’re already working on problems.
Still, although I could be paid more, I’m making more now than at any other time in my life. I get 31 days of paid time off and work from home about half the time. If I have to work, these are all good things.
The job I have right now is objectively speaking the best I’ve ever had - it pays decently, allows me to work from home, features good bosses and nice coworkers, and isn’t too stressful.
But it is simply something I do to pay the bills; there isn’t really, any thrill or enjoyment out of it exactly. Using the “lottery jackpot test” - if I won a sufficiently-sized jackpot in the lottery, I’d quit this job at once. No hard feelings whatsoever, but I would have better things to be doing.
I am guessing that at least 95% of jobs in society fit that jackpot-test criteria.
I like being an ER nurse because Tuesday is always different than Monday, I make a decent buck, and every so often I get to pull a kid out of an open grave, which is pretty fuckin’ cool.
Having said that, some days truly suck.