Do you love your job?

In My Humble Opinion
21

I don’t really like my job, but I don’t mind where I work. Three years ago, I took a temporary position as an accounting/data entry assistant. I also answered the phones and handled the mail. They hired me on full-time. Since it’s the only “real office job” experience that I have, I took another job in the same type of position in a different business sector this year (from industrial general contractor to residential property management).

It’s not fulfilling or interesting or scintillating, and I feel like I’m really stuck in it. I don’t have a college degree, and, like I said, it’s my only office job experience. It’s always boring and bland.

If I had financial independence, I’d do community theater (I’m such a ham, and I love working backstage to) or work with animals, preferrably horses (their poop doesn’t stink like dog poop does). Or something involving education, though not necessarily traditional teaching.

So, here I am, unfulfilled and stuck in a dead-end job at 25. sigh This sucks.

22

I like what I do, a lot. I’d never say I love it because, well, l love ACBG and cute furry animals. I work with people with disabilities and really enjoy it even though my job is now 99% administrative. Well, somebody’s gotta do that stuff. I still have contact with the people we serve which is a must for me. They are the reason I’m here so, I do see my work as a calling. I taught school for a year and a half right out of undergrad and decided that, even though I liked the kids, I could not spend 40 years of my life as a teacher. I started doing the kind of work I do now and here I am 28 years later still liking it. Since I have to work, I’m glad it’s something I like doing and coming in for everyday.

If I didn’t have to work, I’d like to do some direct support for the people we serve. It doesn’t pay as much as what I make now (waaay less) but if I didn’t need the money, that’s what I’d like to do, probably as a fill-in or on a part-time basis.

23

I basically have the same type of job as Shagnasty (we actually worked together many years ago so you can thank/blame him for exposing you to me :smiley: ).

I both enjoy and hate my work. It can be interesting but it generally deteriorates into jumping through a lot of hoops at odd hours to complete relatively mundane and tedious tasks. As luck would have it, I tend to join consulting firms about 18 months before they collapse spectacularly. In fact, among my friends it has pretty much become a running joke for the past 5 years or so.

Every year or so I join a consulting firm. It can be a Big-4, a dot-com startup, small private firm or large public company. Doesn’t matter.

My coworkers are usually a fun group of “not fat or ugly” single 20-30 somethings who drink excessively and have a bit of a “used to be kind of dorky in college but are making up for it now” vibe about them. I enjoy their company, but as I like to joke, they all have a twin in every other consulting firm. If I left, I would just meet another dozen people at my next job exactly like them.

Management spends a lot of time gushing about 20% annual growth and how the firm will be bigger than whoever or will become the McKinsey of whatever.

Withing the first couple months, some event happens that fundamentally changes the company - a merger, the World Trade Center falls on the office, company goes in some new direction, whatever.

People start getting progressively unhappier - constant complaining, too much time unstaffed, work becomes mundane or tedious, layoffs, no bonus or promotions this year, etc.

People start leaving in droves for better offers and a new batch of identical people come in. The “old guys” who left keep in touch for about a year.

Within 18 months, there are either massive layoffs or I get so fed up I quit and start the cycle over again.

I’ve been at my current position 14 months.

24

I abolutely love my job. I get to meet hundreds or thousands of new people every year–I work very personally with my clients so we tend to develop a personal relationship as well. I learn new things every day. The money is good, all our three offices in Reykjavik are within a 5 minute walk from my apartment, I show up and leave when it suits me and all my co-workers are absolute equals… Og, I love my job. I also get to travel (east coast America is next up) for free pretty much when I want to but I’m afraid of flying so I don’t use it an awful lot. Also, I’m monstously good at what I do, so there’s never a crisis of any sort.

Come to think of it, I’ve never really had a job I hated; I always say it’s all about perception and perception is a function of the mind. If you want to like your job, you can.

25

It’s hard to say. I don’t do anything all that special, but what I DO do, is very much appreciated by my management. I make good money, I enjoy the people I work with, the stuff I do certainly ain’t “hard” by ANY stretch of the imagination, I have a lot of leeway with my hours and tasks, I have benefits up the ass - would I prefer staying at home watching mindless TV and drinking beer? HELL YES. :smiley:

So I don’t know - DO I love it? Hard to say.

26

Not today, I don’t.

27

More than I love taffy.

28

I’m a software developer. When I was studying to enter this field 17 years ago, I used to joke that my ambition was to find “a job that I can stand.” My previous 14 years of work experience had not been very pleasant or rewarding. Well, I succeeded. Actually, I exceeded my modest goal. I can stand it, I like it most of the time, and it pays fairly well. I can’t say that I love it. If I didn’t have to work, I would play guitar more, read more, build more things, learn to play some more instruments, spend more time in wilderness areas, spend more time trying to do something useful for the poor, learn another language. Maybe I should start buying lottery tickets.

29

Thank you all for the wonderful, thoughtful responses. : )

30

It’s just a job. My job is a direct result of the first job I was able to get when I moved to the Shining Metropolis many years ago. It’s unrelated to anything I studied or prepared for. I was hired to do data entry, turned into “the computer guy” because no one else would do it, and have been working in IT ever since.

I didn’t think it was important to love my job. I was wrong. I didn’t know how much my job would take over the rest of my life.

I am absolutely positive I’d be happier doing something else, although I am also positive I would be very unhappy doing what I trained for. The longer I do the kind of work I do, the crummier it gets. IT - at least, support-oriented IT - has become just another Mr. Fix-It type of work. I feel like a plumber, only I move bits instead of water. My “clients” do not regard me as a skilled professional with something to offer, but rather as a useful idiot who can be called to serve up instant fixes on demand.

If I found out tomorrow that I didn’t have to work for a living, I’d learn horseshoeing (to keep my body busy and satisfy my horse habit without owning more of the creatures) and lay in supplies to expand my fiber business (to keep the creative impulse satisfied).

31

Most of the time I don’t like my job. There are times when I’m on the coast collecting data or working on a construction project that I love it, but these are few and far between and most of the time I feel as though the computer I sit behind all day is sucking the life out of me. If things are particularly slow, I find myself daydreaming that the building will catch on fire so I can go home (either that or I receive a work related injury, like my chair breaks, I fall over and knock myself out).

I thought of doing construction full time but I’d be away from home too much and construction isn’t a pregnancy friendly job.

I didn’t intentionally go to school for this but found myself side tracked from my original goal because I had too much pride to quit engineering when I found it wouldn’t provide me with the opportunities I was seeking. That and I already owed too much money.

If I didn’t have any college debt, I would have quit last September and returned to school (to teach). Now I’m 17 days away from having my 4 years of engineering experience for the Professional Engineers’ license and my husband is trying to convince me to take the exam this October, just in case. We’ll see…

For now, I try and look at it as a paycheck. Something to do for now until I can go back to school; some days are easier than others (today is not one of those days).

32

My job is just a job. I don’t really like it and at times I absolutely hate it. I can’t wait to move on to full time college and get a degree in what I really want to do. :slight_smile:

33

Imagine how I feel! I went to B-school to get out of computers. Now the only jobs I can find are in IT related consulting. 90% of “business consulting” has become the business of selling and supporting the systems that makes business run.

34

My Job is my life. It is far from ‘just a job’. But I wouldn’t go as far as to say it’s a calling.

There other things I’d like to be doing… but they are things I would need skills for, which I don’t currently have. I’d like to be doing something psychology related.

Recent events considered… I have a week off beginning in two days… I am not looking forward to it. I will not know what to do with myself. My work is where I shine. My life happens at work. The people I love (and the person I love) are at work.

Having said that I have a chance to sort out some things I’ve been neglecting because of what’s being going on at work.

Recent events aside… If I didn’t have to work at all I’d probably over-indulge on alcohol and die in a few years.

35

Got you beat. I hate mine 100% of the time. The only redemming quality is that I can surf the boards at work sometimes.

36

Oh, I also wanted to add, I can’t imagine there are very many jobs I would enjoy. I mean…why would I want to work, when I can not work?

A few exceptions might be if I could do something like write, or act. But then, acting someitmes requires getting up at, like, 5 AM and acting till 2 AM…I like sleep. And writers have deadlines…I suck at those.

37

I don’t know.

Will Ferguson wrote a good book, Hitching Rides with Buddha. He says how Westerners “lovehate” Japan, its schizophrenic society makes them want to “leavestay”.

I “lovehate” my job as an emergency doctor. It’s not just a job. I often do make a difference. Sometimes I’m devastated when I can’t make a difference. My job makes me cry, but after the problem has been dealt with. I can deal with a crisis with a degree of detachment that allows me to do my job in the first place. Some people appreciate what you do when you did nothing, some people appreciate nothing after you pull the proverbial rabbit out of your hat. It’s strange work, I enjoy it immensely and it takes up too much of my life. It robs me of time. Some parts of the work are very difficult – from managing expectations, soul-crushing bureaucracy and far too much time on the phone.

I find people in society are under immense pressure to say “I love my job” or “I hate to work”. I like to work. I “lovehate” my job. Who said life was simple? A “good job” pays well, is interestingtedious and requires sacrifices you don’t always want to make.

:dubious:

38

Would have liked my job if the department wasn’t so disorganized. It’s an island of crap in a sea of tranquility. All the result of a single person. Fortunately the company was bought out and will shut down in 6 months. Woo Hoo. Seriously Woo Hoo.

39

See, I would find that horribly depressing. I like my coworkers and all, but I need to have some kind of life and friends outside of work. All too often, socializing with with coworkers just turns into griping about work. Being too close to coworkers creates conflicts of interest. I want to work in a place where I’m evaluated on my performance, not on how good of a drinking buddy I am with the boss.

Basically I like knowing that when I leave a company, my entire life won’t evaporate.

40

Well, I guess I have two jobs. Most of the time I’m a SAHM, and I like that a lot. But I’ll talk about my career choice; I’m a librarian.

Yep, I love being a librarian. It’s great. I enjoy working at the library when I can. However, public library work is not all a field of roses, and to illustrate this point I will tell you what happened to me at work yesterday morning, which is really why I’m posting here because I’ve been dying to.

I was helping a woman look up some things, and she was clearly not the most stable person in the world, but she was reasonable enough and I was able to help her out. Then I printed out some resources for her, and she paid me with a handful of change from her pocket. And there, among the dimes and quarters, was a maggot. Yes, a real live maggot there in my hand in the library, and it meant that this woman had maggots in her clothing (though she didn’t smell, really). So I dropped the money on the desk, got a Kleenex and disposed of it, and shoved the change into the box.

So, I love being a librarian, but if you’re going into public work, you should probably be pretty unfazeable. Because any librarian you meet will have stories at least as interesting as that one, which is relatively mild except that it’s so gross.

And I also love being a SAHM. But that’s another thread.