Hating Your Job Isn't A Personality Trait. It's A Problem.
We've normalized the Sunday Scaries. Maybe it's time to stop.
Inna Kapturevska_Ua | Unsplash People complain about their jobs a lot, almost daily. We live in an economic system where money has become the main, if not only, source of survival, allowing us to pay for food, housing, clothing, and all the other necessities. But to have money, the majority of human beings need to work.
Unfortunately, we live in times in which we have normalized the concept of hating our jobs, not realizing how toxic that can be.
When someone mentions that they despise their job or gets off in a rant about how much they dislike it, it’s like an old story heard a million times. A bit annoying too, honestly.
My colleagues breathe in relief that it’s Friday, so no work on the weekend, and when it’s Monday, they complain because the work week has just started.
I’ve heard friends talk about their jobs as if they were going to face their death penalty. To be fair, I despise my job too.
I’m not saying that we should love every part of our workday — even our dream jobs have sides that we’d rather not do, but when the job becomes a mere chore that we want to just be done with for the day, finding it dull at best or tedious and stressful at worst, well, how are we supposed be mentally healthy?
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What worries me is that most of us wear this hate-your-job statement as a badge of honor.
And for those of us who do like our jobs, you’re not doing it right, or you’re not working; you’re just having a hobby.
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think that this is the reality for all of you — I’m sure that many of you who are reading this managed to find their dream job and, if not, are pursuing it.
But sadly, it is the reality for many of us, and it seems to only be getting worse. A global poll conducted by Gallup in 2019 says that only 15% of the world’s one billion full-time workers are satisfied with their jobs, meaning that 85% of people dislike their jobs.
Now, maybe these numbers have changed in the six years from that poll, but even if things might’ve shifted, I don’t think we are in a much better place. Why is this topic so urgent? Because we spend the majority of our waking hours at work.
The more prevalent reason for this career dissatisfaction is the mismatch between one’s passion or studying background and what they ended up doing in order to financially support themselves and their families.
Recently, my friends and I complained that none of us is doing the things we want to do and what we studied for. I have two degrees, one in Languages and Cultures and one in International Cooperation. But I’m working as a clerk in an insurance agency, copy-pasting emails and checking documents that all look the same.
I want to gauge my eyes out most of the time. I didn’t even know that such dull, alienating jobs existed.
No disrespect to those who do it and enjoy it, but really? My only saving grace is that I have a lot of hobbies and passions that I immediately turn to as soon as my shift ends, and future projects I am slowly but steadily planning out that give me hope and something to look forward to.
I know that this is not going to be my long-term spot; it’s just a temporary necessity that will help me save money for what I want to do.
This would be my invitation to all my fellow job-haters, big-dreamers, disillusioned but still hopeful humans: please, please, for the love of yourself, do not get stuck in something you hate.
If you have a dream, a big passion that you’ve always wanted to achieve, follow it. And if you don’t, if you still have no idea what your spark is but know that your current situation is making you depressed, then take a deep breath, pause, and find it in yourself.
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Everybody has a dream, no matter how small. Make lists, let your guts talk, be inspired. No matter how crazy it sounds. You want to be an alpaca trainer? There’s a place for it. You want to paint but have never done a course or school? Enroll in one and sell your paintings on Etsy.
You want to become a plant influencer? Go for it. I’ve read about all sorts of weird and absurd jobs, and I think the term “impossible” in this case is inadequate.
I understand that it’s not easy; there are many obstacles, especially because so few of us have the privileges needed to reach certain goals. Some of us live in places where the job markets we aspire to are oversaturated or paid poorly, or don’t even exist, or are only available to those who “know someone who knows someone.”
But we are lucky to live in a world that is highly connected. We have planes and trains to move from one point to another, we have the internet, we have social media, we have all sorts of resources that allow us to go beyond our little backyard.
We aren’t doomed to become like the Italian poet Leopardi, who couldn’t see past “the solitary hill and hedge, preventing him from seeing most of the endless horizon.”
Life is too short to spend the majority of our time at a job we utterly loathe.
And besides, whatever our parents taught us, that with a degree in a practical job we’ll be granted financial security and retirement, is non-existent today.
The kind of world and economy they grew up in is no more; they took all the safety nets from us. We might as well follow our dreams and try to be happy on our terms.
Maja Urukalo Franov is a Croatian-born writer & poet based in Italy, and a disability rights advocate. Some of her poems have been published across various literary magazines, like ARTEMISPoetry, SHIFT: A Journal of Literary Oddities, and Wishbone Words, among others. She recently published her first collection of poems, Ink & Blood & Nicotine.
