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rgod -> RE: TELL ABOUT A JOB YOU HAVE HATED,WHY,HOW YOU GET OUT (7/18/2008 1:58:11 AM)
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I've had lots of jobs that I didn't like. I have had a lot of "jobs" actually - because I'd work for a single company but the nature of my work is that I complete a lot of short assignments (contracts). So generally, I stay with a company for a long time (usually 5 - 10 years). For most of my career I made decisions based on how much money I would make instead of whether God wanted me to be there. Subsequently, I hated a lot of my jobs and I definitely didn't like the types of topics I was writing about and the repetitive nature of my work - although I really loved writing. Now I'm on a different career path and I thank God. I've been seeking the Lord and He is leading me to work that is much more suited to my interests, personality, and talents.
Here are my top 5 bad jobs - in the almost 20 years that I've been working - in all of their glory.
1. I once worked at a popular discount shoe store where you "pay less for your shoes". I hated it from day one. I had a structured schedule, couldn't be creative, and spent the entire shift putting smelly shoes back on the shelf. And I had to work late at night. Because it was just a job to earn a little extra cash I was able to leave it after a few weeks. I decided that the aggravation was just not worth it.
2. While I was in college, I was a secretary for a man who was an alcoholic. He was a really nice sweet man - but it put me in the position of having to cover for him while he took long drink filled lunches at a local bar. That was very difficult - but it was something that I learned to handle with a simple "he is unavailable right now." But the hardest part was the assistant manager. The assistant manager would never look me (or any woman) in the eye. He would stare at our chests and legs - mostly our legs. He did this to all women unless they were senior to him (which few were at the time). At that time, the organization was battling sexual harassment - and many of the young secretaries had to deal with it. I caught wind that some of the men in the office would do things like ask us to get certain files from bottom drawers just so that they could look at us when we bent over. I stayed for about one year with him (I had already worked there for two years prior to that - but changed the organization and I got bumped up to a higher level). I wore a LOT of pants and moved all of my files to the top of the filing cabinet. Eventually I ended up transferring to another office in the same organization.
3. Earlier in my writing career I had to document software for a bank and the person I was working for hated everything I wrote. I wanted to write the document using simple language - because when people are reading documentation, the last thing they want to do is struggle to understand what they are reading. So the customer that I was working with redlined everything I did and changed it to exactly what she wanted. I had only been working as a writer for a year and a half, so I didn't know how to handle a situation like that. I don't have a problem with being corrected now, but then it stung and I tried harder. It was the one and only time I'd ever been dismissed from a position. Thankfully, no one blamed me for it because she had the reputation of being difficult to work with. So I was working on a new contract by that afternoon. In retrospect, I wouldn't have let it go on so long - I would have been a lot more proactive and would have requested to be either removed from the contract so that another writer could have a go at it - or I would have tried to have a much more specific and structured editing process to avoid this type of problem.
4. Later in my writing career I worked for a customer who was really nice to me when we were around people, but mean, lewd, and abusive when we were behind closed doors. (He'd make up acronyms that spelled out crude names for female body parts for example.) So I found many ways to deal with him that didn't involve being behind closed doors (email - only going to his office when others were around - talking to him after a meeting when people were still lingering - asking him questions when he walked by my desk). I loved my co-workers - they were great people and I liked the subject matter - as I've always been interested in biology. The last straw was when he got upset because I was working on another project - that he had directed me to work on. He wouldn't give me enough work so I would check in with him to ask for work - every day at first, then every few days, then every week to get work from him (all of us were underworked and my co-worker used to fall asleep because they'd give him nothing to do). Well, he got tired of me checking in with him, but for some reason - he wanted to keep me and my co-worker on the contract (he kept renewing my contract every few months for over two years), so about a year into this he told me to help out another research scientist with documenting his software. I was so glad to work that I wrote several thick manuals for the other guy - who was very sweet. However, I never put my customer's work last - he was always top priority - regardless of what I was doing. I had been communicating with him via email - giving him updates and progress reports - so I could document all of his instructions. Well, as time grew, the lewdness and meanness increased until one day he screamed at me in front of everyone over something trivial (I printed a page that had an ink smudge on it - I was getting ready to throw it away and find another printer - he grabbed as it was printing and started screaming at me). It was so irrational. I was so mad from that and all of the other things that had happened to me while I worked there that I left angry, went to bed angry, and woke up angry. Well, I'd had my limit. So I called my company pronto and I was out of there and into another position by the next week. If I had it to do over again, I would have addressed the lewdness from day one. (There is a way to do that without being rude). And I would not have stayed, even if he extended the contract. But the rest of the people were pretty cool and I did learn a lot.
5. I was hired to be a research assistant. But the woman who was running it was brutal. By the time I entered the picture, she had already run off several PhD students. No one warned me ahead of time and I only found out about it from others when it was too late. My advisor knew at the time and didn't say a word. It was so dysfunctional. The research manager would snipe at me in meetings - then my advisor would snipe at her grad assistant - who actually was doing an excellent job. I concentrated on holding my tongue, being professional, fulfilling requirements, and making it through the end of the assignment. The other PhD student who was working there was routinely depressed - I felt badly for him. I made it all the way to the end with no depression - but it hit me like a sledgehammer after I was done and I was depressed for several weeks afterwards. After that, I rejected all future offers for any type of grad school assistant from my advisor - I realized that he wasn't necessarily looking out for my best interests.
Well, now I just pray. I follow God in all things. Sure, there will be rocky experiences because that is life. But I handle things differently now. I don't just take the first job, but really think about how it will fit with me. And I also am much better at reading people. I don't waste a lot of energy trying to change other people and there are certain things that I will not accept (unless God tells me to).
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