Raise Your Hand if You Hate Your Job!

"Oh, oh, and I almost forgot. Ahh, I'm also gonna need you to go ahead and come in on Sunday, too... "

My awesome friend, Mr. Andrew Weitsman, had a nifty little idea a while back! Apparently he has so many bright ideas that there just aren’t enough hours in the day for him to write about them! So he has a plethora of blog posts just waiting to be used up. He gave said ideas away to those who were interested so, of course, I jumped at the chance to help these poor little orphaned posts out by giving them a home!

The following is one of Andrew’s blog post ideas. I have bolded his content so that there’s a distinction between his thoughts and my own input. I do hope you enjoy and check out Andrew’s blog sometime as well!

7 Tips & Tricks for Those Who Hate Their Jobs But Still Need to be Productive and/or Efficient & Have no Other Options

1. Create a fantasy role around your work day, such as “Ashley was trapped deep behind enemy lines, forced to collate copies and send the department head weekly updates, all while gathering the information that she could use to bring them down.”

Frankly, I don’t really know what to say about this one because my imagination is not nearly as active as Mr. Weitsman’s… A word to the wise, however: keep the “I’m going to bring this company down” thoughts to yourself, as that sort of chit chat, if overheard or read, can and will get you fired.

2. Invest yourself in your hobbies. As long as you can at least somewhat tolerate your work but are having a great time outside of it, you’ll be fine.

I like this one. A huge key to happiness is work/life balance. If you can leave your work at the office and come home to enjoy your family, friends, hobbies, etc. you will at least have something to look forward to while you tolerate your work day.

3. Look into a work-from-home option.  Refer to the book “The 4-hour Workweek” (or ask Andrew) for more info on this.

This would be awesome, right? Unfortunately, a lot of employers aren’t terribly keen on this idea for one reason or another. In many cases an employer gets burned by a past employee to whom they gave too much leeway and therefore developed an unwarranted distrust of all future employees. I personally haven’t read the book, but I may have to look into it…

4. Batch tasks.  Andrew wrote a post about this somewhere, but basically it’s doing all associated tasks at once (ie: checking email, making calls, filling out reports, etc).  It cuts down on frivolous time expenditures, which will let you leave work earlier.

This sounds like a no-brainer, but even the most dedicated employees need a reminder every once in a while. This is going to help you be so much more productive and minimize distractions. One thing that helps me is shutting down my Outlook except to check it once each hour (or at least turning off that little pop-up notification that is oh-so distracting!)

5. Integrate yourself with other departments on projects.  If you can distance yourself from those who are giving you grief and move more towards another area where you like the people and the work more, you might be able to get a transfer.

This brings up a good point. Do you hate your job or do you hate your coworkers? Remember, if you like your job but hate the people you work with, it is okay to focus more on work and less on personal interactions. You are there to do a job, not become best friends with your weirdo cube-mate.

6. Use some of those vacation days.  Sometimes, it’s a need to distance oneself from work over actually hating the job.  When you come back from a (hopefully) relaxing trip, if things still suck, maybe you should look into a career (or at least office) change.

Everyone deserves a vacation. Even if it’s just a “staycation” as I call it, aka using vacation time to just relax without ever leaving your city.

7. Look into your core competencies and interests and determine if you can start a personal side-business in your off time.  It’s easier than you’d think, and you can build personal income and business reputation while still pulling in the big bucks from your office job.

If you are serious about freelancing, I would like to recommend “My So-Called Freelance Life” or “The Anti 9-to-5 Guide” both by Michelle Goodman. The transition from a desk job to a freelance career will be much smoother with a little knowledge under your cap.

I would like to leave you with one parting thought: If your job is making you so miserable that you are taking a bad attitude home with you, making the people around you unhappy, losing the ability to function at work, having frequent work-related meltdowns, or if it is affecting your physical and/or mental health, GET OUT!

Take it from somebody who knows firsthand what a job like that can do to you. No job is worth your physical or mental well-being. You have options! Freelance, temp, work two part-time retail jobs, whatever it takes to get you out of that situation. Seriously.

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Dear Boomers: Please Retire. Love, Gen Y

 I came across this interesting  blog post the other day: 15 Reasons College Students Need to Invest in Their Careers. It got me thinking a lot about the plight of the entry-level professional. All of the statistics that J.T. O’Donnell talks about are really interesting, but the most fascinating one to me is this:

“70M+. The number of Baby Boomers (people in their 50s-60’s) in America who are ‘retirement-ready, but under-funded’ and thus will stay in the job market, holding back the entry of new grads to the workplace.”

The reason I find this noteworthy isn’t because I think it’s terribly shocking. It’s no secret that this recession has hit Boomers really hard. Their 401ks, which they have contributed to their entire working lives, are much lower than they had hoped they would be – no thanks to the stock market – thus forcing them to remain in the workforce beyond normal expectations.

The challenge this presents to the next generation of professionals is that with fewer people exiting the workforce, there are fewer positions opening up. The repercussions of which are seen in another statistic presented in J.T.’s post:

“25 years old. The average age before a college grad can finally afford to move out of their parent’s house and live on their own. (They are called Boomerang Kids and K.I.P.P.E.R.S – Kids In Parents Pockets Eating Retirement Savings.)”

Okay, let’s recap: recent grads are not finding jobs because their parents generation is retiring later in life but part of the reason the Boomers are retiring later is because they’ve lost part of their retirement savings and are still supporting their out of work kids… Sounds a bit cyclical, eh?

So what’s an economically unstable society to do? I certainly don’t know. I’m not an economist, nor can I predict the upcoming trends in employment. What I do know is that this is a VERY frustrating time for Millennials. It’s not easy swallowing your pride and moving back in with mom and dad, especially when you can’t, for the life of you, find a job.

Here are my words of encouragement, Gen Y: You’re not alone and the good news is that this won’t last forever. In the meantime, don’t give up the job search, no matter how disheartening it becomes, and take steps to improve your resume, even if it means working for free for a while because your situation can only improve from there, right?

And for the love of Pete, don’t blame your joblessness on your parents! (At least not while they’re still providing the food and shelter…)

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Subway Ruined My Sandwich. Or Why You Should Fire Worthless Employees…

So I went to Subway yesterday for a veggie sub. Relatively simple assembly, I’d say: bread, cheese, veggies and dressing…Pretty hard to screw that up, right? Wrong. Not only did the woman behind the counter mess up my sandwich, she was also rude, had abysmal communication skills, and actually checked her cell phone to see who was calling before she got around to ringing me up.

As I ate my self-doctored sandwich, after a disgusting mayo extraction that probably shed the fat equivalent of a Big Mac off my lunch, I came to the conclusion that the Subway employee didn’t deserve her job.

In the past year and a half, I’ve seen people very close to me lose their jobs, or even remain unemployed for months after graduation, all with their hopes of finding another opportunity soon dwindling each day. The more I think about how deserving these people are of a good job, the more frustrating it is to see people everywhere who do not deserve their jobs.

Maybe this Subway employee doesn’t realize how precious employment is right now, or maybe she doesn’t care. Who knows? What I do know is that in this economy, there are people who would kill to have a job and the Subway employee’s attitude is reflective of a huge problem in the workplace that most of us have experienced: people not pulling their weight and contributing to the overall goal of the company.

I’m not suggesting that my college educated friends and family start looking for jobs in the fast food industry. Rather employers across the board should take a close inventory of their employees to determine who really deserves to be employed. With only 45% of Americans reporting satisfaction with their jobs, there are bound to be plenty of people who aren’t doing their jobs to the best of their abilities due to said dissatisfaction.

This recession sucks. Mostly because the way I see it is that there are a lot of VERY worthy people out there looking for a good job, while people like the girl at Subway, or the co-worker who spends a good 3 ½ hours each day on personal phone calls and watching YouTube videos, are sitting pretty with their bi-weekly paychecks and complete disregard for the success of the company.

As an entry-level employee, I clearly have no control over who keeps their job or gets a new one, and frankly, probably shouldn’t even have an opinion about which of my coworkers really deserves to be there. And short of tattling on the incompetent Subway employee (not that I’ve completely ruled it out…), I really have no voice there either. So I’m counting on you, managers & executives. Do us all a favor and take a close look at those you employ because the chance that there is someone amazing just waiting for the chance to replace a less than stellar worker is pretty high.

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Reverse Ageism

We all know ageism is a sensitive subject in the workplace. When people get a little older, they sometimes get treated differently because they are viewed as out of touch or even incapable of performing their job functions the same way they used to. But it’s not just older generations who are getting discriminated against…It’s happening to the youngest generation of people in the office as well.

Entry-level employees are typically in their early twenties, and fresh out of college. Right now, that makes them proud members of Generation Y. Before I go on I would like to go ahead and get some of the stereotypes attached to our generation out of the way:

1. We are entitled. We feel like we are getting shafted if our fist job offer doesn’t come with a corner office and a huge signing bonus.
2. We need you to tell us how amazing we are. We grew up getting a trophy for winning first place as well as for coming in last. We got an “A” for effort so we need positive reinforcement regardless of what we produce.
3. We are lazy and disloyal. We want to work 8:01-4:59 every day. Not a second more. We demand that our social life not be interrupted by our jobs. After all, it’s just a job, not a career, because we plan on finding another one in a few years anyway!

With this list in mind, it is easy for people to dismiss our generation both as employees and as coworkers. These stereotypes, which may or may not be true for some people, often prevent people from seeing the enormous value we can bring to the companies we work for. I know that I’ve experienced this firsthand and I have a feeling I’m not alone…

So what does reverse ageism look like? Well that is probably different for everyone, but for me it typically involves being the catch-all for everything technology related yet being overlooked when it comes to other aspects of my job. You see, another stereotype of our generation is that we know a lot about technology…and that one is pretty universally true. We grew up with computers, iPods, text messaging and the internet. We don’t use the instruction manuals on our new electronics. We turn them on and teach ourselves. So when our employer switches our e-mail system to Outlook, or purchases a new web-based database to track customers, we adapt. And quicker than our older coworkers, it seems.

Because of this uncanny ability to learn new technologies, we are often taken advantage of. We are the first (and sometimes only) people to learn how to do something so we are forever the “experts” on the subject. Don’t get me wrong, I’m happy to help. I will even teach someone how to do something if they are willing to learn. What I won’t do is their job for them every time they need to utilize this new technology but don’t know how. All too often our generation is expected to do this because we are the resident “technology gurus,” but when it comes to other areas of expertise, we are dismissed as young, naïve, or inexperienced.

You know something else our generation is known for? Multi-tasking. We can write a report for our boss, text our friend about happy hour and read a blog post about utilizing social media to help the company we work for improve their online presence all at the same time. The information that we are all bombarded with every day is sometimes overwhelming for older generations, but we’re used to it and we are able to absorb a lot of it.

What this means for our employers is that we are willing to learn a lot to get ahead. Our consumption of information did not stop in college and it isn’t likely to slow down anytime soon. We want to contribute and be an integral part of an organization but for this to happen, we must first be taken seriously.

So all we ask for is a little bit of credit every now and then! While we are doing everyone else’s jobs as they come to grasps with new technology, we are also learning everything we can about being successful professionals. We are using our technology savvy to connect with people across the world who can teach us more about being the best we can be. Please look past all the negative stereotypes of our generation because if you do, and allow us to become contributing members of your team, most of us won’t disappoint …In fact, you may even be a little impressed with what we bring to the table!

Have you experienced any reverse ageism in your workplace? If so, what does it look like for you?