I Hate My Job!

You may sit in an office for eight hours a day–air conditioning, coffee always at the ready, birthdays once a week, therefore cake once a week—with coworkers who are generally decent people, but are slightly annoying due to the frequency in which they take personal phone calls, blow their nose, or click their mouse. You may stare into the glaring computer screen in your office, the lumbar support in your chair digging into your lower back for those eight hours and think, “I hate my job.” Well, you can do that. You can sit there among the industrial hums, clicks, and buzzes, and think, “I hate my job,” but I can assure you, there are worse things to do in the world.

“I hate my job” is a strong phrase. When you say, “I hate my job,” do you really mean that you hate the people? Hate the hours? The office? The location? Your boss? The pay? The lack of benefits or vacation time? These are important questions to ask.

While you may feel bored and unchallenged at your job, watching Youtube videos all day and updating your Facebook status to let your friends know about the reoccurring boredom, then at least acknowledge the fact that you have a computer and free internet. Think about the Stock Assessment Technician that is working all day for The Fisheries Service of the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, counting fish for a living wage. With each fin and scaly tail that swims by through that transparent window, they are surely thinking, “I hate my job.” Think about the guy hauling the massive coil of tube to empty the infinite row of Porta Potties at the end of a three-day, chili cook-off. Remember the meter readers, constantly berated by those that have been unfortunate enough to come across their car as it was being ticketed for being two minutes over the limit. Remember the lumberjack with one hand, the sewer cleaner with a permanent odor, and the homeless man at the intersection with a sign that should probably read, “I hate my job.”

“I hate my job” is something we might all say at some point, but do we really mean it? We may say “I hate my job,” but only mean it at that particular moment, that moment when you go the break room and see that your sandwich is missing from the refrigerator for the third time that week, that moment when the copier jams right when you need it most, that moment when your boss tells you to come in early Saturday morning to finish a statistical analysis of third quarter sales figures, that same Saturday morning that you had promised to bring the snack for your kid’s Tee Ball game. While the thought of “I hate my job” might cross our minds more than once a week, it is more likely that we only hate our jobs some of the time, in the heat of the moment of an unfortunate task or assignment.

Take the mosquito researcher. This person has to literally offer themselves up as live bait to swarms of bloodthirsty, potentially malaria-infected, massive mosquitoes. This is a career choice when one might be genuinely entitled to say, “I hate my job.” With each fresh bite, with the formation of each red welt, and with the hours of restless nights, scratching your legs to pieces, an “I hate my job” is surely warranted.

Take the guard at Buckingham Palace. While you rhythmically grind and gyrate your body on his, pose for silly pictures, and whisper obscenities in his ear, he simply must stand there and take it. Even though he might not make a move or a peep, he could surely be thinking, “I hate my job.”

Take the person who must remove road kill off of the road. While it might have been you to clip the squirrel or careen into the possum with the front end of your SUV, it is the Road Kill Remover who must get out there in the sizzling summer heat, smelling scents that make eyes water, scraping off fur and carcass, all the while thinking, “I hate my job.”

Whether you are a telemarketer on the wrong end of a frustrated and obscenity-stricken rant, a roughnecker with oil and grime stained skin, an Alaskan Crab Fisherman with saltwater in your hair and an angry crab hanging off the cuff of your pants, a coal miner with the lungs of an asthmatic octogenarian, or a mercenary who has just been captured by the enemy, you can all share in the simple phrase, “I hate my job.”.