Soul-crushing jobs...who's got one?

[JonT]

Saw this on Dilbert the other day. Thats me. Who else has one or had one and what did you do about it? Where are you today? Need some motivation...

[coloradoporsche]

My job is alright. But thought you would enjoy some quotes from Office Space....

Peter Gibbons: So I was sitting in my cubicle today, and I realized, ever since I started working, every single day of my life has been worse than the day before it. So that means that every single day that you see me, that's on the worst day of my life.
Dr. Swanson: What about today? Is today the worst day of your life?
Peter Gibbons: Yeah.
Dr. Swanson: Wow, that's messed up.

[Aerkuld]

Whenever I read Dilbert I swear Scott Adams works in our office!

We had one of the page-a-day Dilbert desk calanders and it was worth reading it when you got into work everyday as 'Dilbert world' virtually predicted what would happen in our office with disturbing accuracy.

[masraum]

Had a couple. I went to college just out of HS. Didn't really know what/why I wanted to do, but thought it was the thing to do. Good at math and science, so figured I'd get a BS in EE, but college is lots of work that I wasn't willing to commit to so I eventually dropped out.

I then got a job close to the next thing that I was good at, cars, so I went to work at a retail auto parts store. I quickly worked my way up to manager of one of those stores. That's a soul crushing job. The managers schedule was 55 hrs/week, but they expected you to put in more than that. Pay was $21k per year in the early 90's that with bonuses got me up to $26k per year for 60-70 hrs a week occasionally 80-90 hrs a week. Not really much potential to move up unless I was willing to keep that pace up for that pay or was willing to relocate and again keep that pace up for pretty much the same pay or was willing to kill enough people that they'd have to promote me. I knew it was a bad deal, but didn't know what to do about it.

Then I met my wife who lived half the US away, so I moved from FL to TX. She knew some folks, so I ended up bartending. Much better than retail, but it eventually gets to you too. I eventually started buying books at Barnes & Noble and started studying and got a foot in the door doing IT work. And now here I am today, making a decent living and enjoying my job (Network engineer (Cisco, VoIP, Satellite, etc....). It may not be making me rich, and it may not be what every little boy dreams of, but it's pretty good.

[Hugh R]

Not me. Some times I get bored with my job, but most of the time its pretty cool. I used to have one of those jobs, but not now.

[Moneyguy1]

If your job crushes you, at least have an avocation that is fulfilling. I worked in research when I first started up; first at GM, then for an aerospace company working on NASA funded projects. Great while it lasted, but periodic layoffs due to cancellations made it less than perfect with a house and two little ones. Back to school. Got Masters in Business, began doing consulting in financial and management analysis. Much better. Took a LONG time to find the right niche. Still like engineering, though, and have a workshop for creating little things and learning how stuff works.

[cantdrv55]

I was once the field service manager for a third party service organization repairing/maintaining MRI machines nationwide. We charged $100K/yr for the service yet we had very few spare parts. When we weren't preforming scheduled maintenance, we were reverse engineering circuit boards, assemblies, etc. Mind-numbing work for low pay and long hours.

The owners were crooks masquerading as religious people. Our business cards had scripture on them and they ended just about every phone call to clients with "bless you". They wanted me to make all the engineers work 6 days/wk, 12 hours per day. Plus, when traveling, our meal allowance was only $17/day regardless of location!

I endured it for 1.5 years just to have "Field Service Manager" on my resume.

[alf]

First job when i turned 16 was cleaning the meat market every night at the local store, after which i rode my bike home 5 miles up hill in the cold dark night. $3.50 and hour. Kept fit though.

[tabs]

I like my job, this is me hard at work........

[Purrybonker]

My job absolutely sucks soul. It's amongst the worst iterations of capitalism - where every issue and every thing, including people must be monetized to be given any gravity. But it pays far too well.

Corporate finance. Money changers.

But, like a crack addict, they got me by the financial shortones.
I want to be a better person, I really do....

But hugely in the money stock options with annual vesting milestones kill even my moral purity. Just try to take the highground with 7 figure incremental paydays. You feel like you'd be cheating your family by walking from the next tranche, even while you can't sleep from all the distastefullness, crap and stress.

Ok, ok, just one more vesting period and I'm outta there, honest.

[Aurel]

My job would not be definded as soul crushing on the paper: research professor, with complete freedom of researching anything I want. Sounds pretty cool huh? The catch is that there is no salary coming with that job. I am responsible for finding that too. This is the part that crushes my soul with stress. First I need to compete to get grants, then I need to execute the research, being my own tech, then report on the research while preparing the next grant. The goal is to grow this thing enough so that I can get help paying students doing the actual work. Nobody to report to else than an accountant who tells me if there is enough money left to pay my salary on the account. I am meeting with investors next week. Hope it goes well. If not, I may seriously look for a more stable job (if such thing still exists). It is great to be an entrepreneur and do your own thing, but it is also very lonely and stressful. It may not be the right thing for me. Sure I am not flipping burgers and make a very good living, but I am not too happy at it.

Aurel

[jluetjen]

It's funny, I had a great job, that turned into a soul-crushing job (at least for me). I was a factory sales and marketing guy for backplanes, a fairly ho-hum component. But I was selling to a great industry -- Aerospace. I had a couple of "defense" accounts, but really I was selling into missle warning satellite programs. Otherwise it was all of the commercial avionics accounts like Honeywell, Allied (now owner of Honeywell), Smiths, Rockwell, Boeing. Got to work with great people contributing to products that made people's lives better. Even got to be on TV talking about our products when they went up in the Space Shuttle.

Then my business was sold from a Technology driven company to a Financially driven company. The whole world changed, nothing was as fun any more. I was so frustrated that I just quit a few months after the sale. It helps to have a wife with a good income, and to not be too hung up on income and material things. We cut a few corners for about 9 months, took a cheaper vacation close to home and I found a new job working from home as a salesman in the Semiconductor industry. Once again working great people, it's still a technologically driven industry even though it has matured. The pay's OK, but lots of people make more then me. Oh well. I'm enjoying myself and still making a good income.

There is hope. You just have to make up your mind to do something about it.

[svandamme]

i'm near burn out...moved to a country i don't like to do a job i did used to like, beat every record in the stats, dealt with more crap then anyone else, 5 years of beeing understaffed and me taking several ones a day for the team... it's got me beat... everything hurts and my brain is mush...

the managers don't have a friggin clue, upper management keeps stacking up screwup after screwup
reduced the company to less then half ,and we need to keep putting out the same amount of work.. for the same salary(unlike the bigshots who keep stacking up big cash and leaving payment)


if all goes well, my targa will be sold by monday evening, and i'll be planning my stylish exit from this ****hole...

in the end, i've been the idiot..
i was thinking that people would appreciate things, quit naive , you get a new manager , and you can start over scoring points... Dilbert is right...

[lendaddy]

You guys still have souls to crush? Must be nice.

[scottmandue]

Life is too short and you spend too much time at work to be miserable there... start an exit plan, start sending out resumes - you might be happier doing the same job for someone else, if there is something else you would rather do get some training and change careers.


I worked for the family business (air conditioning contractor) it was hard work but paid well and kept me in good shape. I hated it and was drinking beer and smoking pot from the moment I woke up to the second I laid my head down. I went back to school, got a two year electronic tech certificate, bounced around to different computer tech jobs for a few years, then landed a sweet job with the state of Calif.

Len, your the boss man aren't you? Of course you have no soul!

[sammyg2]

I had one of those jobs for two years.
After 6 months there I started dropping hints and putting out feelers throughout the industry that I might be interested in something else, most good jobs are word of mouth anyway.
About a year ago, my dream job called me. Literally. They called me and we started negotiations.

[lendaddy]

Originally posted by scottmandue


Len, your the boss man aren't you? Of course you have no soul!

This goes without saying

But seriously I was lamenting the other day that our business is about 30 years old and we had some good stretches in there. You know, where a new line makes great money or you expand to a new building, or hire a dozen people, buy a couple new trucks, or whatever. You know though....things go well.

I have NEVER known that, not from this side of the office door anyway. I came in office about the time the industry got ugly (coincidence???).

I really want to know the elation of success, I can imagine it....

I know we can turn it around, I'm just getting really sick of this **** (not just sorta tired of it, I mean downright pissed, we work too damn hard and are too good at what we do for things to be like this).

[cowtown]

I had one soul-crushing job in the past. Recruited out of b-school to work as a marketing manager at "the" major CPU manufacturer. I spent 6 months working 60 hours per week, with progressively higher blood pressure, stomach pains, and a generally growing hatred of anything and anyone related to the company. It wasn't the job description, it was the idiotic "me-first" culture and carefully nurtured yet totally unnecessary aggressiveness they instill in all the employees. It felt like going in to work as a cage-match contestant every day.

I quit with nothing lined up (burning bridges in spectacular fashion, as well). Landed on my feet a few months later (at 65% of the pay. Oh well.). Best business decision I ever made (though I had my doubts at the time).

[IROC]

All things considered, I love my job. In fact, I think I'm overpaid sometimes... I get to work on neat things (state of the art space hardware and DoD weapons systems) and get to work with some really sharp folks.

Mike

[azasadny]

I love my job, but the work environment is like the Titanic right now. I feel like I'm living in the last days of Hitler's bunker and I'm waiting for my cyanide capsule. BTW, I work for Ford Motor Co in their WHQ in Dearborn, MI as an IT auditor... not a good place to be right now...