Feel free to ask Aunt Acid a variety of questions at [email protected]. Previous installments can be found here.
Hi Aunt Acid,
I need your advice please. I am 37 years old and am in my 8th office job. I’ve always left my jobs because I think the grass is greener on the other side. For me it gets to the point where I feel bad waking up every morning to go to work. There were only 2 jobs out of the 8 that I really liked a lot, and I had to leave both — one of them I left cause the place was not making money, we were even getting paid late, and the commute was 2 hrs at times. At the second job I loved, the plant closed, so they laid everyone off. All the other jobs I’ve left because of low pay, not challenging, not being acknowledged, and 1 boss from hell.
Tomorrow I’ll have been at my current job for 2 years. I love my boss and loved the first year working there, but then things changed. They hired more new people, including a coworker who wants to be a stand-out that I can’t stand. And then there are sales reps who don’t seem to like me because they say I’m not like my boss, who babies them and doesn’t question them.
I swore to myself I would stick it out at this job no matter what happened. But here I am again…thinking of looking for another job. I’m soooo tired of job hopping, but these awful feelings of not wanting to go to work and just obsessing over what to do at work are driving me crazy. Please help me! I like what I do, but the people there don’t mesh with me. I want to stop job hopping ’cause I do it every time something goes not as I envisioned. What can I do??? Your advice would be greatly appreciated.
–No more job hopping
Oh, my friend. The first thing you might want to do, besides take a deep breath and maybe a hit of something, is tell yourself that you are not alone. Not by a long stretch. Take it from the Gray Lady herself:
Even if you’re lucky enough to have a job, you’re probably not very excited to get to the office in the morning, you don’t feel much appreciated while you’re there, you find it difficult to get your most important work accomplished, amid all the distractions, and you don’t believe that what you’re doing makes much of a difference anyway.
Take it from Forbes:
Job hopping is the new normal … Ninety-one percent of Millennials (born between 1977-1997) expect to stay in a job for less than three years.
Take it from me: you are not alone. Nor are you a “GYPSY unicorn” because you want a job that feels somewhat fulfilling. You’re not even a millennial, damn it all. You’re a person who wants to work hard and have your virtue and effort rewarded with something other than a golf clap.
I was once like you. For a while, my employment track record looked like this:
+ Got a job, had to leave it after 10 months
+ Got another job, was let go after 6 months
Unemployed
+ Got another job, left it after 1.5 years
+ Got another job, was let go after 13 months
Unemployed
It was only once I found my fifth job that I found my groove. Five jobs in four years! Not counting internships! I felt like a failure. I was so sheepish about having accomplished so little that I skipped my college reunion. (Later, I skipped the next one, too, because I realized that not doing things you don’t want to do is the fastest, cheapest road to bliss.)
Job #5 stuck. Job #5 shaped me; in that office, at last, I developed not merely as an employee but as a human being. I honed important skills, got praised, got promoted, negotiated raises, saved money, contributed to my IRA, and felt like a semi-successful proto-adult. Job #5 prepared me for what to come.
It was an exercise in adjusting my perspective, though. Part of what made the match of Job #5-and-me successful was my ability to realign my priorities, to better understand what I could and could not expect from a job. For example, I could not expect a chummy workplace as seen on seasons 1-4 of The West Wing. However, I could expect a place that offered steady hours, a decent wage, and a minimum of high-pitched profane screaming. More on this below.*
Job #5 was also a hot air balloon I jumped out of right before it crashed. Job #5 no longer exists. But there is a Job #5 out there for you, my friend—or, as it would be in your case, a Job #9. Because it looks a bit depressing, numbered like that, let’s rebrand what we’re looking for: the Good Enough Job, or GEJ. And it is out there for you. The question is how to find it.
Sometimes what helps is having not merely a short term plan but a long-term one. What do you want, ideally, out of a job? What is it you’re good at? What have you liked doing in the past, at your previous paid gigs or volunteer ones? What makes your engine purr? How can you do that for money? Or, if that’s unlikely, because what you’re good at and passionate about is philosophy or philately, how can you get the kind of livable, paying gig that will allow you a maximum of time, funds, and energy for those pursuits?
There are different ways of going about this. One is to ask a mentor. I’ve never had a mentor; perhaps you’ve been luckier than I in this respect. But if you too have been deprived of the mentor experience, get creative. Ask a therapist, a life coach, a panel of sage friends, even a wise-beyond-her-years Kindergartener. Ask your grandma. Ask, “What do you think I’m good at? What am I letting hold me back? What would you do if you were me?”
Go in with your mouth closed and your ears and mind open, as though your writing were being workshopped at Iowa. As in a writing workshop, not everything you hear will be valuable. Still, all information is good information at this stage. Later, you can separate out the signal from the noise.
Then go somewhere quiet—the mountains, a bathtub, a library—and ask yourself the same set of questions: What do you need to give yourself permission to do? Earn money? Not earn money? Live to work? Work to live? Ask your inner child what she always wished you would do as a grown up. Ask your gut what she craves and fears. Ask your id, your superego, your shy, awkward, repressed tween. None of them gets to drive the car, ultimately, but they all have to ride in it. Every one of their opinions is worth hearing.
Now find patterns. The night sky is a graveyard, a battlefield of stars, but there are also constellations—stories—if you know how to look.
Start putting together a plan for how you can segue from the job you currently have to one that would please you more, one that will satisfy you in the long term. That might mean figuring out how to move, or how to apply to school, or both; that might mean selling a house, or buying a car, or going abroad. It might be as simple as angling for a new and different position in your current organization. Don’t overlook anything because it’s obvious. But don’t overlook anything because it’s impossible, either. Action is alchemy: it transforms the impossible into what’s done.
Before you implement your plan, run it by some of your trusted advisors. Consider their feedback and reassess, if necessary. Take the time that you need to make a plan you can trust. And don’t worry about getting it right immediately. Job #9 might be a bust too; it can be a bust and still represent progress. You’re aiming for significantly better here, not best, and not best, immediately, now. Change requires a nearly saintly combination of patience and diligence. But it’s worth it.
Success, as I mentioned earlier, also requires recalibration. Accept that, just as some romantics never find their “soul mates” (ugh), you may never find your ideal job. That’s okay. That’s normal. We Americans put way too much pressure on our jobs to define us, to provide us with identity, these sad, hyper-capitalist days. Remember, you’re not looking for perfection, just contentment. And I have every faith in you that, if you put in the effort, you can find it.
—
* Here is a list of what I have discovered you can and cannot expect from a gig:
CAN EXPECT: A reasonable level of physical and emotional safety.
CAN’T EXPECT: A place where you will never get hurt.
CAN EXPECT: Access to coffee and water.
CAN’T EXPECT: A fridge or a table at which staff can eat lunch.
CAN EXPECT: A bathroom.
CAN’T EXPECT: A bathroom where no coworker will audibly vomit or masturbate during the workday.
CAN EXPECT: A job good enough that you don’t have anxiety attacks on your way into the office.
CAN’T EXPECT: A job so good you would keep showing up even if you weren’t paid.
CAN EXPECT: At least one co-worker you like enough to eat lunch with sometimes.
CAN’T EXPECT: Co-workers you think are so great you go out regularly for happy hours and who you can call to bail you out if you get thrown in jail.
CAN EXPECT: To be treated with a reasonable amount of respect, assuming that you treat others—bosses and interns alike—with respect as well.
CAN’T EXPECT: Never to be asked, or instructed, to do something that is not in your job description.
CAN EXPECT: To feel bored, antsy, undervalued, lonely, and/or paranoid on occasion, no matter what.
CAN’T EXPECT: Anyone to treat you better than you are currently being treated unless you make it clear that better treatment is what you need and deserve.
***
Illustrator: Liana Finck’s work has appeared in The New Yorker, Lilith, Tablet, and The Forward. Her first graphic novel is called A Bintel Brief. Her webcomic, Diary of a Shadow, can be read on her website.
Tags: advice, aunt acid, jobs, work
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As someone who is slogging through issues with her own current employment right now, these reminders were incredibly helpful. Thank you.
I agree with EVERYTHING in this. I found my bliss seven years ago and joke that I’m like a badger in my den and will turn viscous if anyone attempts to get me to leave my current job before retirement. Before this one I had only stayed in jobs…two years at most.
The ONE thing I disagree with is that I feel you CAN expect to not have to listen to a coworker jerk it. I’d throw down with HR on that one.
Aw, don’t turn viscous! Go with the flow.
Blork, misspelling! Vicious, but your comment made my error way funnier!
As someone going through a painful career transition right now from something like philosophy to…who the fuck knows what???!! this is timely for me. Thank you.
Ugggh.
I am SO lucky that I have a job I thoroughly enjoy and generally look forward to. (Not always – that would be a miracle, no?) But it leaves me $400 after student loan bills, car insurance, &c. for housing/food. I keep thinking “I should look for a better paying job”, but I think about how soul-crushing it is to work a job I hate and would I rather be happy and broke (and living with my parents) or miserable and still potentially broke? (I work for the state, so I have really good benefits even if my base pay is shit, such as something like 3 weeks’ vacation + 3 weeks’ sick leave and good health insurance and retirement, and would making an additional $50/week but worse benefits be worth the switch? because most jobs I qualify for that pay more don’t pay that much more, and my job skills are basically “receptionist” (though tbh I am skilled in databases and am developing more skills by asking for work/learning opportunities outside my standard job description))
Anyway, this advice was great and I’m going to be keeping it in mind the next time I get frustrated with my tiny pay packet and look into changing things up.
It was a revelation to me when a friend described her salary negotiating process and made it clear that she assigned a financial value to things like vacation time. “My salary history shows [X], but with benefits it works out to [Y], so I’d reasonably expect to make [X + value of Y – price of new lousier benefits], or to discuss some alternate arrangement such as granting me more vacation time.” The framing is not aggressive or unpleasant, just, “Here’s what I know I’m worth.” If her number is outside their range, she’ll say something like, “I’m interested in this job for [whatever reasons], so I’d be willing to consider taking a small pay cut for [specified period of time] if it’s possible to get a written agreement about revisiting the number at that point.” Being very matter-of-fact about it helps keep it from being too anxious-making for either party, and practicing those dialogues with her has helped me in my own negotiations.
Wow, an extra $400?!
Sorry, everyone’s situation is different. I make about $400/month currently, that sounds super luxurious to me! You can afford coffee that you didn’t make yourself!
That’s how I feel! I’m actually not doing too bad, living with my parents and at a job I like with really good benefits.
But that $400 will be eaten by rent/utilities/other costs of having my own place instead of living with my parents. So right now, it’s like This Is Great! $400/month to put into savings or use for indulgent long weekends or whatever! but apartments in areas of town where I’d feel safe living alone? yeah, I’d need more than that $400/month. And I’m at the point in my life where I’d rather live with my parents and have that extra money than to have to deal with a roommate and not have extra money.
(Though, to be honest, I do give my parents money each month for household upkeep/groceries and every time we do house repairs I chip in or help, which isn’t factored into that $400-after-necessary-bills.)
So, do I stay here and live nicely or move out and be broke? do I get a new job that would allow me to NOT be broke if I moved out, or do the enjoyment of my job and benefits such as retirement and vacation weigh heavier than slightly more pay at a job without those benefits/enjoyment, especially when the slightly more pay might not keep me from being broke? (One of my student loans has a $0 monthly payment because I work for the state and earn so little. It’s $300 if I didn’t have that waiver!)
Oooh, you don’t live alone, that makes a huge difference.
I mean, I shouldn’t complain. I could work more and get more money, and my rent is absurdly cheap ($150/month!). I really really enjoy having extra time off, so I consider having my every-weekend-is-a-long-weekend lifestyle an acceptable trade for never having any money. All my friends do this, so I sort of forgot that people don’t work with the goal of breaking even every month.
Yeah, having a roommate would make things a lot easier on me! I hate sharing space with other people – right now my weekends are Sunday/Monday, so I usually get one day a week at home alone and it’s glorious. But when that doesn’t happen, I often spend entire days in bed just because I don’t want to have to talk to anyone else, and I did the same thing when I lived in a dorm and so on. :/
There’s a tiny possibility that my sister is buying a house with a garage apartment that she wants to rent to me, in which case my situation would be entirely improved. I’d be able to afford rent (she’d have me help with groundskeeping and dogsitting – and in the future, babysitting – in exchange for low rent) and would have my own space separate from my parents. Plus, my sister would have a tenant she’d know (she’s had a few housemates in the past that…ended up being awful?) and would get benefits of a family member living close by. I don’t want to be too hopeful, in case the house she’s looking at falls through, but wouldn’t it be grand?
I would be perfectly happy to break even each month instead of having a some extra left over, and this would make it that I could do that without having to change jobs or share my space. Gah, fingers crossed for me! 😉
Ooooh good luck! (Yeah, I don’t live alone either, but luckily my roommates are awesome AND we have a 4-bedroom house with 2 couples, so we have an extra living room and a workshop/coldroom instead of needing that space to pay rent – so yay for grumpy introverts)
The night sky is a graveyard, a battlefield of stars, but there are also constellations—stories—if you know how to look.
WOAH WOAH WOAH. Damn. That’s an excellent piece of writing/advice/poetry right there. I am stuck wondering a few things about my current employment, and I will sing this in my head today!
I’ve stuck with a job I like but that is no longer challenging me and pays me barely enough to stay afloat for far too long because I’m terrified of being in this exact situation.
help
I have found reading askamanager.org invaluable in getting to better.
I feel pretty lucky that I’ve never heard anyone vomiting or masturbating in the bathroom. At one job, there was a woman who refused to close the stall door when she used the toilet–I have no idea why.
CAN EXPECT: To feel bored, antsy, undervalued, lonely, and/or paranoid on occasion, no matter what.
CAN’T EXPECT: Anyone to treat you better than you are currently being treated unless you make it clear that better treatment is what you need and deserve.
YUP on this one. I tend to just take it and take it and take it and seethe with resentment until I just quit (leaving my employers baffled sometimes because they don’t know how much I hated my job since I’m usually fairly cheerful and professional). Yet after 1.5 years at my current job, I stood up for myself TWICE and both times, it worked! In fact, the first one was the most astonishing because my boss, a Man, genuinely had NO IDEA that what he was asking of my supervisor and I (we’re both women) was not feasible in the long term because we’re both good in a crisis!
I still figure as long as you are looking for a new job while you still have one, the market will tell you if you’re too much of a job-hopper. I mean, if the next place will still hire you for a job you want, aren’t you actually OK?
So, constant self-doubt and worries about one’s future stability and general existential panic are just normal parts of being a working adult, right? This article and all the comments so far are telling me yes. I ask because I just recently clawed my way out of minimum wage kitchen work into a customer support job I love with coworkers (and bosses!) I love at a successful startup that I can actually wholeheartedly get behind.
But I’m on a temporary freelance contract and I’m telecommuting from my parents’ house.
I want the real job! They’re non-maliciously dangling the Real Job and its Salary and its Benefits and its Relocation Allowance over my head and my contract is up in a month and I’m finally at a point in my life where I have some kind of direction and I still can’t stop worrying about my future. I’m good at what I do and I make myself useful and drop unsubtle hints about my viability as a long-term employee by taking on extra projects and I’ve even gotten to use the foreign language skills in which I ostensibly have a degree and everything is going SO WELL that I shouldn’t be worried, but I am. The self-doubt is eating me alive. I am definitely not cut out for freelancing. My health insurance expires in two months and I have congenital issues that require expensive annual tests (here, because of my avowed love of poop jokes, I will elaborate that they are colonoscopies, which are wonderful, ask me anything) and I need to replace my dying Volvo and I need to know that I can take care of myself in the long term.
If anyone can give me any kind of tough-love nugget right now I will treasure it forever and put it to good use.
The self-doubt is normal.
Have you spoken to your boss about the Real Job? Can you ask them for a decision timeline? I’m thinking something like “I really like working for Company, and I know that we’ve discussed the possibility of me staying permanently, which is my first choice. However, if that is not a possibility for Company, then I will need to pursue other options. Can you please tell me when a decision on that front will be made?”
Ooh, that’s beautiful. Thank you!
I’m also starting to realize that this is playing out very much like every serious romantic relationship I’ve ever had, although usually I’m the one in the position of power hearing the entreaties of would-be partners. Time to think like a man and practice tasteful groveling!
I think of jobs like romantic relationships too! And I used to feel disenchanted about romantic movies, thinking “This love story is so fake. There’s no guy like that.” Now, instead, I feel that way about bosses in TV and movies. “That workplace is so fake. There’s no boss like that.”
A month is a good amount of time to sit down with your manager and say, “hey, I love this job, what can I do to get Real Job here?” They should realise you’re worried, and if part of your worry is not wanting to leave the organisation, that’s a point in your favour as well.
I’m turning in a major project at the end of the day, and I’m thinking that would be an excellent time to prime my bosses for The Talk. Hopefully I can get an answer out of them by the end of the month!
I think everyone’s advice above is solid. If you are not already doing so, you might also start looking around. If you find another position, that makes it even easier to have “the talk.” And why not create options? To me, it always seems easier to find a job when I have one.
As someone who works on the finance advisory side with startups, I’ve seen startups be much more leery about Full Time Real Jobs than stable companies. A startup frequently doesn’t know where the paychecks are coming from week to week. Which of course they will never tell you! But they absolutely don’t.
Startups operate at a loss. For quarter upon quarter. It’s all “rah-rah we’re so fun and awesome, you love working for us because we’re so different!” It can be super energizing and exciting. And if you hit the jackpot and can buy in on some shares of stock as an employee before they go public, it can be phenomenal.
But the flip side is that startups run on a hand-to-mouth basis, they can be very cash poor, struggle with basic operating expenses, and consequently, will push harder to keep workers on contract or alternate arrangements as long as possible. Even if your bosses are awesome and want to do this thing for you, they may not be able to, due to the nature of startup finances.
But don’t let that stop you. Advocate for yourself. Fight for it. If your foreign languages degree is serving you in this job, that’s perfect. Keep doing what you’re doing. Keep wearing multiple hats. Keep cheering the cheers. Keep bringing the Real Job up. Don’t let it go. Startups respect tenacity and self-advocacy.
Just keep in mind working at startups are not like working at companies who are truly on their feet and making a real profit. I’ve seen too many of them pull in enough funding to make payroll 12 hours later, and tell no one about it.
I would just add that if it’s a startup, they may be reluctant to hire you because they don’t want to have to fire you in six months because they can’t afford your salary. So when you do talk to them, keep in mind that a “permanent” position may be a promise they can’t keep. Would you rather be on an explicitly temporary contract, or take a “pennant” job and then get laid off in six months?
Wait, who is dangling it over your head? Your parents, telling you to go find that Real Job? Or the current job that you’re doing as a freelancer? If the workplace is talking about it to you, that sounds fantastic! You should just ask them bluntly, “Is it possible for me to become a full-time employee once this contract is over?” Sounds like it would probably be a yes! I hope so.
Oh, never mind, I just saw the other comments and figured it out.
One thing that I have found helpful is to sit down and make a list of each job and what you liked and what you didn’t like about it. This can include both the actual work that you did, as well as the conditions that you did it in. Did you love the work but hate the hours? Love the commute but hate the people? Etc. Patterns will emerge about what kinds of work you like to do and what kind of conditions you prefer, which will then help you evaluate other potential jobs.
Also, I found that I had many jobs which I loved for about 6 months to a year, and then some time in the second year, I got bored. These were often positions that were a good match for my current skill set, but in which there was not a lot of possibility for growth or upward mobility (e.g. there are lots of people doing the job I did, but only 2-3 people supervising those folks). I have found that it is really important for me to work somewhere where there is the opportunity for growth and development and that the company believes in that. But you also have to stick around long enough to get promoted, and that can be hard and frustrating if your timeline for wanting new challenges doesn’t match up with your company’s promotion schedule.
I have the opposite problem: I’ve been at the same workplace for over twenty years, and I’m really starting to wonder if I can take it much longer. I’m afraid to walk away, because the benefits are great, but it’s really soul-draining to work two decades in a job you don’t love.
Ugh yes I needed to hear this! I just started what I had been super sure was going to be Amazing Job and Amazing Job has been turning into “wtf? . . . I mean seriously, wtf??” and pay is late and other people left so I’m doing their jobs instead of Job I Wanted to Do and am sort of half-looking for another position because I just don’t see this going where I wanted but I WAS SO SURE. And I’ve been whining and flailing about saying “but I WANTED the long-term job that I could settle into for years and years!” and I just needed to hear that job hopping is really okay.
God, do I feel this right now. I’ve done retail, medical records, and mail carrying. After being let go from the postal service I’ve genuinely had no idea what I want to do. I don’t have a degree, so I’ve thought of going back to school, but I’m not going to bother unless it’s something with a viable decently-paying career potential–I’m 35, and I don’t want to be paying student loans past retirement age. Sigh.
Don’t let it put you off. I’m pretty much in the same boat (just sort of floated around entry level and administration jobs my whole life). At 34 I had a relationship break up, my dog died and I moved states. I did a whooole bunch of soul-searching and decided to go back to school. I am now doing a biology degree and I LOVE IT. The years of methodical and process driven work I’ve done have served me well for science. I’m sure you’ve acquired a ton of skills in your old jobs that you can turn to your advantage in tertiary education. Don’t let fear hold you back. My mother basically said “You’re not getting any younger so either take the leap now and have a degree before you’re 40 or turn 40 anyway and still be in the same place you are right now” which kind of sealed the deal for me. I’m Australian so I don’t know what it’s like where you live, but a lot of universities have summer semesters so you can finish earlier. Good luck!
Might I suggest trade school? If you have a hands-on hobby, you could probably turn that into something decent with benefits within a few years. It’s def. not as expensive as university either. All my certifications put together cost roughly $12,000 and I just cobbled them together from working in warehouses and industrial shops.
Before you settle into resignation that things are going to suck, read The Spy Who Fired Me, a Harpers article about how computerized management and monitoring are making work worse: http://harpers.org/archive/2015/03/the-spy-who-fi…
And then consider how we might all be trying to do this differently, as a system. (Surely there’s someone working in HR who thinks we can’t keep going like this forever…)
It’s paywalled :/
Expectations vs reality with work is a really tough thing, because you want something where you fit in and enjoy yourself and a place where you can really grow, but there's just so much you don't know, when starting a job. I mean, you could have a great first six months and then six months in management changes and things start sucking, big time. I am currently in the career I want to be in (which in some ways makes it harder than before, because now this profession has kind of become part of my identity, and once you start thinking of yourself as X, your working life kind of narrows in ways that you don't really think about at the time), but while the job I'm currently in was good for when I was starting out, working here for the past couple of years has really taught me about what's important to me.
Like I (and I mentioned this in the open thread but I'm in a rambly mood) don't think I can work in an open plan office again. I feel like my nerves are amped up the entire day and by the end of it I have to go home and just numb out and try not to think mean thoughts about everyone I work with. It's hurt my social life because I feel like I have no bandwidth to actually meet new people; I don't have the patience because I use it all up trying to get through the day at work. But the thing is, I partly knew this about myself when I took this job, but I took it anyway because I had been looking for a while and this job is a particularly good foot-in-the-door position. And that choice had its benefits, but I am at the point now where I've squeezed what I can from it and the benefits no longer outweigh the negatives. And I think, particularly in this economy, that people just have to make more choices and compromises like this- and in general it will lead to more job hopping, I think.
Wow, an extra $400?!
Sorry, everyone's situation is different. I make about $400/month currently, that sounds super luxurious to me! You can afford coffee that you didn't make yourself!
Oooh, you don't live alone, that makes a huge difference.
I mean, I shouldn't complain. I could work more and get more money, and my rent is absurdly cheap ($150/month!). I really really enjoy having extra time off, so I consider having my every-weekend-is-a-long-weekend lifestyle an acceptable trade for never having any money. All my friends do this, so I sort of forgot that people don't work with the goal of breaking even every month.
Ooooh good luck! (Yeah, I don't live alone either, but luckily my roommates are awesome AND we have a 4-bedroom house with 2 couples, so we have an extra living room and a workshop/coldroom instead of needing that space to pay rent – so yay for grumpy introverts)
Might I suggest trade school? If you have a hands-on hobby, you could probably turn that into something decent with benefits within a few years. It's def. not as expensive as university either. All my certifications put together cost roughly $12,000 and I just cobbled them together from working in warehouses and industrial shops.
It's paywalled :/