I Hate my Job

[MatusowIsBald]

[ QUOTE ]
Hi All,

I want to get some of my thoughts out there for you intelligent 2+2ers to critique. And I do respect a great amount of posters on here so I look forward to your comments.

The deal is - I hate my job. I hate it so much and I think about how much I hate it everyday. I hate it because I don't care about the work that I am doing. I work for a marketing agency that sells poison to the public. I work with people who would sell their soul for a promotion and I believe would even market Crack-Coccaine if they were asked to. I am an entry level employee, I am disrespected everyday and it effects my after work life. I think about how unhappy I am with my job ALL the time.

I am getting paid 42K Canadian per year before taxes (my girlfriend is a first year teacher with 45K/year). I have been playing poker for a few years but didn't start studying the game and taking it seriously until I placed my Super Bowl winnings on a PokerRoom site (I had played online before but I was a fish). I have built this $200 into about 7K in the past 7 months. I started at .50-1.00 limit hold em and am currently at $3-$6.

I hate my job. It obviously effects my performance as I usually am not willing to go the extra step to impress the boss. I arrive at 9am, leave at 5pm. They will never fire me as you have to be borderline retarded / dangerous to be fired from this place. If I were to stay till 7pm every night I would probably get a promotion within 3 months and add 5k to my annual salary.

This strikes my as a -EV situation. The money I would make with a promotion dwarfs that of poker. So what do I do? - continue to plod along at the 9-5 job and chase my bankroll dream at night? It just makes me so sad to bite the "so called" 9-5 bullet as a cog in this machine.

Even if I do get a promotion I would never be able to stay in this industry for years to come. I need to get out.

I'm dizzy with confusion.

Any advice about any of this would be appreciated.

thank you friends.

[/ QUOTE ]

I know exactly where you're coming from. I've had jobs I hated so much that I felt like I wanted to cry when I woke up in the morning and knew I had to go to work. I guess the questions I would ask you are:

1) Is there another job within that industry you could see yourself doing? I'm not saying with the same company, but maybe another job in that industry with another company? I started out in the mortgage industry doing, in my opinion, one of the worst jobs in the world. I made lateral moves for a couple of years and am now doing something in the same industry that I absolutely love.

2) If there is something you would love to do but would have to go to back to school or get some kind of further training to do, are you in a place financially where you could do that? Do you have money saved up? If you do, that is HUGE. That would allow you the time to explore something you think you would really enjoy.

3) How long can you hold out before leaving? I'm not trying to sound facetious, but can you make it another two weeks so you can get a good reference from this company? It sounds like they like you, so even if you end up doing something completely different at your next job it would be nice to have another good reference on your resume.

The last thing I will say is that it sounds like you need to get out as soon as you can. Even if you WERE making great money there it's not worth the emotional distress. So many people stay at jobs they hate for years and years. I've never understood that. Do what makes you happy in life. I think you will be ECSTATIC once you're no longer working there. Best of luck to you...