Thursday, March 30, 2006

Work - Job - Career ...it's a love / hate kinda thing


I hate my job


Just for fun, I went to Google Blog Search and typed in, "I hate my job."

Holy cow - in 0.42 seconds, 18,966 results flashed before my eyes. Here's a few of the tidbits from the top o' the search:

I even learned that Amy hated her job so much that she hired a singing telegram (gorilla) to deliver her resignation. Her resignation song wasn't quite as good as my ol' Johnny Paycheck favorite, but it did git'r done.

I heart my job

I googled "I love my job," and came up with 1.5 million results. But they weren't nearly as fun to read. Except for a post on Dooce called, "I love my job." And, yes, the irony here is that the post is written by the famed blogger (Heather Armstrong) responsible for coining the phrase "dooced," after she was fired from her Web design job for writing about work and colleagues on her blog.

Hmmmmm.....let's see.....Heather loves her job because...well, maybe because she's self-employed and makin' cash off her blog advertisments!

70% of workers are disengaged

Heather is obviously not part of this crowd. Gallup Management Journal's semi-annual Employee Engagement Index discovered that over 70% of today’s workers are disengaged due largely to “negative workplace relationships.”

Translation:

Approximately one-quarter of the American workforce is simply
"showing up to collect a paycheck."

Thank you, Johnny Paycheck.

I can empathize. I have toiled in a job that I did not love. Haven't we all? But, as my poor wife can attest, I don't stay long in a poor-job-fit. It's just the way I'm wired. It's a good thing my name isn't Benjamin Harrison Smith. When Ben, my grandfather, was clocking 12-14 hour days in the tire factory, the work-world offered far fewer "choices." In fact, to that end, the hardest working man I ever knew clocked time in only two companies his entire life.

Thinking of my grandad makes me very thankful that I'm pounding away today on my ergonomically correct keyboard and working in a culture that values and rewards employee contribution.

It's much better than "collecting a paycheck."

And, I'm guessing I'll never have to hire a gorilla to belt out a few bars of "Take This Job and Shove It!"

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