ihatemyjob

Here I am writing a blog about what to do if you hate your job, and while I’m writing this, the United States is shedding jobs faster this than my Alaskan Malamute blows his coat in the spring. In October alone we lost 250,000 jobs here, pushing the unemployment rate to 6.5%, the highest in 14 years.

And, by all accounts that’s only the start of it.

So far this year the U.S. has lost 1.2 million jobs. So, if you are reading this blog because you hate your job, the good news is, you may well lose it any day here.

The bad news is, you may well lose your job any day here.

Before I started blogging here I was working the call center of a huge retail bank. It was my seventh year working in a call center, but only my second year with the bank. Before the bank job, I spent five years in the call center of a multinational insurance company, answering questions about property & casualty insurance and adding new cars to auto policies.

People do not tend to call their bank or insurance company to tell them how much they appreciate the great services they provide. No one navigates an eight tier phone menu and then sits on hold for four to ten minutes just to tell a cubicle dweller how much that person is appreciated and respected. Instead, most of these folks are really angry about something when they pick up the phone and even angrier when they finally get to a customer service representative.

So call center work is basically angry call after angry call, and many of the callers are angry about things that a $10/hr CSR can’t fix or isn’t allowed to fix.

Over the seven years I spent in these places, I was told again and again, “At least you have a job.” I was told this by supervisors, coworkers, family, friends, strangers, check-out clerks at the supermarket… Name a person, any person, and that person probably told me at least once, “At least you have a job.”

I have to be honest here:

If all of those call center jobs disappeared tomorrow, I would not be sad.

Raise your hand if you love call centers.

Anyone? Anybody? No?

I didn’t think so.

Let’s get real for a minute here. Most corporate customer service jobs exist for the sole purpose of shielding upper management from the consequences of their bad decisions. Corporate CSRs are human shields that protect CEOs from the wrath of enraged customers–people who thought they were purchasing a product or a service, only to discover they were just being given an opportunity to give their hard-earned money to obscenely wealthy people in exchange for aggravation, inconvenience, and disrespect.

So when my corporate customer service job became just another one of those 250,000 in October, I didn’t cry. Instead, I danced a little happy dance and then went out and found myself something less stressful to do for a teeny weeny bi-weekly paycheck.

Back at the farm here, I’m writing, writing, writing, because that’s what does it for me. That’s the work I really love.

My point is that sometimes catastrophe is a blessing in disguise.

In Hindu mythology, the gods and goddesses of creation have both loving and destructive faces, just like creation itself. The old must be torn down before the new can grow and flower.

Right now, we are witnessing the destructive part of the cycle, and it is indeed terrifying at times. But I have no doubt that something better will replace the old. At least in my own life, it is already happening.

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