One of the biggest problems with being in your younger twenties is most of the jobs we will get are nowhere close to being a dream job. I lucked out – I absolutely loved my first job out of college. Granted, the position consisted of going to bars and buying beers for consumers, but it blossomed nicely into event planning and marketing within the company. As I’ve posted before though, it was not my passion and eventually I burned out – leading me to search for the elusive dream job once again.
Here is a short list of some of the un-dream job situations my friends currently have:
Kay searched for three months before finding her current full time position. She does local marketing for a nation wide company and she is amazing at it. A bit of bragging here: her numbers are the best in the region! She really enjoys the marketing aspects of her position, but the daily frustrations from the company are becoming a bit too much for her. For example, the computer they gave her died and they promised her a new one. It’s been a few weeks now and she still doesn’t have it. Then they announced that they were reorganizing the entire company. Wonderful! What entry level employee doesn’t go numb and reach for the closest bottle of vodka when they get that news? She had to re-interview, but being that she is the best in the region, she was rehired and is currently learning her new position. Which is difficult seeing as they won’t have any training manuals until November, and she still does not have her own computer. And what about that raise she was promised last April? She did have the guts to ask about it when they got to the “compensation” part of her interview. (I was very impressed since most of us still cringe when it comes to telling perspective employers what our salary expectations are.) They told her they would look into it. In my opinion, asking her to reapply may not have been their brightest move since it forced her to update her resume…
Isabella works for a large pharmaceutical company doing basic lab work. She was very excited when she started there; it is a well-known company and she has the option to transfer to San Diego within a few years if she chooses. She jumped in with both feet, completely positive and willing to do whatever it takes. It’s been a year or so and the tides have turned. For one thing, her coworkers act as if they are in high school, forming cliques and gossiping non-stop. That situation, coupled with the fact that she has to perform some unsavory tasks involving animals (she loves all animals) has led her to begin a new job search. She thought it would be easy to work there for a couple years before asking for that location transfer - now she can barely stand the idea of staying another month.
Brie and Kate are both paralegals. They work for different firms in different cities. They also entered the position from different paths; Brie thought she wanted to be a lawyer and Kate thought it sounded interesting in school. Now they are both looking for a way out and jobs that are more than a paycheck. Brie is considering going back to school but isn’t quite sure what she wants to study. Kate has been talking about attending night school and thinks she would like to do something with numbers. She is the only person I know who actually has said the sentence, “I just really like math.” Both of these girls walked in to the first day on the job thinking, “This is what I want to do right now.” The job didn’t change, but they did.
We don’t just wake up one day as members of Happy Hour Anonymous, scanning craigslist posts with our computer screen tilted sideways. It is the gradual evolution of a twenty-something due to working extra hours for no extra money. Good thing for you, most everyone you know is in the same boat. A sense of camaraderie develops and the soothing mantra, “It’s just a bad day” is announced every day promptly at 6pm while searching for alcohol in your freezer. However, the day you tell your roommate, “I want – no I need - a new job,” is the day you can set yourself free. When you realize that the job you poured your blood, sweat and (literally) tears into, is not the job you thought it was – OR more likely - it was the job you thought it was, but now two years has passed and the thought of one more day sends you off to the nearest bar for a lunch break tequila shot – you can do something about your circumstances and find a company that makes you happy (and pays you for working weekends.) Until then, embrace Happy Hour. Odds are that somebody there had a bad day too.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time
-T.S. Eliot
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