To think most people don't do jobs they love?

[LardLizard]

I'm sure thousands do but I'm talkingmost people

Ahh, Anatidae, your situation and attitude sound similar to mine.

I do remind myself often that I'm very lucky in what I have.

I love my job and occasionally post about particularly good days on Facebook, if I've been working with something particularly beautiful or special that I think people might like to see. People often say 'wow, your job is amazing, you're so lucky', which I do think I am. But I would hope that those people have enough common sense to realise that I still have bad days, my colleagues still drive me mad on a regular basis, and my salary is an absolute joke.

I have genuinely hated a job in the past though and that was very different to just feeling a bit frustrated. Sunday nights felt like the world was about to end and I cried pretty much every day when I got home from work. Very glad I got out of that one!

I can genuinely say I do now but it's taken me until mid 40's to get there! Self employed and doing what I love, wish I'd been brave enough to do it 20 years ago.

Brilliant article Anatidae! I work with a couple of these Gen Y people and we came to the conclusion they were deluded too.

Agree with @Anatidae's link. I watched several young people in my life be taught by their schools that all they had to do was pass a few GCSEs and then skip out into the world where they'd land an amazing job with incredible perks and pay, and life would be rosy.

So to actually find that actually they'd have to put in a slog at McDonalds et al, and do some fairly low level jobs first was quite a surprise to most of them and they were not prepared for it.

It feels like they were set up a bit.

I've worked in a pretty wide range of jobs and the conclusions I've come to are:

Any job can be enjoyable (even wiping adults' bums - a job I have done) if it 1) seems like something that actually needs to be done (and those adults definitely needed to have their bums wiped) 2) it garners at least some respect from somebody (even if that somebody is just you) 3) the pay is good enough that you can afford at least some things that aren't basic 4) at least some of the people you work with are people you like and respect 5) you are never made to do anything in your job that seems pointless or goes against your own values 6)You at some point feel a sense of achievement, of a job well done and a goal reached 7) you have enough work to keep you genuinely busy, but not so much that you feel you can never get it done.

I do think it's possible for most people to find a job they really enjoy or even love, but there are two related issues standing in the way of that. 1) the definition of a 'good' job tends to be so narrowly defined and 2) too many people work in jobs that don't suit them and therefore end up making other people's lives miserable by being useless, grumpy, needlessly micromanaging, lazy, unreliable etc etc. In most jobs I've had that have been shit it's been almost entirely down to the other people, people who shouldn't have been in the roles that they had and who as a result made everyone else's life harder.

If you're not sure what job suits you then you have to sit down and be honest about what you really like (forgetting all notions of prestige, pay, what's expected of you etc) and have some imagination about what job might fit with that. If you're doing a job where you feel you're actually making some progress, have some skill and are being challenged (no matter what that job is - it could be painting lines on roads or quality control in a chewing gum factory) you will enjoy it.

To add: when you do find what you like, you then have to start at the very bottom and work up. That's the hard bit. But if it's something you enjoy it won't be too hard.

That article was excellent and made SO much sense!
Yes, I used to work with a few of those GYPSYs as well - couldn't understand why they couldn't walk straight out of university into a job that paid what it had taken me 5 years to achieve (poor pay though in the NHS then - it's a bit better now).

And when you listen to all those "cutesy" videos of what children aspire to be now, it's so depressing! Far too many of them want to be "famous", "rich", "on tv" - without any idea of achieving anything of worth that could get them that. Because they don't need to, they just need to be accepted onto some well dodgy reality tv show and be the most shocking person on there to be noticed.
That's not going to instil a decent work ethic in them, is it :(