The 8 Biggest Signs You Hate Your Job

Congratulations your hired! Your first day on the new gig is always full of excitement and anticipation. You arrive early to make that great impression and you’ve met your boss, colleagues and  everyone seems relatively nice and professional. After making rounds and introductions, you’re led to your new work station. Sure it’s not much, but you’ve seen worse, so you’re cool. But that doesn’t matter, because you’re energetic and motivated to prove your worth and demonstrate to everyone what you’re made of.

While getting settled into your new digs and acquainted with your new colleagues, you get the scoop from the ‘office gossiper’ on who in the office to avoid and watch out for. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’ve heard it all before and pay it no mind because, quite frankly, you didn’t come for the nonsense. You’re focused and determined not to allow anything to discourage your flow. You have arrived wide-eyed and bushy tailed to earn your keeps, kick a$$ and take names.

Eight months down the road, shyt done changed. The office gossiper turned out to be the one you should have been watching out for all along and your boss doesn’t value your insight, yet takes credit for it behind your back. You’re overworked and underpaid. Your wide bright eyes have dulled to a faint glow and your motivation has turned into despair as you abhor your job and everyone associated with it.

Show of hands if you can relate! I’ve been there. Some of you reading this are probably experiencing some variant of this now. But alas, as with anything in life, you have to take the good with the bad and work is no exception. Here are some other signs your job has become the bane of your existence.

You simply stop giving a sh*t

Your general disposition in the workplace has become one of indifference and apathy for any and all things work related. Deadlines no longer mean a got damn thing to you. Your lunch breaks become lunch voyages. When you show up to work on time, everyone in the office thinks you’re early. As far as you’re concerned, everyone at the office can take their TPS Reports dipped in hot pepper sauce and shove it.

You walk around the office with the “Stay the phuck out of my way” expression on your face most of the day, and you spend just as much time away from your desk as you are sitting at it.

You begin speaking to your boss ‘like a boss’

There’s a general respect we give to our superiors and its conveyed in the way we communicate with them. Professionally courteous with respect to his/her position. Welp….not anymore. What was once, “Good morning Jamie, how are you doing this morning? I’ll have those reports to you by noon.”  has now become, “Sup Jaimster! Man, I don’t know about you but I sure as hell didn’t feel like coming into this hell hole today. Definitely not in the mood to deal with the client’s bullshit at all. What an a$$hole huh? Anyway, listen, about those reports that are due today…does Friday around 5pm work instead?”  

You’re responsible for 65% of the internet usage

For each screen of actual work you have open on your computer, there is a disproportionate number of websites open. On a good day, you have at a minimum 19 websites up and all of them strategically placed at the edges of your monitor for easy access and quick minimization should anyone approach your desk unexpectedly. You’ve managed to nail it down to a science and your mouse clicking finger couldn’t be any quicker.  Besides, you’re not stealthy because you’re afraid of getting caught online, but rather that its none of anyone’s business what the hell you enjoy viewing.

Faux work replaces real work

Nothing says you hate your job more than doing imaginary work. You’ve had that same spreadsheet up for days. You know, the very same spreadsheet from a project you completed 2 months prior (They always come in handy, don’t they?). Not to mention the random miscellaneous pieces of paper you’ve strategically scattered around your desk to appear ‘knee deep in it’. Nothing says swamped like a desk full of papers you arbitrarily shuffle from time to time to signal ‘completion’. No imaginary work is complete without the occasional ‘grunts of  disappointment’ as you buckle under the stresses and frustrations of your demanding ‘work’.

You hate everyone that walks by

You find yourself becoming increasingly annoyed when you’re busy browsing the internet on company time and people decide to just casually stroll by your cubicle in droves. Of all 300 cubicle isles to walk down, they choose yours as the main access point. All of a sudden your desk becomes a high foot traffic area. Why is that?

Underachievement is your new status quo

You show up to the office everyday with zero intention of doing any task beyond your basic duties. Volunteering for special projects has become a thing of the past.  In fact, you feel the company should be grateful to you for doing any work at all, much less the bare minimum. You’ve already come to terms that if it isn’t in your job description, it’s not your problem.  And you no longer hesitate to remind anyone who dares request services of you outside of said job description that, “It’s not my job”.

How do you know your job description so well? Because you’ve already printed out a copy of it from the HR section of your company’s intranet site in order to update your resume of course.  And you wouldn’t truly hate your job if you didn’t update your resume on company time.

Your only joy are the weekends

But then Sunday comes along and treats you like a ‘trick’ by sucking the joy right out of you. Sunday has become that b*tch Kendrick Lamar was asking not to kill his vibe. Yeah you get to sleep in, but it just isn’t quite the same as Saturday. Its like you can feel the cloud of work looming overhead preventing you from truly relaxing and enjoy Sunday for all its worth.

Daydreaming becomes your favorite past time

You find yourself fantasizing about how to get away with beating the sh*t out of one of your supervisors and/or running them over in your car.

Alright folks of OM…Those are just a few signs you hate your job. There are countless others, but I want to give you the floor.   Pull from your own experiences and share. What are other signs you hate your job?

01/15/19 Post title updated. Original title, “You Can’t Fire Me, I Quit!! 8 Signs You Hate Your Job”