Working a Job You Hate

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I worked in that trade, as a warehouse manager.

I absolutely hated it, but I was able to better orchestrate my team by actually being in the mud working with them sotospeak.

Delegation is finite as a manager, if you really want your team to perform well you've gotta bounce around them a little bit and help them with the tasks you've given them.

This works because of 2 reasons:

1.) It shows them that you're purely about the operation and actively trying not to be an arrogant jackass by the willingness to get your hands dirty. Plus, it allows for a little personal conversation, lets you connect with your staff on a more humane level. If you task someone with a difficult task and they're not in the right mental headspace to be able to handle that task well, the result is going to be compromised. So from the managerial perspective of trying to get something accomplished it's best to humble yourself as a manager and remember that your staff is human too and to help them to help reduce risk to that potential compromise. Example: If Armando normally lifts 100 cases a drinks on the average day, but on a spike is tasked with lifting 150 drinks, if he didn't sleep well, eat well, or if he's depressed or angry, that increases the likelihood of him accidentally injuring himself with the overflow or over-delegation.

2.) It actually helps offset any accidental over-delegation that can happen, and this is important because it's very often an accidental oversight on managements part that they overtask their staff. Popping back a few minutes after walking away to check up on everyone else and maybe help them as well if they need it, helps iron out that wrinkle of a situation. It's always a lot easier to say "go do it" than it is to ACTUALLY do the task, and if you've got a manager actually worth a ****, they will learn that.

MOST of what made me hate that trade was the high volume of mathematical focus for a wholesale distribution operation. No scanners, EVERYTHING had to be manually double or triple counted before the deliveries could leave on route the following day. Which is fine if it's only a page or two of line items, but when the entire route is bulked and compressed into 7 or 8 pages of product with high numbers per line item, okay then yeah, that's a lot of math, and a lot of physical labor, basically in the last 2 or 3 hours of an otherwise 9-hour day.

The money and labor aren't bad when you're young, but as you get older, yeah, it kinda weighs on you, and there's high rotation rate in that industry because the pay isn't enough to cover basic living expenses as well as potential medical or healthcare coverage for emergency trips to the hospital for whatever reason should a likely on-site injury happen. Or to put it simply: You can only marginally afford your groceries and bills, and if you break a bone or accidentally lacerate yourself with a straight razor because the locking mechanism failed while you were opening boxes, you're going to be out of work for a while, and if you're not out of work for a while than you're spending out the ass on bandages, braces, antibiotics, or any additional extra that you have to deal with.

I switched out about 6 or 7 years ago into retail due to nerve damage in my lower back from years of heavy lifting. It was the most transferrable relative. The pay isn't as much, but the environment is better, it's less strenuous on me physically, and I have a much better relationship with my manager as a manager at my current job than in my former warehouse jobs. So it is true what's said: People don't quit jobs, they quit managers.

My former manager was abusive as Hell to the entire staff. My current manager, not so much. She can be a hardass at times, but nowhere near like the guy I used to work for who was a total loose cannon.
 
I'm 40 years old and have been working in warehouses/factories since I left school at the age of 16. This is something I hate and purely do just to survive, because I don't have the skills and/or confidence to do anything else.

I've been at my current job since 2014, while I do prefer it to any other places I've worked, I still hate it.
One of my major gripes is the warehouse manager, she's one of these that absolutely loves her job and can't get her head around why everyone else doesn't love it as much as she does.

She's always asking me if I'm OK, and everytime she does I just think to myself "I'd be a lot better if you just left me to do what I'm paid to do."

I remember her once saying "There's no point being in a job if you're unhappy." What planet does she live on? There's millions of people worldwide who work jobs they can't stand just to pay the bills.

Can anyone relate?
Yes and no. I always made sure I got a good education and skills and qualifications and it took quite some doing, at one stage doing a full time job plus two or three part time jobs just to get by. But the result was that I did not have to do any job I did not want to do, I could be picky, and make sure it paid well and was interesting. Think about it like this. If everyone could have a great job that pays well and is fun easily nobody would bother to learn skills or get qualifications and lots of jobs would never have anyone apply for them. People do boring jobs and badly paid jobs because they don't rise above it to do something more fun and better paid. Because we get people who study and learn and pass exams and we gets others who cannot be bothered this is how the world works, the thing is spread out with some doing this and some doing that. If everyone was too lazy to get qualifications and exams there would be no scientists, no accountants, no lawyers, no doctors and where would that leave us?
 
I think there needs to be more, and better, aptitude testing in schools, so that people can have an easier time finding a career they can be successful in, that pays for a lifestyle they can at least tolerate/feel like they're getting something for their work, instead of feeling like you're just being drained of your time (and by extension, your life), or forced to throw your time away on something you're not interested in at all, don't enjoy at all, doesn't matter to you at all, and doesn't get you anywhere in life at all.

I also think more needs to be done to help people figure out who they are, what's important to them - not just in terms of what career you want and what kind of money/lifestyle you want, but what kind of person you are, and why, so that you can make more informed decisions about everything - so you can make sure the decisions you make line up with your personality, goals, values, and priorities. Obviously, no one can "find yourself" for you. But you can tell someone HOW they should be thinking, to figure it out themselves - what kinds of questions they should be asking themselves, to figure it out. You can't give someone the right answers, but you can give someone the right questions.

Just getting people through life to the age of 18, only teaching them academia and nothing about real life, and nothing about themselves, and then just saying "well, that's it, you're on your own!" and washing your hands of them, is a terrible system, and is long past due for an overhaul. We need to leave that 1800s-type mentality in the past where it belongs, and do more to help people find their niche in today's ever more specialized world.

I think we'd have less people working jobs they hated, if we did more to help people pick jobs that were aligned with at least one thing that was important to them, so they had at least one important reason to keep going. Compulsion isn't enough, that only breeds resentment and makes you feel like a prisoner or a slave. There has to be something higher than that, which appeals to you personally - something that advances you towards something that matters to you, instead of simply being forced to run in place.
 
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I work for money not enjoyment.
I can't really think of any jobs I would "enjoy"...maybe auditioning new girls for XXX movies? :devilish:

Haha...that's still some self-knowledge though.

You're getting at least one thing out of your job that steers you towards something you want (the money).

I thought I knew what I wanted when I was younger, but it changed, as my understanding of things changed, and as I changed myself.

Then it changed again. Now I'm somewhere in between.
 
I think a lot can relate. I quit mine. I dreaded showing up every single day that it drove me to not show up anymore, lol. But then I found a better and small company with nice people and enjoyed it.

But some days I do wish I could just be paid to live and not work lol....Yeah, we all work a job we hate just to pay our bills.
 

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