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Should I stay or should I go?

  • How to decide if I should stick it out at my boring, unfulfilling job, or if I should leave? I've worked at a city government job now for two years. It pays pretty decently compared to other opportunities I've seen, and I get PTO and paid holidays as a part-time employee. I also like that it's only part time, as I like having the rest of the time to work on a freelance business I've had for a while. However, there have been a lot of changes lately, and I'm feeling extremely bored and unfulfilled. I keep browsing job postings to see if there's anything I might like to do instead. Sometimes I feel miserable and think that I could do much better, but other times I wonder if I'm whining over nothing and should just stick it out. For the first 1.5 years, it the environment was different. My boss/head of the organization was very temperamental. Everyone walked on eggshells around him, he'd frequently go off on people for ridiculous things and liked to micromanage, and then other times he'd be very friendly. You never knew what you would get when you would walk into the office, and his previous assistant used to change the background on her computer screen to a different color depending on his mood to subtly warn people about whether it was "safe" to go talk to him or not. The rest of the office all kind of bonded over how terrible he could be sometimes, but no one would stand up to him so it could be quite miserable going to work depending on the day. There were times I went out to my car at lunch and cried because of the stress. But I liked that he tried to keep my work varied and interesting, and didn't want me working on menial, repetitive tasks. I was always doing something different - sometimes it would be organizing the storage closet, other times it would be following other employees to get a feel of what they did day-to-day, or helping take pictures for our publications. He tried to keep me out of the paperwork jungle of one department that is constantly buried in paperwork, because he knew I could put my talent to better use. Then he retired, and there's been quite a change with the new boss. She's implemented things like employee of the month, a new mission statement, restructuring of the different departments, and has just made the office seem more of a friendly place. At first I appreciated the changes to the office culture, and loved not having to go to work with fear of getting yelled at each day, but slowly my job is changing into something I don't enjoy anymore. I now get assigned to repetitive, monotonous projects that last multiple weeks, and that's all I do. Pretty much "Here is a giant stack of paperwork to process, let me know when you're done," and then I'll be stuck going through the same exact document every ten minutes, day in and day out for three or four weeks. I am an INTJ and absolutely cannot stand repetitive, monotonous, detail-oriented tasks that drag on for weeks on end. I almost cried tears of joy when they pulled me to help stuff envelopes the other day, because it was at least something different. The other thing that frightens me for the place is a whole is we've lost eight people in the last month, due to a couple of layoffs and mostly people quitting. In a 50 person organization that's already sort of struggling to keep up, this scares me. First it was one here, one there, then last week I came in to find three more positions open because one gal had been fired and two others were leaving to different jobs. Lately there has been no supervision available to answer questions, as everybody is running around like crazy trying to get stuff done, and when I go to ask questions or find somebody higher up, they're either not in their offices or there is a line of people down the hall waiting to ask questions since this is the first time they've been available in days. All of this just gives me a bit of an icky feeling in my gut and I'm wondering if I should jump ship as well, or stick it out. While the overall culture seems to be slowly improving, there is now this overly stressed vibe running around the office because everybody has more work than they can handle and supervisors are constantly unavailable. One of the few things I did still look forward to was attending a weekly meeting, as I enjoy sitting in on meetings and it helped to break up the monotony. Then yesterday I received an email telling me my presence is no longer needed at this meeting. I feel like I have slowly lost all of the things I liked about the job to begin with, and I don't know if it's just a bump in the road or if I should be looking for a way out. I am a bit scared that if I leave, I will not be able to find something that pays as well or has the sort of benefits I get, or will find that my situation wasn't as bad as I thought it was and then just be miserable at another job. Other complicating factor is I am paying into a public employee retirement system, which I will not receive the benefits from unless I pay into it for at least five years. But at this point I'm kind of dreading going to work every day and just feeling like I'm on a slowly sinking ship. How do I decide what to do in this situation? Other than being self-employed and volunteer work I have done for other organizations, this is the only paid job I have held, so I don't have much to compare it to and am having a hard time deciding if things are really bad enough to leave and if there's something out there I might actually enjoy rather than just somewhat tolerate.

  • Answer:

    Start looking for a new job, but don't up and quit before you are offered a new job that you are reasonably sure (you can never be positive) is better than this one. Apply for whatever looks interesting, and take interviews even though you're not sure the gig is a fit. Interviews are as much you checking out whether the job is a fit as much as they are the hiring people figuring out if you're a fit. I took this approach six months or so ago and landed a new gig that I'm very happy at; hopefully it works out the same way for you.

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Do you have kids? Are you over 35? If the answer to both of those questions is No you might qualify for Quit Your Bullshit Job™. QYBJ™ is a program of the Department of Not Giving A Fuck. Qualified applicants will receive: A sense of peace A loaded netflix queue One (one) packet of ramen A Chance to determine what it is you actually are willing to devote yourself to, and what you are good at, now that you back is against the wall Another job eventually QYBJ™ is not responsible for regret. No returns or refunds, though frankly in all the years of running this program, nobody has ever asked for one.

Potomac Avenue

It sounds like this place has a bit of a power vacuum. You're really feeling the downsides of that right now, but there can be upsides, too. Is there a project or two that you could take ownership of and start working on to break up the monotony? The trick to doing something self-directed is that you want to do something that has a positive impact on the office, but you don't want to interfere with something you don't really understand or make more work for your supervisor by asking them a ton of questions about whether x, y, z, would be okay. One thing that works really well as an independent project is a research project--gathering information can't really mess things up too badly; at worst you've wasted some time, and if you are still getting your other work done that's not going to be a huge deal. If there's a system in the office that isn't working or is working poorly; if there's a weirdly difficult process for getting certain necessary information; or if you know that someone has to do this research eventually: these are all good candidates for doing some research. Example: At one temp job I had I made a spreadsheet with different office supply purchasing options. I put all the sales contacts and ordering information in one (digital) place and labeled it so it was easy to find, and printed a copy and put it up in the office supply room with a note about how to find the digital file. This was a huge improvement on the dusty drawer full of catalogs and random sheets of paper that made up our current system. I didn't interrupt my boss to tell her about this or otherwise make work for her, but when I next met with her I quickly mentioned the list, showed her where it was, and explained how it would make things easier for the various admins in the office. It took no time or attention from her but made things better, and she loved it. She also asked me if there were any other things about the supply ordering process that could be streamlined (YES, yes there were!) and put me in charge of overhauling the entire ordering and inventory system. It was awesome and about a million times better than the data entry that I had been doing. So, I did something that required none of her time and I positioned myself as someone who could be in charge of a self-directed project, and in return I got a project that required more than rote work. Positioning yourself to take on more responsibility is something that you might be looking at considering the staffing issues they're facing--there are likely responsibilities that are opening up for people who are making themselves known as self-directed, competent, capable people. If this all sounds terrible to you, consider that your project doesn't even have to be solely work related; maybe even start a rotating lunch group or a post-work happy hour would give you something to look forward to.

internet fraud detective squad, station number 9

My rule of thumb: When you list out all the pros and cons and tl:drs and whathaveyous, the last thing you come up with is what you really want to do, and you're just looking for permission. But at this point I'm kind of dreading going to work every day and just feeling like I'm on a slowly sinking ship. Leave. But do what craven_morhead suggests and leave slowly and on your own terms.

Etrigan

This is a part-time job? I'm confused why you are taking it so personally. Ditto if this was a full-time job. It's a good paycheck. Why do you care?? Anyway, it sounds like they might be downsizing and/or letting you go, so sure, look for another job. But no, it does not sound like the gig is worth leaving on its own terms. Jobs are not fun. Who cares about restructuring and repetition?? Unless you are leaving to start your own business, one job is like any other. The retirement fund thing sounds like a scam, but it is s scam you have to stick with or cut bait. You have to decide.

jbenben

Part time with paid time off and holidays is pretty great, especially if it's helping you sustain your freelancing, and I wouldn't leave without something pretty exciting to jump to. Would you have an advantage for applying to other city jobs that might have the same benefits?

Salamandrous

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