How To: Survive A Job You Hate

The alarm sounds and the pain and despair immediately overcome your body like an illness kicking into motion. Your body aches, your heart races and your mind wanders and calculates the cause and effect of every plausible and valid reason not to leave the protection of your bed. You haven't got swine flu. You aren’t hiding. It’s far worse.

You hate your job, and there is no way of getting out. 

Millions of men face a similar scenario every morning. With a terrible economy and few companies hiring, making a career change is a major risk. People will laugh and tell you that you should be happy to even have a job at such a terrible time. They can say that with a smile because they don’t have your job. There are times you’d choose homelessness and poverty over sitting through another sales meeting or brainstorming session.

Here is the cold hard truth: You’re stuck, at least for now. Your only choice is to make the best of the circumstances. Just because you hate your job  doesn’t mean you can’t take something of value from the situation (and something of value doesn’t mean stealing -- although you did run out of printer paper at home). Here are four tips on how to make the most out of a job you hate.

Build personal relationships

To keep yourself sane and away from using paper clips as dangerous projectiles, try to make the actual office experience as enjoyable as possible. The work itself might be unbearable, but as long as you enjoy the company of co-workers, it won’t be too hard to handle the daily grind. Imagine if you worked at a job with all your closest friends. Even if the work sucked, you probably wouldn’t mind too much. First, get on the good side of those in management who you still like (provided they still like you). It doesn’t hurt to have friends in high places or to do some schmoozing. Learn from their rise to the top of the food chain. They probably did the same thing to get ahead. Also be aware of those individuals just starting out in the company. Be a teacher. Take newer employees under your wing and show them the ropes.

Building relationships with co-workers is also a clever networking move. They know people at other companies. They have connections that can soon be your connections. It could lead to a better job within the company or possibly something with another company. Think of befriending coworkers as making nice with fellow inmates (except without the sexual favours for survival). They are serving the same sentence. Making friends and allies will help make the time served tolerable.

Get involved

Remember the first couple weeks of secondary school or university when you only knew a few people and weren’t really having the best time. What did you do? Chances are you got involved in activities around campus -- you joined a sports team, the school newspaper or the new student union committee. You met a bunch of new people and life on campus got more enjoyable. It’s the same concept on the job. Find projects you are interested in working on. For the sake of experience, get involved so that you can build your CV to get the next job. At the very least, this could alleviate some boredom, especially if part of why you hate your job is that you feel uninspired. Getting your hands into different projects could get you a transfer to a different department or even a different location.

Want to make the most of a job you hate? We have more tips for you.... Next Page >>