Low Morale

I hate my job; I get depressed just thinking about having to go in there. The longer I work there, the more I grow to hate it.

On one level, I hate it for practical, everyday reasons: I've worked there for a year and three quarters with no vacation. And there will be no vacations, ever, as long as I work there. I could take some days off if I wanted to, but they'd be UNPAID days. I don't get paid enough to take more than an extra day without it having a major adverse influence on my finances. In the past, on previous shitty jobs, periodic week-long vacations were a boon, giving me a much-needed respite, which kept me from totally burning out.

My job also has no paid sick days, and they give you a hard time if you ever have to be out for any reason. I want to tell these people to get a grip: we're not saving lives here; we're helping people get fat. They need to keep it in perspective.

There's also no health insurance offered, which is something I find more important the older I get.

But beyond all these practical reasons for hating my job, there's also the matter of morale; in my case, the familiar gripe of feeling like a square peg in a round hole. In every job I've ever had, I've always worked with people very different from me; intellectually, personality-wise, their entire way of looking at the world. To those who are familiar with the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator, I've spent my entire working life as an NT in a sea of SJs.

For one thing, they never talk about anything other than everyday, mundane matters: what's on TV, sports, popular music, gossipping about other people, and the like. They never talk about ideas, or anything far from the lowest common denominator, unless you count fundamentalist Christianity under "ideas", which is stretching it to the breaking point, in my view.

As with other jobs I've had, I have to keep most of myself to myself, because to share my ideas would be greeted by a huh? expression and the audible whooshing sound of it going over their heads. It's an annoying thing to have to spend so many hours per day with people with whom I cannot have anything approaching a meaningful conversation with.

I know I need to get out of there, but with my lack of paperwork credentials proving my intelligence and potential, the next job I get will likely have this same type of morale problem all over again.

Ok, I'm done whining. It felt good to vent a little bit. Thanks for listening.