I hate my job. I hate the people I work with and my actual day to day tasks are that of an intern. I have not gained any professional growth or acquired a new skill while I have been here and it is unlikely that this will be the case in the near future.
I talked to an older colleague about it once and she told me that if I don’t like the job, I should at least like what it does for me – pays my rent, gives me money to drink the weekend away and eat gourmet burgers I know very well that I can’t afford, etc.
Am I being a lazy and privileged millennial who is not grateful to be employed in these tough economic times? Should I just shut up put my head down and to do the job I was hired to do while I eat lunch with my three new best friends; Fuzu, Brighter Monday and LinkedIn?
Have I talked to my boss or my supervisor about some of the challenges that I am facing? Of course! We are millennial and if there is anything we love to do; it is to talk. I have presented my problems and possible solutions. Have they (yes they, because my bosses seemed to multiply conveniently after I reported to work) taken any of them? They are dead on arrival.
OUR TARGETS
No time for trial or exploration, we must meet our targets! Which is a corporate way of telling you “I’ve really got problems of my own.” For you to only discover that they had no real power to help you to begin with.
Why am I so angry and frustrated? Because this is not what I signed up for. When I came to work here, I wanted more than just a salary.
I wanted to learn, I wanted to grow – it was a career move that made sense and now I am going backwards. I am completely unmotivated and as a result my day to day intern-like tasks are suffering and the office is lucky if I show up before 10.
I am disheartened beyond words because I don’t want to be the lazy, thankless millennial that I have become. That’s not who I am, and that is not why I worked so hard to get here. We were always told to work hard!
But what if the work is easy and boring? Why are we working so hard? To what end? To get a promotion and earn more money to buy expensive alcohol? As much as that would be real nice, that’s what sponsors are for. And more importantly that is not the only reason I am here!
I want to innovate! I want to give real value to my employer! I want to produce work that I can be proud of! And who is supposed to help me do that? HR? They are too busy trying gossiping about the scandal of the week. What about the department head or the person at the top of the food chain?
They don’t take me seriously because I come late and I am a lazy thankless millennial. So my only solution is to continue with my best friends until one of them gives me an opportunity and we can do this all over again! Sounds like fun!
How sad. How true. How can we identify these trapped young people?