At What Price, Success?

Among my circle of friends are many who share my disgust of the traditional working environment. And in recent weeks, among this same circle, there are many giving up the fight altogether. Starting their own business, taking a sabbatical, cashing in their mutual funds for a few months traveling the Far East.

It’s a shaky time for me to think of so extreme an exit strategy. I like stability, as well as paying my rent. Considering a leave of absence from the working world makes me uneasy, and, to be honest, a little nauseous.

What these escapees had in common was their initial drive to succeed. A lawyer friend who graduated top of his class grew to hate the legal grind. A senior editor despised the rigidity of style guides and her perfectionist-of-a-boss and took the summer off to start a freelance career. A loan consultant who worked nights and weekends in the hopes of making manager sold her million-dollar home to teach English to monks in Thailand.

I had my own ambitions but found that on my sluggish climb up the corporate ladder that I was met with overly aggressive colleagues and a more grueling workload with each and every rung.

It’s a point of considerable contemplation for me – understanding the balance between doing what you love and finding good people to do it with. That’s a magical combination, but is it even possible? A couple of recent conversations are making me think otherwise.

Last week I met up with a former colleague whom I worked with for a number of years. The job was anything but glamorous, but we had a blast. In fact, it was one of the best jobs I’ve had in my life. Extenuating circumstances (best left to another blog post) forced us out of that place, but he quickly landed on his feet. His new job isn’t anything to write home about, but he adores his new boss who gives him leave off of work to go back to school and finish a bachelor’s degree in computer science. Not a bad move.

A later conversation with a friend of a friend fueled my internal debate. He was an ambitious and highly paid lawyer to the stars. But his bosses were unbalanced and his clients unhinged. So he saved up enough cash to take a year off traveling through Southeast Asia.

He’s back in the states and wondering about his next career move. But during our conversation, he shared with me his interesting conclusion. You can be an overachiever and take a grueling, rough rode to financial and professional success; or you can settle for a little less prestige and a little less glory. But you’ll be in the company of sane co-workers and enjoy a life outside of the office. Unfortunately, you can’t have both.

My job searches typically focus on the work itself: Will this look good on my resume? Where do I move up from here? Rarely do I wonder if I’ll like the people, or if I can share a laugh or even a friendship with my coworkers. It was important that I liked my new boss, but I focused on the tasks of the job hoping the friendships would develop. Funny, they never seemed to.

So there’s my conundrum. Finding more value in what I do or who I spend my time doing it with. It seems like pure luck to me, but maybe there’s a strategy to it. If you were able to have found both, I’d love to hear about it.

It’s Not You, It’s Me (but really it’s you)

Once I was single and unemployed, with nary a prospect in either. It struck me as I spent my days meeting prospective bosses and nights flirting with prospective boyfriends that the process was nearly identical. It hit me as I tried to explain to a prospective boss why I’d stayed at my last job for less than year. It was the same excuse I used for why I’d broken up with my college boyfriend.

In our love lives, we’re encouraged to sow our oats, shop around and get to know ourselves before me settle for the ole’ ball n’ chain. Not so in our professional lives. Our job interviews go like any blind date. We look our best, lie to make ourselves look good, then wait weeks by the phone for their call. Oh please, oh please, oh please. Let them pick me!

If my job were a boyfriend, I’d be in one hell of an abusive relationship. My job and I would be ripe for couple’s therapy and I’d be shopping for a good divorce lawyer. Hell, the judge would be signing the restraining order as we speak.

I realize I’m being paid to play the role of the battered employee. Full benefits, even. Why do I deserve more, you say? Fine, you have a point. It’s what kept me long-suffering in my current situation, and consistently miserable throughout.

Now in my mid-30s, I’m finally happy in love, and I wonder if I can apply the lessons I learned in my search for a perfect partner to find that perfect job. Like the good men, are all the good jobs taken? Or should I be allowed to shop around, try different jobs on for size, and feel free to leave if it just doesn’t work out between us? Babe, it’s not you, it’s me, I can say. How else do you know what you’re really getting into until you’re there? And then, how the hell do you get out?

Knowing my rent was coming due, I’ve taken jobs that weren’t quite the right fit. Today, sitting at my cubicle, I feel like I’ve woken up hung over and lying next to a naked man whose name I don’t remember. Eight months after that blind job interview, I’m trying to sneak on my clothes and crawl out of the bedroom without waking him.

Some Plain, Decent, Everyday Common Rightness

I often seek solace in classic films to provide a little perspective on my problem du jour. Casablanca helped me survive my first college breakup; and in my 20s, after my then most serious relationship ended, I put Now, Voyager on repeat for days. A tissue box in my lap, I’d sob its most famous line: “Oh Jerry, don’t let’s ask for the moon. We have the stars.”

Maybe it’s because classic films break down our most complex human crises into simple bite-sized pieces. It’s the fight between good and evil, between right and wrong. You always know which side to root for, and what the hero is willing to live and die for. And it helps that he always gets the girl.

I took some interesting lessons to heart recently during a screening of Frank Capra’s Mr. Smith Goes to Washington (1939). I always thought the film a little sappy for my taste, but that night I found a compadre in Jefferson Smith, its title character. Jimmy Stewart plays the idealistic young senator who sweetly clings to the national tropes of truth and justice, even in the face of a political machine that almost (but not quite) breaks his idealistic Johnny Appleseed spirit.

Though the film is a rather over-simplistic portrayal of truth over injustice and politics at its worst, Smith’s struggles appear anywhere we have power-plays, egos larger than life and money to be had. And well, that’s pretty much everywhere.

It’s the scene between Smith and Saunders, his once cynical assistant played by the cheeky Jean Arthur, that always get me. Smith is the victim of a smear campaign spearheaded by his fellow statesman, the “bought” Senator Paine, and newspaper mogul Jim Taylor. With suitcase in hand, he is ready to return home. But the wry and weary Saunders has enough sense for the both of them. Standing in the shadow of the Lincoln Memorial, she makes a plea for Smith to stay and fight the good fight.

“Your friend Mr. Lincoln had his Taylors and Paines. So did every other man who tried to lift his thought off the ground. Odds against them didn’t stop those men—they were fools that way. All the good that ever came in this world came from fools with faith like that, you know that, Jeff…They aren’t all Taylors and Paines in Washington, that kind just throw big shadows, that’s all. You didn’t just have faith in Paine or in any other living man; you had faith in something bigger than that. You had plain, decent, everyday common rightness and this country could use some of that. Yeah, so could the whole cockeyed world.”

Those profound words helped rub a little cynicism off these once idealistic eyes. I wonder how many of my colleagues are themselves Jefferson Smiths, or even Clarissa Saunderses, those of us with once big dreams who were beaten down by others without compassion, kindness or a moral backbone. How many of us are willing to get back up and fight the lost cause like our friend Jeff Smith?

We all need our own Saunders in this crazy mixed-up world, but hopefully Jean Arthur will do.

In Good Company, But Not Working for One

Today I make a confession. Like nearly half of you, I hate my job. I’ve found statistics claiming that every other one of us hates our 9-to-5 working lives. That’s one hell of a statistic. Seems we’re all in good company, just working for a bad one.

Truth be told, I really have no right to complain. I get paid well, with enough flex time for regular visits to my shrink (i.e., health insurance). My colleagues aren’t crazy (at least not in the clinical sense). And I’ve never been sexually harassed in my life (and why the hell not, I’d like to know). Still, I hate my job. Hate, as in the black hate of death…as in fake a sick day to avoid it…as in cry on a Sunday afternoon just thinking of the week ahead. I can’t for the life of me figure out how this happened.

I had dreams, like all of us. And I think I started out on pretty solid ground. But somewhere along the way, amid the office politics and corporate culture, I got lost. Maybe I was too busy watching my back, covering my ass and putting everything in writing to step back and wonder if this was really what I wanted.

Now my days are marked by relentless meetings, a pertinacious buzz of the office intercom and the yapping of my bosses — all three of them — when I’m late coming back from lunch. It’s the fact that a good day means I was only marauded once for that memo with a typo. Can you believe I’ve actually lost sleep over that stupid memo with a stupid typo?

My job leaves me gasping for air first thing in the morning, and shuffling out with my tail between my legs by the end of the day. It’s getting to me, dear friends. And I’m starting to wonder if it’s just me.

So of late I’ve been scouring the daily job listings looking for a different (better?) job and I have to wonder if there’s an escape from this existence I’ve created for myself. What would make me one of the lucky 50 percent who like their job? Would I know it if I saw it?

Thinking about work always reminds me of my Dad. His advice was the sound kind of a doting father to a naïve child about to make her way in the world. “Work hard and do what you’re told,” he said when I started my very first job as a waitress at the local steak and stein. “They call it ‘work’ for a reason, dear. You’re not supposed to like what you do.”

These many years later, I think back on his guidance often. And I have to wonder this: In our MTV, feel-good, instant-gratification, 2-outta-3-marriages-end-in-divorce society—we can hardly stay with our mate but we’ll stick it out for a job we hate. Why?

So like Odysseus beginning his voyage into the unknown, I begin this blog. I’m putting it all out there, asking questions (even stupid ones), and looking for answers. What I need is perspective. And I am asking anyone — even you, the guy who stumbled upon this thinking it was porn — to give me your feedback, nay, counsel, as I try to discover if it’s even possible to be professionally satisfied.

So my question for you, dear readers: Do you like your job? What is it that keeps you satisfied and coming back for more?