Sounds like you're in Stage 2 of the Five Stages of Work. I heard this talk given by a CBC (Canada's National Radio Station) radio engineer as she reflected on her job there: Stage 1. The Good Day: Your job gives you happiness, fulfilment, and meaning. Stage 2. The Bad Day: Your job starts to irritate you. Everything you overlooked during the good day begins to stress you. You begin to learn some really unpleasant stuff about your workplace. You become frustrated, confused, and apathetic. You feel powerless. Stage 3. Revenge: The bad days outnumber the good days. You become self-compensating for your stress. Self-compensation might range from taking home post-its to absenteeism to searching for or even doing a second job during your original job, and worse. Stage 4. Personal Re-Engineering: You realize that you do value your job. It is the job you’ve always wanted. You explore how you can change so that you can once again have the good day. Personal re-engineering might involve asserting your concerns, negotiating with others, changing your expectations, and much more. Stage 5. Redemption: Some of your days at work are so excellent, they redeem all the other stress involved. Anyway, bfx, good luck sorting it all out. We want to see you happy.
Thank you for sharing this. This is going to be helpful once I take part in real-jobbing.
lil, I love this. Wish the talk was available, or maybe it is, and I'm just not able to find it. Personal Re-Rengineering is a bit conflicting to me, though. Comes across as the onus being on the worker to change, with negotiations being secondary. This could easily lead back to Stage 2 or Stage 3.You explore how you can change so that you can once again have the good day.
The “bad day” tends to make us disconnect from our job. Personal re-engineering involves risking the pain of committing more deeply, engaging with vision and passion, and caring enough to work calmly and persistently to move the workplace in our desired direction. Sometimes it helps. Minimally, we clarify what we want and need and know that we tried our best. Btw, I copied here my notes from the talk. The speaker had a show called “Workology.” Her name is Jane Farrow. I have not seen this speech anywhere on line.