We do exactly the same job.
To me the idea of enjoying a job is an odd one: I don’t want to work, I only work because I need the money. If I had money I wouldn’t work.
I don’t know if this makes me the oddest person on earth, but where I am my coworkers sometimes make me feel so.
She asked me if I enjoy my job. I looked at her surprised while thinking to answer her with a regular blanket manager answer like ‘it is such a honor to work here, fuck yeah, I’d love to work here for free!’ or being completely sincere.
I was in a good mood, so I chose being sincere: ‘I don’t enjoy working, I work because I need to pay for the rest of my life, I enjoy cooking, writing poetry and walking through a forest.’
She looked at me a bit surprised and replied: ‘but you have to like your job.’ My answer? ‘As long as I earn money all’s good.’
This happened in a big room with like 9 coworkers hearing the convo.
Now I don’t know if I just committed job suicide where I work at, but it was liberating saying out loud at the workplace what I think a job is.
And why the fixation that you must like a job? It’s a job for fucks sake. Why do you have to like it?
To me this only confirms my current job is a cult. Am I exaggerating?
If every workplace is like this I should stick with the devil I know…
Since I have to work, I don’t mind the job I have. I’m good at it, I get to exercise skills not everyone has so I am welcomed as a useful teammate. The nature of the job exposes me to no shortage of new things to learn, which I greatly prefer to repetative days.
If I won the lottery tomorrow and no longer needed to work, I would be gone before my boss had a chance to read my three sentence resignation letter. All the things I enjoy about my job, I can do better on my own as hobbies or volunteering or other social community-based endeavors.
I don’t know that anyone I work with would say they enjoy it right now. We’re going through a particularly awful re-organization that no one is happy about. My emotional distance from my job puts me at an advantage over others who look for more life meaning in their job/career.