I hate my job

I hate my job

Dear Mookychick,

This is going to sound like a whinging problem but I don’t know who else to whinge to. My friends either say I should leave my job (I can’t) or say I should deal with the problem like they have to in their own jobs on a daily basis…

I love my life outside work where my friends are as intelligent as myself, they help me find meaning in life. I love painting and photography and these give me an outlet. I don’t paint as much as I would like to but I photograph things every day.

The problem is I work in a shipping office doing mindnumbingly boring stuff all day and I’ve done it for two years because I live in a town where jobs are hard to come by. I know I’m only special to myself, there is no reason why I should have a glamorous or artsy job when so many people in the world are starving. But I really cannot stand my job. I was closed-off when I started and because no-one leaves and no-one new arrives everyone has pegged me as a stand-offish bytch. They talk all the time about football or crappy beauty magazines and make jokes that to me just aren’t funny and I actually think it’s driving me mad. I’m starting to take sick days when I’m well just to be out of the office. I’m feeling a bit skizo with it all – if I’m popular outside of work and hated and shunned inside of work, which person am I? I wish I had been more open when I started working here because even if I hated everyone at least they would talk to me but now it seems too late. I think this living two lives is beginning to make me ill. Dear Mookychick please help!

On another note I would love to get my photography seen by other people but there don’t seem to be any places where I live which do exhibitions for unheard-of artists – any ideas?

Love, Anonymous Me xxx

The Mookychick answer to your problem

Ashley says…

As you’ve already figured out, your options really are those two: leave or deal with the problem. Since you’ve ruled out leaving (let’s just assume you totally can not) you want to know how to deal with your job. The only way I could possibly see that happening is if you used it as material for your creative endeavors. The creators of The Office didn’t come up with that stuff out of thin air.

But no matter what, you have to use this as a springboard for getting out. OUT.

You love painting and photography, so throw yourself into it as much time as you can outside of work to be able to leave. Read up on becoming a freelance photographer. Schlep your paintings to galleries.

Set up a table on the street and sell them. Scan your work and put it on the internet. Hang your paintings in the trees. Ask restaurants if you can hang them on their walls. Self-promote. Never underestimate the power of the well timed, pre-announced media stunt. If you have no energy to do this you will never escape. But by being a martyr and saying that because there are starving children you have no right to be happy, you are making no one, least of all yourself happier. You are not making things better. It’s a cop-out.

There is no pay that can pay you enough for soul-crushing work. Take that from a former high-school teacher. Pretty soon those fake sick days will turn into real sick days. Kill the head and the body will die, as the late Hunter S. Thompson said.

And here is some advice from alternative philosopher and folk singer Utah Phillips:

That’s when [Fry Pan Jack] told me – you know, he’d been tramping since 1927 – he said, “I told myself in ’27, if I cannot dictate the conditions of my labor, I will henceforth cease to work.” Hah! You don’t have to go to college to figure these things out, no sir! He said, “I learned when I was young that the only true life I had was the life of my brain. But if it’s true the only real life I have is the life of my brain, what sense does it make to hand that brain to somebody for eight hours a day for their particular use on the presumption that at the end of the day they will give it back in an unmutilated condition?” Fat chance!


Char says…

Gosh it does sound as though you’re in a bit of a pickle what with hating your job and having all this creativity running through your blood – something i can definately relate to.

Wanting to be something, someone special enough to make others sit up and take notice of your creativity, well its something all of us want – I certainly do!

You say the town you live in is small and that jobs are hard to come by – whats stopping you moving? What is stopping you from re-locating to another part of the United Kingdom, perhaps even doing the same job for a little while, or something similar whilst being in the right location for the kind of creative pursuits you wish to follow.

Let’s use London as an example. If you’re single, fancy free and ready for a challenge and can put up with living in tiny space for max amount of money, then i would say go there. Get a new job in the city, you could even re train for something before you go there, maybe a course at college? At least that way you’re keeping your spirit alive with plans and dreams for the future that you’re making happen, makes the tedious day to day droll of work more bearable if you can see a light at the end of the tunnel!!

When you get there, get a job, and then work like a mad nutter getting your name known.

Start a blog, use websites such as www.deviantart.com and www.freemyart.com to showcase your own work for free!

Get yourself noticed, write, visit and pester galleries, boutiques, especially small businesses and get local! Target people and places to show your pictures and art- be prepared to work for free. Try your local newspaper, get down to your local career centre for ideas on how to get out there doing your thang!

Sod it, hang your work in the street on a saturday afternoon, get some of your friends to hand out home made flyers, create a buzz and watch that work sell off the pavement before the day’s out.

If you want it, then you’ve got to get out there and make it happen, opportunities don’t just fall at your feet…you gotta get in there and give it some welly!

Good luck chick,

Charlotte x



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