Hey Sisi,

So, first up – changing jobs a lot as a student is not exactly unusual – it’s a time of trying things out, seeing what works/what doesn’t. So try to stop beating yourself up about that so much, it’s not going to have any affect on your career post college, if that’s one of your concerns. There’s absolutely no problem in changing jobs for good reasons – the trick is to work through understanding if the reasons are good for you.

It sounds like your first job at McDonalds you handled just fine until it became too boring for you, very understandable. And you sought out something new which worked really well to start with. So far so good, right. So was it the new co-workers or the boss that was the bigger reason why you stopped enjoying it so much? I ask since it was a job you say you loved, so it’d be worth understanding what became tough about it for you, tough enough that you didn’t want to overcome the problems. Did you dislike your new co-workers or do you struggle with some types of bosses?

Yeah, a lot of summer jobs suck and the need for money, especially in your early days, will often see you toughing it out – if you know it’s what you want to do. Not worth toughing it out for something you don’t want anyway. I had some great summer jobs and some were much more in the dull camp for sure, all are what you make of them and mostly a means to an end at that point in your life. Figuring out what causes your work stress triggers will help a lot in identifying what kind of roles and working environment you are likely to enjoy, both now and in the future post college. What are you studying, what are you hoping to get into when you finish – sometimes it is possible to get your summer job in the industry you are interested in, try it out so to speak.  Else just knowing what kind of environment/people are best for you and then look for those. It’s also worth being aware that dealing with difficult people and situations is a just another basic life-skill you get tend to get better with as you get more experience. Dealing with bad bosses and situations/stress can be done, have had many both good and bad – you just develop different skills for dealing with them which means you then only leave your job when you want to – not when you feel you have to because you can’t cope.

Hope helps.

Dear Sisi:

No doubt almost every job gets boring or distressing soon enough. So yes, we have to endure boredom and distress anywhere, including in love relationships that… we may hope would be exciting and wonderful at all times.

Here are the reasons you disliked or quit jobs so far: “it became very boring and I wasn’t feeling It anymore.. I didn’t like it (or the manager).. my favorite workers were leaving, and I didn’t like my boss”-

the things you mentioned here, boredom, “not feeling It”, not liking a manager, and co workers leaving, these read to me like things you should endure, invalid reasons to quit.

“the scheduling/hours… instead of doing a 6 hour shift I could be doing a 10+ hour shift, but I would only find out when I get my shift”- that reads to me like a valid reason to quit unless you have nothing to do after work, after the expected 6 hours and you absolutely enjoy the work.

“my co workers and managers (very stern and passive aggressive.. rude.. angry boss… angry co workers and negative environment vibes”- these reasons may be valid or not, depending  on what you perceive to be passive-aggressive, rude, angry and negative. If the manager yells at you, that is clearly unacceptable. But if the manager’s tone of voice at times sounds angry, that is not a valid reason to quit because everyone gets angry at times and everyone’s tone of voice automatically changes.

If a negative work environment means that coworkers don’t take their time to say good morning to you or don’t smile at you a lot, that is not a valid reason to quit. But if coworkers bully you, as in making fun of you, pointing the finger at you and criticizing the way you look, for example, that is unacceptable.

Regarding your mother, you wrote: “my mother who brings me down… My mom really dislikes when I leave a job… after speaking to my mom I started feeling guilty about disliking jobs”-

– you are not guilty for disliking jobs. No one is guilty for liking or disliking anything. We don’t choose how we feel, it just happens. So we are not guilty for how we feel.

Let’s say you are at work and your manager looks angry and says something angrily to you, for example: will you hurry up? Don’t you see the customer is waiting??

Naturally, you want to quit the job (or express your own anger at that manager). Next thing though, is you feel guilty for wanting to quit the job, not wanting to displease your mother. This very guilt adds to your bad experience. Without this guilt you wouldn’t feel… as badly.

I wish your mother brought you up, not down. If she did, you would be stronger and better able to endure jobs when the reasons for quitting are not valid.

Let me know what you think about what I wrote to you, will you?

anita

Hey Sisi, no problem – glad it helped. Anita is expert on helping people through dealing with anxiety, among many other things so I’ll leave you in her capable hands there and will stop posting here to let the two of you work through it. Let me know if at some point you want some more practical job-related help, been there for sure!