I have a love and hate relationship with my job. Most of the days it’s hate but some days it’s love
The days I love my job are far and in between, but they are precious: the fleeting moment when the client tells me my graphs are sort of amazing, a successful meeting we thought might fail, or beating Mckinsey at a selection round.
Most of the days, though, I am spiteful: the inventor of powerpoint must be a total dick, my male co-workers have egos the size of the sun, too much numbers without a storyline, and all this money being spent… why are we doing this and who decided to pay me for all of this nonsense?
I have said how much I want out, how much I need an escape though I have no where to turn to.
But today I’m going to talk about love. Because last night, it was love.
Courtesy of my boss’s wallet I had a glass of the most wonderful red wine I have ever tasted.
It’s burgandy and purely classic.
But tasting expensive wine is not why I fell in love with my job last night. Not completely why.
I fell in love because my boss told me he wanted to contribute back to this world with all the success our small company has been able to achieve.
He wants to give back to the world with our knowledge base, not just building a house for habitat humanity but really taking advantage of what we have and others don’t have: consulting probono cases.
And he asked to look into it.
I smiled. I smiled because contributing back to the world is the reason why I want to quit this job.
And now my boss wants me to do exactly that, on the job.
I smiled because what an opportunity this is for me to be creative and thought-provoking. And I thought, “this could never happen at BCG or graduate school.”
I smiled because I have a boss who believes in diversity and supports Obama. And I thought, “this does not happen often in corporate.”
I am probably never going to be one of those people who say, “I Love My Job!” because I am never able to say “I love my life!” or “I love my parents!” But life is never suppose to be simple, simply good or simply bad.
For me, things are always complicated. But for now, I want to turn my hate into love, strive to be an agent of change.
