So, you’re sick of Jane in purchasing …
You might actually be too old for this. I know I’ve been saying that more and more lately. I said it when I pulled a hammy running (OK, fine, I wasn’t running ... I was standing up). I said it the last time I took a puck in the cup at old-timers’ hockey. I said it when I oh-so-bravely rode The Hulk roller-coaster in Florida. I even said it about something called a Jägerbomb. I shouldn’t even know what a Jägerbomb is at my age.
Some people say “I’m too old for this ...” referring to their job. And a new survey, reported on by HuffPost Canada, shows that job satisfaction takes a nosedive as soon as we’re over the hill. The magic number, according to science, is 35.
The survey was conducted by a human resources firm, asking 24,000 employees in eight countries about their happiness in the workplace. If you’re under 35, chances are work is a rainbow-coloured candy land where you gather with coworkers to cheerily map out work plans, enter data into spreadsheets and talk about “Game of Thrones” while sipping the free caramel macchiato.
If you’re over 35, you might still be pretty happy, but more and more of the older crowd is starting to grow disenchanted. The honeymoon is over for 16 per cent of workers over 35. They’ve had it with the scuzzy microwave in the lunch room and the smugness of their supervisor and for the love of ... Todd, stop hitting reply all!
The survey only breaks down the workforce into over or under 35. What about over 45 (asking for a friend)?
The reasoning behind our attitudes toward work makes a lot of sense. If we hate our jobs, it’s probably because we haven’t reached our goals or we’re burned out or we’d rather be doing stuff with our families. Personally, I’d rather be golfing, but I wouldn’t say I hate my job. My dedication to golf probably means I hate myself, actually. It is a painful game. At the best of times, you’re walking around hitting a little white ball for four or five hours. This is for fun and when things are going well. At the worst of times, you’re tramping through the woods looking for a little white ball, getting eaten by bugs and, sometimes, getting rained on, too.
But I digress. The big question for those of you who do hate your job is: What are you going to do about it? Are you going to keep living a lie, going to work every day and barely resisting the urge to staple Jane-from-purchasing’s lips together?
Are you going to quit and find another lousy job with possibly even worse coworkers than Jane from purchasing? Nobody’s worse than Jane from purchasing, you say? Do you really want to take that chance?
I’ll tell you what you’re going to do, because I am in the solution business. You’re going to put on your middle-management-or-better pants and you’re going to find a way to get your hands on a Powerball ticket because the jackpot is reaching record high levels! OK, my deadline falls before Wednesday’s draw but, as I type, the big prize is $700 Million USD!
Your ticket to freedom and happiness only costs $2, and the odds of winning are surprisingly good at 1 in 292.2 million, or roughly the same as the odds of the Blue Jays making the playoffs this season. I’m not saying winning is a sure thing, and there are a few more things that are more likely to happen than winning the Powerball. Things like dying from an asteroid strike or a parasite or constipation, for example, are all more likely to happen. So is getting murdered at the Grand Canyon or becoming a movie star.
Still, I didn’t buy a ticket to be a movie star. I didn’t enter a draw to get schmucked by an asteroid or fatally bunged up. The odds of winning the Powerball may be long but they’re even longer if you don’t have a ticket.
If nothing else, for $2 we can dream. We can dream about being $700 Million USD richer. Minus the U.S. taxes. And minus about $300 million as a penalty for taking the lump sum rather than an annual payment over 30 years. So we can dream about being maybe $300 million richer. That’s still OK.
Oh, but if you bought your ticket with a group of people, like maybe your co-workers, you could lose a good percentage to, to, oh no, Jane in purchasing.