Hate your job? Mrs. Griggs says stay put — but start looking
Editor's note: If you think job frustration among young workers is something new, Ione Quinby Griggs sets you straight. In this excerpted entry — published 52 years ago today in her long-running advice column in The Milwaukee Journal's Green Sheet — Griggs counsels a young worker fed up with her job, and what she fears it's turning her into.
Is it too late for a young adult to change jobs after several years in a field that affords her a fair paycheck? Is it fair to herself to stay on permanently if she dislikes the job and finds it increasingly unpleasant? Read this letter:
Mrs. Griggs: For a few years, I have stayed on in the field I am in, trying to make the best of it, even though I have never liked the work. It is technical work and involves working with animals and solutions, cleaning up after animals, and animal autopsies. It is all very depressing.
I had a biology major in college, and originally thought this could lead to a career in conservation. However, I needed work immediately after finishing college, so I accepted this work. I couldn't pass it up because there were college loans to repay.
I was the oldest of a big family of children, and I had a widowed mother. My brothers and sisters had their own financial and educational problems to think of, so I had to make the best of what I could get.
I have tried to be a good, conscientious, cheerful worker. Some of the secretaries would come into our lab, wrinkle noses and wonder how I could stand it.
Lately, I have given up fooling myself that I could be an all-American, wholesome, attractive girl, and fear I have become cynical, selfish, sarcastic and self-centered. I am almost unbearable when I go home to visit. I go with the intention of being a good daughter, a sweet agreeable companion. Instead, I am out of sorts and bitter. Everything I say seems to cut my mother. Everything she says seems to challenge me to say things to hurt her.
I wonder if there is any hope for me. Is it too late to try changing into a different line of work? Or shall I learn to swallow my daily tasks as a pill to be taken each day?
Soon I will be given an opportunity for a raise, with new work that is practically the same. I still don't know how to cope with the loneliness and the attitudes of the "prima donna" secretaries.
If there were anything else I could go into, I would change, yet I am confused. I just hate the thought of being confined to this type of work for a lifetime. — Hopeless Hopeless: If you are unhappy with your work, and personality and attitudes are changing on account of it, it would be wise to consider a different field — but stay on at the present job until you are sure what type of work you want to do and where you can get a new job.
First, you should have a vocational test to see just what you are suited for. Find out everything you can about conservation work or any other work that appeals to you. Talk to people who do the kind of work you decide on and weigh the good and bad points.
There isn't any field that is 100% ideal, but if it has interest for you and you find it enjoyable, the bad points will not bother you to any extent. I enjoy newspaper work so much that it seems a pity to me for anyone to be in a line of work that is disliked.
If a vacation is scheduled, it might be a good time to look around and make plans, but be sure you have another job before resigning from the present one.
Added thought: Don't let the "prima donnas" worry you. They may be young and thoughtless. Even though you don't like your job, it is one that requires training and intelligence.