Set up for failure:
Should you ever take the job no one wants?
They’re posted on company job boards, listed on online career websites and passed along by word of mouth between friends, peers and coworkers. And while they offer potentially attractive salaries, good benefits and unending challenges, there are numerous job openings that share one current trait: No one wants them.
Paul Nelson, a software sales manager in New Brunswick, New Jersey, says he knows all about trying to fill a job that is considered impossible by his co-workers. Nelson, who asked that his real name not be used, considered himself the “last man standing” for the manager of his previous employer’s sales group, which was responsible for selling inventory software to small and midsize firms. “Anyone who was even remotely qualified for the job left the company or refused to toss their hat into the ring,” says Nelson, 43. “I was 38 at the time with three kids so I decided I could use the extra salary. I figured it couldn’t be that bad. And I knew what I was getting into. And still, I thought I could handle it.”
What Nelson was “getting into” was a job that, according to him, required an almost cult-like devotion to the company’s CEO. “I figured I’d kiss up and just deal with it but it turned out to be much more difficult,” he says. “I was expected to basically sell everyone else out. I was supposed to be the insider who dished all the dirt on the other managers, and I just couldn’t do it.”
Still, it’s not that he didn’t try. “I played the game for a few months when he’d ask about a certain person but I’d just pitch in small stuff, like ‘oh, he’s late every once in a while but he’s a good guy,’ small stuff like that,” Nelson says. “But our CEO, who took over the company to sell us off but then decided he could be the next Steve Jobs and wanted to re-do everything we’d already done, was determined to find out who was saying negative things about him and negative things about the company. It was too much.”
Nelson says he finally had enough when one of his coworkers called him Dwight, as in Dwight Schrute from the TV show “The Office,” who would sell out his office mates in a heartbeat to gain points with his boss. “I’m a huge ‘Office’ fan and that one hurt,” Nelson says. “I know he was joking, kind of, because everyone knew what I’d gotten myself into, but it did make me think.”
In fact, it made Nelson think enough that he gave his twoweek notice three days later. “It was a sinking ship anyway and I had been looking for a new job so it wasn’t like I did this noble thing,” says Nelson. “But it did feel good to tell him that I quit. And the ‘Dwight’ thing pushed me over the edge.”
‘Lost my dignity’
For many, the breaking point with a job usually comes from the boss and not his or her peers. “I think people snap a bit when they get called out and humiliated in front of their co-workers, who, let’s face it, are their friends,” says Theresa Hecht, a career adviser in Tampa, Florida. “People have to suffer some humiliation at some point in their life but no one likes to be ridiculed in front of others. That’s the top reason I hear when people tell me that they left a job or refused to accept a promotion.”
Rebecca Harrison, a retired HR director, says if she had been honest with herself, she would have come to the same realization before she accepted her final job as the hiring manager for a group of boutique hotels located in Minneapolis, St. Paul and Rochester, Minnesota. “I’d seen my future boss rip people to shreds during meetings. I’d even watched him berate his wife in front of one of our hotels one day without any thought of the people walking by or me, who was standing three feet away. Those are bad signs, right? But sometimes, you see a few extra dollars and a better title and you convince yourself that you’ll be the one to figure it out. And guess what, you won’t,” Harrison says.
Hecht agrees. “It’s a lose-lose situation, most of the time,” she says. “I tell people you either ruin the job or the job ruins you, and in most cases, you’re the one who gets ruined.”
So is it ever worth it to take the job no one else wants? “That’s up to the individual,” says Hecht. “But be ready for what’s coming. If something doesn’t pass the smell test, stay away.”
Good advice, Harrison says. “I quit after three months,” Harrison says. “I was 61 at the time and I took early retirement. I still feel foolish for taking the job in the first place. I mean, when you know a job is going to be bad, like it’s right there in front of you, and you ignore all the signs, you kind of deserve it.”