Communicator, cooker, drinker, poet. Grew up in a mining town, wore a hard hat.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Life Is Too Short To Have A Job You Don't Like

Simple as that. I had a lunch meeting with a person who recounted a simple, but very insightful anecdote about happiness at work. For the purpose of the post, I'll refer to him as Marc.

Marc was once having beers with an old friend who worked for a big telecom company. They started talking about the lottery and Marc recalled that he had once met a woman who would keep her job if she won the lottery. He asked his old friend, "Would you keep yours if you won 10 million tomorrow?" The friend replied that he sure as heck wouldn't. Then he asked Marc the same question. After a brief pause, Marc replied that he probably would keep his job. Why not? He liked it: the people were nice, lots of autonomy, not too much stress. We should all be so lucky.

I've had a couple of jobs that I would quit in a heartbeat given the chance. But I've also had one or two that I would totally keep if I won the lottery. As Marc recounted to me, smiling, "No big deal. Win the lottery? Call the boss, take a couple of weeks. Blow off steam on a cruise or something and get back to it."

What kind of job do you have: lottery-win-quit or lottery-win-keep?

1 comments:

Anonymous said...

Ooh, good question. I think I'd probably keep mine (just in case I go all Rock Star and blow it on Cristal and Bentleys). But in all seriousness, I would. There would be a lot of unpaid leave, but I'd keep it ;)