To Quit, or Not to Quit?

As a child drawing from endless hours of watching reruns of fifties sitcoms I would greet my father as he trudged though the door in his machine oil soiled coveralls with an enthusiastically gleeful inquiry, "How was work!" My father's sardonic reply was almost always the same. "Work, is work." You see, my father's generation was from a time and place where personal fulfillment was not really a consideration in evaluating employment opportunities. And as much as our society's cultural ideals about our work and our relationship to it might have grown in complexity since my father's generation; I believe his stoic axiom still holds more than a mere shred of truth today. Regardless of what you do alot of times work is just work. Any task can become tedious, any workplace can turn stressful and any social atmosphere can become unpleasant or even toxic even if it is in an office. So, how do you know if it's more than just a matter of pushing through a rough patch at the old gravel pit or really the end of the road at your present employer. If you check off any of the following warning signs the needle is fidgeting towards the latter.

1. Bedtime Anxiety Attack.

If you find yourself lying in bed totally aware of the fact that you've got to be up early tomorrow to beat the mass transit purgatory that is morning traffic yet, choosing to continue chuckling at late night talk show monologues or comparing your life to that of your former classmates' through your favorite social networking site all in a desperately futile attempt to prolong that night and put off the impending workday; you have to really ask yourself, is it really worth it?

2. Home Hulk.

Has all of that radioactive discontent building up in your cubicle turned you into a temperamentally volatile and emotionally destructive beast who unleashes his or her fury upon family and friends at the drop of a hat? Well isn't family at the top of the list of reasons why you get up and drag your sorry butt to work in the first place? And if it's going to make you resent them, doesn't it defeat the purpose?

3. Your Desk is an Island.
One thing I have discovered over the course of my working life and the myriad of jobs I have taken is, no matter how unpleasant the task, how unappreciated the work and even how unsatisfactory the pay, the people you work with and the relationships you build with them can make any job bearable and occasionally even fun. Also, never underestimate the value of social currency. If you hold any hopes of moving up the ranks at your company just understand your chances are just about zip if no one in the office can pick you out of a photo of the latest corporate team building workshops everybody was forced to attend. Ask yourself a couple of questions? Do you consider anyone at work a friend? Do you ever hang out with coworkers outside of the workplace? Do you ever talk to the people at work about something other than...work? If you've answered no to all or most of these than a couple of things could be happening. You either:

A.) Don't fit in with people you work with.

OR

B.) Have been branded a social leper.

Either way, without a human connection with the people you spend half of your waking hours with, you're more likely to become miserable, not advance and ultimately not last where you are at anyway because you lack the social support network to lean on when you encounter those challenging times we all come across over the course of our careers.

4.) Office Zombie

Vacant eyes, shuffling gait, incoherent mumbling groan when engaged in conversation... if I'm describing you at work, you might have become the Office Zombie. Apathy can hit us all from time to time but if it's more than just a passing spell of cognitive and emotional disconnection then we have a problem. In case you didn't know we're mere mortals. ( if you are an exception, good for you) Taking that into account, why waste your life doing something you cannot bring yourself to even remotely care about. Also, depending on what you do, a lack of a complete investment of focus on the job could potentially put you at risk professionally, legally and even physically. You just have to ask yourself, quit or stay; is there really much of a difference? I mean, everybody has seen you at your desk dependably for the last month, but we both know your consciousness has been off scanning its butt and emailing it to everybody in the building. So, does it make sense to continue to endure brain atrophy inducing boredom at your job, when in a sense you aren't even there anyway?

5.) The Portrait of Manager Grey

Look at your present, immediate professional superior. You might be under his tyrannical thumb today, but you've worked hard and dotted all your i's so one day that's gonna be you. Now, did that statement, heard in the voice of your own internal narrator, just send chills down your spine? Could it be because your looking at this beat up, prematurely worn, weary middleman and see a terrifying picture of your future? This is textbook foreshadowing. Let us apply what we learned in ninth grade English and change course...right now.

These are all nothing more than potential indicators to assist in your professional decision making. With each one of these, there are mitigating factors such as job market viability and the number and duration of aforementioned warning
signs that apply to you. The currently grim state of the economy makes any career altering decision that much more nerve wracking but the bottom line is with only on life to live, sometimes you have to be that much bolder when it comes to taking the reigns of your destiny in the pursuit of your happiness.