Why I Hate my Job or How a Person Turned into Machine in Simple Steps


It's kinda amusing how many things you can lost just by having a job. For instance, I can't find myself enjoying the process of writing anymore. This is due to my inability to find anything interesting to write about in the first place. Like seriously, everything I do is boring, and I have to do it everyday. I've got to the point where I can't write anything except my boredom to my situation. But even then, I can't really write it at all because boring life doesn't make a good story.

So here I am, a freshly graduated IR student working in a big international organization, scrambling aimlessly at the keyboard in hope that I can write something meaningful, but I don't know. The more key I type, the more depressing this writing seems. But I don't want to stop, even if it's killing me. Knowing that I can at least write two paragraph makes me a bit relieved. I know that the writer in me is still there, waiting for the right moment to come out. I just need to put more effort in it.

How is this happening? I can't blame anything except my job, I believe I had said that. I have also wrote some paragraph to explain why I hate my job but I can't do it justice. Most of my writing just felt like a compilation of rage and hatred, that's not what I want to publish in my blog. Spreading hatred is against my rule. What I want to do is explaining the reason I hate my job intellectually and objectively. I want people to understand why they too should hate this job.

Perhaps we should began by explaining what my job is. Simply put, I'm the database guy. I have an access to the most important and classified file that this organization has. At first glance, it sounds like an important job, but what I didn't know at that time was that an important job does not equal to interesting job. The simple description to my job would look like this:
  1. Everyday, an Email will be sent to me, detailing a number of person that has been identified as our organization's client along with their profile data
  2. I'll read the Email and also the profile data
  3. Then, I'll input those people to the database based on their profile data
  4. Jobs Done
Now the job seems simple, but then imagine doing that 100 times a day everyday. It would be like playing Pokemon but all you do is killing Zigzagoon all the time. At least you'll get an experience point by killing Zigzagoon which will evolve your Mudkip in the end, but I can't hope the same for my job. Yes. I do get faster at inputting the data and currently I can input one profile in less than five minutes but what have I become? 

If Mudkip evolves into Swampert by killing Zigzagoon, Gema actually evolves into Mecha-Gema. Yes, I have practically become a machine, a database-inputting machine. I have become so efficient at inputting data that I become unable to do anything besides that. That's not an evolution for me, that's a devolution! I have become the worse version of myself!

This is basically the problem about jobs in general in that they only require you to think mechanically instead of creatively. It makes me wonder why does company even bother to put college-graduated as the requirement for their employee when their jobs can be done even by a high-schooler. Seriously. Maybe you are a bank teller or a clerk or an accountant or any popular jobs for fresh-graduate, you'll realize that they all have a set of procedures that you must follow, like for example:

Step 1. Put up a nice smile and say hello; 
Step 2. Tell the customer that you can help him/her; 
Step 3. Listen to their problem (here is the list of problems that a customer can have along with the solutions); 
Step 4. Give solution to your customer's problem according to the list; 
Step 5. If you encounter a problem not listed, consult with your supervisor; 
Step 6. Jobs done and repeat from step 1

With a very strict procedure that you must follow everyday, there is simply no room for creativity. Of course you can actually be creative by handling the situation in step 5 yourselves, but the consequences could be dire. One, you could do something great that your supervisor would not think of and you'll get promoted, which seems unlikely. Two, you could do something great but got scolded by your supervisor for doing things recklessly, which is more likely. Three, you would do something stupid that will make you lose your job, which is the most possible thing to happen.

In that case, the only thing you can do is getting better at following the procedure. Be a more efficient machine than your coworker! One day a supervisor will have a glance at you and you'll get promoted to work in an environment where you'll have to be an even more superior machine than others! Quite nice, eh?

There are some different path that you can take, though, like being political and kowtowing your supervisor to the point where they will make you their favorite worker. There are some creativity needed in taking that path but that would also require you to degrade your morality and I'm not sure if being immoral is any better than being a machine.

All in all, this should probably sums up why I hate my job. There is simply no room for self-development in this job. The only good thing come from my job is a decent salary which I can use to feed myself and my hobby. But then, there is an even scarier proposition, that I would turn into a true machine where I don't mind having no self-development as long as I can continue living. That is truly scary.

I need to get out of here. Soon.





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