Time to Say Goodbye

If you’re like me and so many other people, you’ve been in a dead end job before. Telltale signs can be that you’ve not only done what you’re asked but you’ve gone above and beyond but they don’t give you a raise, they keep passing you up, they keep making excuses, or they bring in someone else from the outside even though things are going well at your company. Only friends of friends are getting these promotions while they slowly forget what your name is.

I worked at a company for over ten years and I learned and grew a great deal there. Sadly they were never going to promote me or acknowledge my dedication and passion to taking care of their customers. They invested a lot of money in my training over the years but they also used intimidation and threats to get me to do more work, dangled incentives in front of me that they had no intention of handing out, made millions off of the six percent raises they gave me and called my rate, “the industry standard” and asked me to train people for field work when they couldn’t keep employees for more than one month. I owe most of the credit to the people I worked WITH. Not the folks I worked under. In my eleventh year I’d had enough. The same manager was threatening people to get them to work hours well past their own labor rules. In my eleven years at the company the most I made as base pay was $35,000 per year. I KNEW I was worth more.

This sort of thing happens to so many people. Part of the reason you’re still where you are is because they’ve convinced you that you can’t do any better than them. They’ve told you that you have to “be somebody” to be considered for a better role with more money and more responsibility. More than likely you work for a large company that has over a thousand employees. You’re a number whether your department is large or small. Repetitive piles of work is what they give you to “keep you busy”. Then someone quits and they need you to stay late. They have a status quo belief that will keep them in the black but never put them in the green. You get in deep trouble for even LOOKING at the CEO in the hallway. What a drag.

The good news is that there are companies out there that DON’T operate this way. They are looking for someone like you. But first you have to get past the mental block that your current employer and society has put on you. Firstly its that “be somebody” doubt. You already are somebody. This is something that is key to remember. You were worth more when they hired you and you’re definitely worth more now. Secondly, don’t think that the repetitive work that you’ve done doesn’t mean you’re not skilled enough to do something else. Sometimes doing the same thing over and over makes you the person with the strongest muscle.

Before you start updating that resume, make some professional waves at your existing company if you haven’t yet. Speak to your supervisor and if you get no where, speak to theirs and yes, if you get to the CEO’s level so be it. Could you get fired for getting to the CEO’s level? Sure, but at this point its probably worth the risk. In the event that you don’t get fired and nothing happens, start applying for better opportunities. Its time to move on. That chapter of your life needs to close. You will find something better and they will replace you with someone who will learn up to your level and eventually leave too. There isn’t much rhyme or reason to WHY companies fall into cozy complacency but its killing them. They just choose to ignore it. You don’t have to. If you get to a good company and you had good co workers on your team at your dead end position, ask the good company if they need more people. Nothing hurts a bad company like losing talent to a good one. You get to be a hero and prove your previous employer wrong at the same time.

I always try to look forward but if I reflect on my time at my dead end job, I can say with no uncertainty that they have no idea what they lost when I quit and found a better position. To this day they still don’t and one could bet that they still have the same spinning revolving door of self respecting folks who quickly get a bad taste in their mouth about working there. I’m certain that folks who have passed through that company started their own companies or became valuable leaders at others. Companies like this are oblivious to the millions they invest in training just for someone to take that and walk out. More for us.