drawing the line

When I graduated from college, I was part of an influx of new workers into an already depressed economy. Jobs were few and far between, and many of us took whatever we could get. My first couple of jobs after college were pretty dismal indeed. I was overly qualified and likely took these low-paying jobs away from someone who may not have even graduated high school. It was an employers' market, and they knew it.

That first job was especially hard. I was working for a woman who was rumored to be a cocaine addict, and her personality was erratic at best. Our boss was demanding, and she expected us to lie to attorneys about her whereabouts – I'm glad I was never caught in that position, though it could have happened at any time. Whenever she got edgy, we knew someone was about to get the axe. It was an incredibly stressful environment.

My second job was better in some respects, but worse in others. Jobs that make us miserable can defeat even the most optimistic and cheery personality and ultimately affects job performance, and that heavy dread of going into work every day ends up deflating every part of our lives

Why did I stay? Because the job market was tight, and prospects were dim. I – and many others like me – treated those life-sucking, soul-starving jobs as though they were the last lifeboats on the Titanic.

But, of course, they weren't.

Years later, we're again in a tight job market, and my youngest sister and brother are facing similarly tough choices as new graduates. It's hitting even the older, more experienced workers – I suppose I fall into that category now – but I was encouraged by an experience a friend of mine had recently.

My friend, Amy (not her real name, because she values her privacy), had been temping for what seemed like forever. She relocated to Portland less than a year ago, and – like many transplants and natives alike – she was having difficulty breaking into a grim job market. Finally, she thought she had struck gold when she was hired as a clerk by a local company, but after only a couple of hours in the office, she knew that her new job was a soul-sucker.

Instead of sticking it out for the rest of the week, or the rest of the month – which could easily have turned into lost years of her life as she got comfortable with the discomfort – she quit, on her very first day. She came home feeling frustrated and disappointed with herself, but I think she is a real hero. She made the hard choice of putting herself and her spiritual and emotional health ahead of economics and financial security. Very few of us escape the kind of trap that had been laid for Amy; very few of us are willing to draw that line in the sand, refusing to compromise ourselves for a couple of extra bucks in the bank.

In poor economies, many of us adopt the attitude that the available jobs – as rotten, dysfunctional, and demoralizing as some of them can be – cannot be replaced, when it's really the other way around: we are the ones who are irreplaceable. Amy refused to sell her soul for short-term job security, and she will no doubt enjoy hefty returns of self-confidence and self-value for many years to come.