Best Job Ever!

Chapter 2Eighty-Seven Percent of Employees Don't Like Their Jobs: Here Are the Top Five Reasons Why and What to Do About It

Oh, you dislike your job? Why didn't you say so? There's a support group for that. It's called, “Everybody.”

—Drew Carey

I never get calls from clients on Friday afternoons because everyone loves their job when it hits 2:00 p.m. “How can you not love your job when you only have three hours left?” a client once told me. Thank goodness for Fridays! One of my clients described her exuberance of exiting her job on Fridays with, “I feel so alive when I walk out of the office on a Friday afternoon, I can't help raising my arms like I'm finishing a marathon.” I laughed as I pictured her walking out of her office with both arms raised. She continued, “It's actually a marathon finish combined with a ‘Hallelujah!’ I made it through another week!” From her response, I pretty much concluded that she didn't really love her job.

You likely feel the same way; study after study tells me you don't like your job. Gallup¹ (2013) recently completed its State of the Global Workplace study and found that 87 percent of employees around the world are disengaged and don't like their job! This means that nearly nine out of ten people reading this book are likely to be unhappy in their work (or for those of you anticipating your first real job, it is likely you will be unhappy at some point in your career).

“Is it really that bad?” some friends asked me at dinner one night. “Why ...