I Hate Your Job

A Guest Post By Dante Alighieri

That’s right everyone, after a week of working my telemarketing job, I’m back and ready to do some more writing! The Second Circle was terrifying, yes, but this one is worse still.

For anyone who has ever had to depend on an incompetent co-worker, this is the part of Job Hell for you.

Inferno of Ineptitude

In the Third Circle of Job Hell, you work for Opportunity Ltd., and while there, you will be faced with these three conditions:

1. Your work is trivial while your co-workers have influential jobs.
2. Your co-workers are far less capable of doing those jobs than you would be.
3. You are compensated based on your organization’s bottom line.

If listened to, you could dramatically improve the sales, finance, operations, marketing, and customer service of your organization overnight. Instead, you are constantly told to stick to your “official responsibilities.” You keep trying anyway, maybe someone will listen at some point.

An image of your good advice.

Your Ridiculous Job

In the Third Circle of Job Hell, your job is to attend meetings and document all references to words appearing in the company’s mission statement.

This role was the CEOs major initiative last year for how to make sure the values expressed in the mission statement are paid attention to. In addition to the daily notes, you must write weekly, monthly, and annual summaries to present to the board.

While your job is sufficient evidence of the dysfunction at the company, some other examples of the company’s ineptitude include:

• Human Resources: Refusal to promote candidates out of jobs they do well.
• Sales and marketing: Strategy of “playing hard to get” applied to dealing with prospects and customers to approve brand appeal.
• Customer service: Fairly typical customer service department, actually.
• Finance: Large glass jars for storing spare change are placed throughout the office to serve as preferred asset management vehicle.
• Corporate website: Chose a URL that is a misspelling of a competitor’s name in an aim to target their customers when they make typos.

As an employee of the Third Circle of Job Hell, these sorts of moronic decisions will become your expectation. It’s all about futility, ladies and gentlemen. Opportunity Limited, indeed.

-Dante

Other Posts You Might Enjoy:

• The 9 Circles of Job Hell: The First Circle
• The Second Circle of Job Hell: Commute of the Damned
• Welcome lifehack.org Readers!
• The Fourth Circle of Job Hell: Work Consumes All
• About I Hate Your Job