Do you hate your job?

By Melanie Lasoff Levs

updated 5:39 p.m. ET Sept. 10, 2006

Before Maria Schnabel, director of Latino public relations for Cingular Wireless, began her rewarding career in the corporate world, she was a young, floundering freelance writer just out of journalism school at San Diego State. Her unpaid student internship at the Los Angeles Times garnered her experience working on interesting stories. But when she realized she was dissatisfied with the industry, she had a revelation.

"Entry-level journalism jobs were very few and very low-paying," says Schnabel, who is now 50. "This was not a career I could see myself in for a number of years." Though it was years ago, she remembers her first job well. She didn't like it. "It was, 'Do I continue in substandard living or move on into something more lucrative?'"

Her decision was difficult because she had focused on journalism in college. But, she says, disliking where she was meant changing her perspective. "It's a decision I've never regretted," says Schnabel, a native of Barcelona, Spain. "I find PR very interesting, and I have a great career."

She has approached her career — which has included several years launching products in Latin America for BellSouth — with that same resolve and strategic eye. "Your career needs to be planned like you plan projects," she says. And, she adds, if you don't like a job or a direction, take control. "Look inside yourself and see what else you can bring to the equation."

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There are as many reasons for hating a job as there are jobs. Some of the most prevalent include a lack of autonomy and flexibility, a corporate culture that doesn't fit with your values, feeling disrespected or unappreciated, and discrepancies in pay. But the top reason is a difficult boss.

Elizabeth, 31, an executive at a boutique PR firm in Los Angeles who asked that her last name not be used, was once a practicing attorney at a small law firm. But her boss, part of the husband-and-wife team that headed the firm, frequently "freaked out" on her, she says. Once he yelled at her because she billed too many hours while catching up on a case.

Another time, she recalls, he was so angry for reasons she couldn't understand that he ordered her out of his office and then stopped talking to her for days. "I would cry every day on the way to work," she re­members. "Every day I was sick to my stomach that I had to get up and go to work." She eventually quit and is now happy at a new job.

So how much should you tolerate? People often stay too long, says Utah-based consultant and trainer Sherron Bienvenu, professor emerita at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and visiting professor at the international M.B.A. program of the Helsinki School of Economics.

They stay because they like the location, they have a close friend at work, they don't want to let their co-workers or subordinates down, or, simply put, they don't want to lose the cash and benefits.

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