Do you hate your job?

Articulate exactly what you don't like, she says. If it's a supervisor, perhaps you can move within the company and work for somebody else. If it's the schedule, create a proposal to suit your needs and benefit the company, and approach management with it.

If it's because you feel overwhelmed, maybe you can negotiate an intern to help with tasks or take a training course in an area in which you're weak. "Rather than making a blanket statement, be specific," Bienvenu advises.

Liz Ryan, workplace expert and founder of WorldWIT, an online network for professional women, classifies job complaints into two categories: modifiable and nonmodifiable. The modifiable categories include discrepancies in pay or promotions (you can attempt to negotiate), problem co-workers (talk to the boss so you don't work with the person anymore) and individual policies or even job tasks (ask if you can take on different responsibilities that match your interests).

The nonmodifiable aspects include the speed at which things happen at the company and office politics. "That is the proverbial turning a battleship around. It takes forever to change a culture," Ryan says.

Dividing your complaints into those categories puts them into perspective. "If you end up with a couple things in the nonmodifiable category — say, you don't like the direction the company is going and you don't like the CEO — those might not outweigh the modifiable things," she says. If you can change the majority of your situation, she adds, "It could be worth it to stick around."

Laura Berman Fortgang, career coach and author of Now What? 90 Days to a New Life Direction, has her clients write a list of complaints to see what's manageable.

"Is it about a whole new career," she asks, "or something practical that needs to be fixed about the current one?"

She and other experts do not advise quitting immediately. But if the signs in­dicate the job is not working, take action, says Rebecca Kiki Weingarten, a career and life coach and co-founder of New York City-based Daily Life Consulting.

"You spend so much of your waking hours at work, and it is so much a part of our identity," she says. "You just don't want to be miserable."

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