Dear Joe,
I don’t want to work anymore. I don’t like my job and I hate my boss. I used to work 40+ hours a week at the plant and now I can’t even get a full week of work because of the economy. I’ve been there 2 years and I’m still pretty much on the bottom. I heard where this guy made facebook and was offered a billion dollars for it and he wouldn’t sell it! What an idiot! If I had a billion dollars I’d never work again!
How can I make a million dollars on the internet so I can quit my job?!
Mike
Dear Mike,
Quit. Your job doesn’t like you and your boss hates you too. I don’t know what circumstances or life choices led you to this job; but you chose to apply for the job, you accepted the position, you’ve been there long enough to complain about a boom of too many hours and a bust of too few. If you are this unhappy, quit. I’m sure that those around you will be happier for not having to listen to you complain, your boss will be glad to hire someone that appreciates the chance to work and cares enough to do a good job.
If you are still there and haven’t deleted this reply from your inbox I want you to understand that I thought long and hard about posting your email and my reply. This is a new blog Joe, you’re going to kill it before it gets started. I decided that you had to have some real frustrations about your job and where you are in your life to write your email to me and maybe there are others that will read this blog that feel the same way you do.
I’ve been where you are, during my years of indentured servitude I worked in an automotive factory. It was my first real job and after 3 years of unexpected layoffs followed by months of 50 or 60 hour weeks and my boss didn’t know I was there… until I wasn’t. After 2.5 years of living paycheck to paycheck I started to realize that I was in the rut. I knew when to be at work, when to start getting ready for my breaks… how early I could leave my station to go to lunch or get ready to leave at the end of my shift. I grew up working in the fields and on the farm and when I was forced to leave college from academic suspension the jobs at the factory were there to help pay for my gas and school loans and they were the best paying jobs for a kid with no life experience, no job experience and no education. One night the people on the line were plodding to the breakroom, all in a line, not talking or looking around just following the routine and I couldn’t help myself, I mooed. Old Charolette looked an me like I was crazy. Leslie, the summer college temp, looked at me and smiled, “Why did you do that?”
“We’re just a bunch of cows, doing what we do every day at this time. Going to the barn to get fed, staying with the herd because there’s safety in numbers, and taking a rest before we have to go back to work. We’re in the rut. When you’re done for the summer Les, go back to school and find a way not to come back here.”
She smiled and said, “If you know that and feel that way, why are you still here?”
4 years later I was in a position to quit that job and start my first business.
Don’t quit your job unless you have a better one lined up or don’t really need the one you already have. There aren’t that many jobs out there if you’re in the market to find a new one so don’t leave until you can do so without putting yourself in a bind financially. People from different professions speak different languages. If you’ve ever gone to a computer shop and started talking to employees about computers, they start talking jibberish very quickly and most of us get lost pretty quickly and finally just ask, will this computer do what I need for it to do? Is your job doing what you need for it to do? Is it providing you with enough hours for you to survive financially? By the sound of it, it once gave you too much, now it’s not enough. Do you want to work for yourself and run your own company? How about working online and earning some extra money to help you pay the bills until you have the skills to start the next facebook?
This blog is to help people like you to start working and making money online. The Industrial Age is in it last death throes, this is the Information Age and if you want to survive you’re going to need to learn the skills be able to work in the digital world. Read this article and see if it helps you get started working from home and write me again if you have any questions. This should help you get started, or lead you to more questions.
Thanks for your time,
Joe