True or False: No Job is Perfect

True or False: There is no such thing as the perfect job? How do you know if you only dislike parts of your job or if it’s just a bad job?

Phil:  All right, Jenna, I'm going to start with a negative statement.  We're pretty positive people.  But if I made the statement, every job has a part that sucks, like there is no job that is perfect.  A. Would you agree with that?  And then, B. how do you know when it's just part of the job that's affecting everything else, that if you remove that, suddenly things would get a lot better versus, man, this is just a sucky job.

Jenna:  Yeah.  So one, I would agree with that statement. I think it's like, you know, when I was teaching, grading was lousy. Now documentation is lousy. You know, I don't get excited to open my computer and document, but I think like every job has an aspect that isn’t anyone's favorite.  Right?  And if you like your job over all, those parts don't matter.  Like the fact that I'm going to document on some patients that I saw today later really doesn't bother me. I'm not dreading it.  It's just part of the job and it's just my least favorite part of that job.  But if you have a part of your job that you absolutely can't stand, that like takes energy away from you, that puts you in a bad mood, like those sort of almost like emotional changes that would make me think more so that maybe you're in a job that sucks more so than has aspects that aren't your favorite thing.  Because again, would I say that documentation makes me upset in any way? No, it's just annoying. Would I say like when I was teaching, would I say that grading was like absolutely terrible?  No, it was just annoying.  But if there's a part of your job where you know, you're like, Oh, well, you know, I have to work through lunches a lot, and that really wears on me.  Like something like that's a little bit different.

Phil:  That brings up a really good point though, that I think is often missed.  When you like have that emotional response to a certain part of the job, let's say it is documentation or maybe it's double booking patients or whatever it is, it might not actually be the problem.  It could be the rest of the job.  And then so I think people go and they change jobs looking for, let's say, where I'm not double booked with patients and then recognize that really it's actually that I don't like my coworkers.

Jenna:  Yeah.  Or it's like, you know, I'm saying like, oh, working through lunch would be lousy.  But right now, if I had to work through lunch, it would be like, all right, I'm just going to see a couple other extra people and it wouldn't upset me.  Whereas like if I really didn't like my job, that might be a bigger problem, where I'd focus on that.

Phil:  Yeah, and, and that would be the thing you would be trying to get away from.  Which is just it's truly a symptom versus the root cause of I don't feel valued. I don't feel that the people around me, we don't care about each other.  We're not involved in each other's lives, versus like, oh, you know, I don't like stretching rotator cuff repairs, you know?