Work Won’t Love You Back, and We’ve Got to Start Acting Like It

Or, I wanted to work for Monsanto (and so should you)

I think my sister was the first to point out that I, when compared to a cliche twentysomething woman, have my career and my romantic life switched around. See, even BuzzFeed thinks you can reduce dating in your twenties to a listicle (in this case, they describe 11 real dud relationships). I have been extraordinarily lucky to avoid that experience in my dating life, but I have 100% experienced most of these stereotypes in a work setting. I’ve definitely had the “definitely not good for you or your self-esteem, but you think you can inspire [the organization] to be better and change” job and the “I need therapy so bad, but I don’t know that I need therapy, so I’m going to use you as my therapist until you literally can’t take it anymore” manager and even the “I’m extremely [successful/smart/externally well-liked], and therefore you will ignore all of my bad traits until you just can’t handle it anymore” boss.

Around the time I first started to think about work through the relationship lens, I happened upon an Amy Poehler quote from Yes, Please that really resonated:

Treat your career like a bad boyfriend. Here’s the thing. Your career won’t take care of you. It won’t call you back or introduce you…