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 to its parents. Your career will openly flirt with other people while you are around. It will forget you birthday and wreck your car. Your career will blow you off if you call it too much. It’s never going to leave its wife. Your career is fucking other people and everyone knows but you. Your career will never marry you. … If your career is a bad boyfriend, it is healthy to remember you can always leave and go sleep with somebody else.

From an early age, I was perhaps more susceptible than most to the fantasy of the dream job, and at many different points in my life, I have really truly thought I had reached it. The thing I’ve learned time and time again, however, is that there’s no such thing. I’m actively working now to cultivate a healthier relationship with work, one defined by boundaries rather than some trumped-up idea of “giving your all.” It’s gotten me thinking a lot more about a time in my life when I not-so-secretly thought maybe the best place for…