Published on 12, July, 2020
I have just accepted a new job. This will be my 7th new job in 5 years. I start out all energetic and raring to go, but in a few months I get bogged down, frustrated, tired, distraught. Then I think the only way to solve it is to start again. How to I break this circle? How do you stay in the same job over a long time? I realise that I'm making my own problems really because the act of starting a new job is so stressful in itself but I really want to make this new job work. I don't think I can cope if it all goes wrong again.
I wish I could help. In 40 working years, I've had 27 jobs - and I've just started my 7th job in 6 years. Actually, it's a return to a job I had 3 years back, but left to care for my mother in her final illness. One of those jobs lasted two weeks. Another one just a couple of days. The longest was for just over a year. I was off caring for mum and recovering after her death for one of those years. If you exclude that, that's 7 jobs in 5 years. Same as you. In some ways, it's reassuring that I can still slip from one job to another at my age - though in care work, there's generally plenty of positions available for experienced people.
I'm like you. It's fine for a while. But then stuff starts to bug me. In one job, it was all the corners it was necessary to cut in order to meet deadlines. That frustrated me because I either do a job properly or I don't do it at all. I don't cut corners. In another job, I got tired of the sloppiness and apathy of some other staff members, and the constant failure of them to complete important tasks because they were too busy playing with their phones - which meant others of us had to take up the slack. Also, the staff were quite cliquey, which I can't stand. All of these, really, are problems that I think people like ourselves face in the workplace. I've found that the older I get, too, the less tolerant I am of these kinds of things, and the less willing I am to stick around and see if they can improve. Experience has taught me, maybe, that they rarely do improve.
So... no real suggestions for you, sorry. But I do identify.
Thank you for your reply, Martian Tom. I think in the past I've got bored and frustrated about my job and my only solution is to find something new. "This isn't working, let's try something different" when perhaps if I'd spoken about my problems a bit maybe I could have worked through them. Certainly some of my employers would have been understanding. My current job (which I'm leaving) it's different though in that I can't stand my manager. He is such a bully. Not just to me but to lots of people in the team. I've seen men in tears leaving his office. It's a horrible environment to work in. My new job, hopefully, is going to be more professional. I really want to start out well and do all the "good mornings" and eye contact and getting teas and coffees like I've learned how to do, but at the same time I'm worried I might end up somewhere awful again. It took me 6 months to find this job, probably partly due to my car crash CV, so I'm really hoping I can make it work.
Good luck. You're going in with a positive attitude... and it's all experience. Employment for me has been a long learning curve which still hasn't reached the point of tailing off!
Workplace bullying is the worst thing of all, I think. It's why I left my last job - though it wasn't a manager. Anyone who 'manages' by bullying isn't a manager at all. Just a bully.
The deputy manager who interviewed me for my last job commented 'You've had more jobs than years I've been alive!' It didn't stop them taking me on.
I couldn't imagine ever staying in one place for too long - until I became part of the woodwork. But I suppose it depends on if you're happy. I've generally had a low boredom threshold. I've done farm work, shop work, office work, driving, petrol station attending, cider making, selling (agh!), recruiting, shelf-filling... and now care work. Of all the jobs, I enjoy working with learning disabilities and generally disabled people the best. A lot of fun, very rewarding... and a kind of natural identification with the vulnerable and marginalised. The longest I was ever in a job was almost seven years, which was when I worked in a wholefood shop. Again, it was congenial because everyone there was a 'square peg' of one sort or another: uni drop-outs, anarchists, hunt sabs, radicals, ravers, starving artists, street musicians, subversives. It was a den of creativity!