Matthew Gates 4m 1,042
The views of this article are the perspective of the author and may not be reflective of Confessions of the Professions.
How long have you been able to hold a job?
Whenever I see an actor or actress on television and notice that they are in there fourth or fifth season, I am quite happy for them that they have have worked for 4 or 5 years and been able to hold a job. For people who retire after working for so many years and have been lucky to hold the same job that has helped them pay their way, this is also an amazing but often unheard of feat. My own father, who is now retired after dedicated service to a Supermarket called Pathmark, gave them around 30 years of his life.
Pathmark, at the time, offered a pension and benefits, so when he retired, he was able to receive a pension, plus his Veteran Affairs benefits, and eventually he will even be able to collect his Social Security. For some people, it is hard to hold a job. For even those who show up to work everyday, perform the tasks they have to do, and then go home afterwards, it’s also hard to hold a job because there are so many factors that could cause the loss of a job.
For me, my lucky number seems to be 1.3 to 1.5 years in holding a job. I have held a steady line of jobs with everything going great, but either I grow bored and tired of the job and start looking for another job and quit, or the company lays me off, or life events happen that force me to relocate or find another job. Everything always happens at 1.3 to 1.5 years. I can count about 5 jobs on a resume that I’ve held that all equate to 1.3 years.
If I can make it past this number, I usually know I’ll be at the job for a while. It almost makes me look like a job hopper or that I have some beef with the company after that number is up, though I never had intended for the master plan to be 1.3 to 1.5 years, it just happened that way. I had been looking at my resume, specifically on LinkedIn, and noticed that a majority of my jobs had that number. What was so unique about that number? Absolutely nothing.
Whichever company I work for I always try to be a loyal employee, love the company for what its doing, and try to help in ensuring it makes its vision into a reality. I show up to work, I try to do the job as best as I can, and in some instances, stay an extra half hour to an hour after work to ensure I’m not behind. As I get older, I know finding a job will get harder, because most companies will want to hire fresh material right out of college, pay them less than half of what the normal salary is for a particular job. While it is not my biggest concern right now, as
The longest job I’ve held in my life was for a dead end security company that offered no perks, no benefits, no health insurance, no pension. It was a simple job: Work for your paycheck. That was about it. Am I supposed to be working for more? Am I supposed to not want to advance in a company? Is there anything wrong with a dead end job other than the fact that there is no where to go, no room for advancement, and possibly not even a possibility of a raise? I held that job for about four years before I had enough and was ready to move on. I departed ways and gave my two-weeks, which was probably the best decision I made in my life.
I really hope it is normal for me to feel the way I do when it comes to jobs. I am sure there are plenty of people who accept their dead end jobs and go in everyday, without much complaint, because it continues to allow them to pay their bills and make a paycheck. For me, I am always looking for advancement opportunities. Maybe I could hold a job that I love for years without any pay increase or advancement, but how many of those actually exist?
And is it really dead end, then? What if a janitor loves his job and works hard everyday, without any room for advancement and raises? Is he still motivated to work? I always wonder why I can’t just be happy or satisfied forever holding a single job, even if it happens to be a dead end job. Perhaps the reason is because nearly every company on this planet does not pay anyone what they are supposedly worth.
What are we worth exactly? Going by the salary estimator of Monster, Indeed, or any other career site surely seems to exaggerate and explode the number. Unless you are an engineer in any field, you are most likely never to be paid what these salary websites estimate. You get what the company feels is the real pay. In fact, the pay almost seems to be cut in half or a third of what you actually receive of the estimate.
Does this mean that companies are taking advantage of people? Does it mean that these career websites are outdated and do not reflect the real salary in real world standards? Or does it just mean that no human is worth the value of their occupation? Maybe it is the fact for every person who feels they could be paid more, there is another person who will do it for less. This is how the real world operates. Even the CEO of a company does not get paid what they are really worth – they usually get paid a whole lot more.
The average number on my resume has now become a part of my life and I almost always look at the 1.3 to 1.5 year mark to know whether I am staying at a job or leaving, whether by voluntarily or involuntarily. Fortunately for me, at my latest job, I’ve now crossed the threshold of a decade and looking forward to working another decade for the same company.
What is your average number of years worked?
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