There are so many reasons to hate your job, if you're lucky enough to have one. The top four, according to Spa! magazine, are: stagnant salaries; a sense of being underappreciated and underevaluated; an overriding, unfocused anxiety; and a lost sense of purpose.
Sixteen additional dissatisfactions follow. They are pretty much what you'd expect in a list like this, the only surprise being how widespread they are, shared by some 70 percent of 1,140 male full-time company employees in their 40s surveyed by Spa!
The picture that emerges is of work as, at best, an unhappy experience; at worst, a miserable one. You work yourself to the bone only to be urged to work harder; you barely met this month's inflated quota only to find next month's even more demanding; your boss hates you and you hate him; your subordinates hate you and you don't know what to make of them; the expected promotion didn't come through and it was your last chance, given your age and the accelerating pace of technological and other change that leaves you at sea even in your present job, let alone the one on the next step up. Never mind promotion — what if you get laid off, or the company goes bankrupt? Is it impossible? Is anything?