15 subtle reasons why you might hate your job

2024 Author: Malcolm Clapton | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:44

Workplace discomfort is not necessarily related to low pay or uninteresting tasks.

It happens that you enjoy your job and your colleagues, but the thought of having to return to the office in the morning is scary and unhappy. French scientist Fabrizio Scrima explained The psychometric properties of the workplace attachment style questionnaire with the theory of attachment.

To understand how this works, imagine yourself in a setting that you like. The place where you go to comfort yourself and relax. And then mentally move to where something bad happened. For example, you were once thrown in a restaurant. Now there is the same delicious food and friendly waiters, but you don't want to go there anymore because you don't feel well there.

Your attitude to work is influenced by how you feel about the building where the company is located and how you think about the organization.

And even if in the office you only love the break room where you chase teas with your coworkers, that may be enough to motivate you to come to work. If you are proud of the organization, then you feel more significant, because you are involved in something beautiful and right. A company’s questionable reputation, on the other hand, can be demotivating, even if nothing bad is happening to you.

The scientist proposes to assess attachment to the workplace in accordance with four ways of its formation:

1. Security. You have a positive attitude towards yourself and the place where you work.
2. Concern. You have a positive attitude towards the office, but negatively assess yourself, thinking that you do not belong there.
3. Neglect. You think well of yourself and badly about your place of work.
4. Fear. You have a negative attitude towards yourself and the place where you work.

To assess attachment, Scrima developed a scale of 15 reasons why you can love or hate your job. The fear segment did not fall into it, since during the tests, no participants in the experiment showed signs of simultaneous self-loathing and work. For the remaining three segments, five theses were created.

To test yourself, simply rate each statement on a five-point scale from one (strongly agree) to five (strongly disagree).

The fewer points you score in a segment, the more typical this method of building attachment to work is for you.

Segment of neglect

1. I try to avoid certain places in the company, even if it interferes with my work.
2. Nothing will make me stay at work longer than necessary.
3. I'm afraid to go back to work after vacation.
4. I prefer not to visit some places in my company at all.
5. I try to postpone coming to work.

Segment of concern

1. I often feel anxious at work.
2. Just thinking about my workplace makes me feel uneasy.
3. I find it difficult to feel comfortable in the workplace.
4. Some places in the company evoke bad memories.
5. Sometimes I feel like the workplace depresses me.

Security segment

1. I am attached to my workplace.
2. It will be very difficult for me to leave my workplace forever.
3. My workplace is like me.
4. I enjoy spending time in the workplace.
5. I would not like working elsewhere.

Naturally, many of the answers are to be expected. For example, few people want to linger in the office. And only a few people postpone work until later, because being late is fraught with fines. But the rest of the theses compensate for this predictability, and the format of your relationship with work is determined quite accurately.

Scrima believes that understanding how you form your attachment to work will help you deal with ambivalence.

If you evaluate your attitude towards the company not only on the basis of obvious signs such as salary or a set of responsibilities, this will help you make the right decision regarding your future career.

It’s okay to leave work because of discomfort that is not related to the main tasks, says Scrima. As it can affect your productivity and even mental health.