Most people are happy when they get a new job, but a Gallup survey revealed that it doesn’t always last.
According to a 2013 Gallup State of the American Workplace report, 70 percent of 150,000 people surveyed admitted to disliking, being disengaged with or outright hating their jobs.
University of Memphis management professor David Allen explained why this could be so.
“I think a contributing factor is that labor markets have been generally less favorable for workers since 2008,” Allen said. “As companies have streamlined operations and tried to keep wages flat, many workers have felt increased work pressure with fewer options to change jobs if they are unhappy.”
According to the report, employee unhappiness spreads through the workplace, which can leads to employees calling in sick when they’re not, turning away customers and stealing from the employer, costing the market $450 to $550 billion in productivity each year.
Ashley Wilson, 21, couldn’t agree more. She’s been in retail for two years and feels stressed from the moment she punches the clock.
“If I’m having a bad day, I’m tempted to be angry at my customers,” she said. “I’ll frown before you can get in my line just so [customers] won’t be tempted to wait in my line.”
She admitted to not paying attention when customers switch tags on items for lower prices or walk out with merchandise without paying.
“If [the company] loses money, I don’t care,” she said. “They don’t pay me enough to care.”
Bennie Minor, a loss prevention supervisor, believes that workers who are dissatisfied with their jobs can be problematic to the business as a whole.
“People who are not happy at work find it easier to blame the job for their unhappiness and can start to believe the company owes them something more than a paycheck,” he said.
According to Wilson, the job would be satisfying if her manager didn’t “belittle” their employees and the company paid more.
“Pay is everything,” Wilson said. “If I were to have an increase in pay, I would care about my job 85 percent more — $7.25 an hour is nothing.”
She has now been working for the company for two years, and Wilson has only earned an 11 cent raise in that time. Despite her dissatisfaction, Wilson is hesitant to quit her job.
“Finding a job is hard, especially in Memphis — plus once you get comfortable with a job it’s easy to stay,” she said. “After a while you’ll know the ins and outs.”
Tolbert Gurley, 39, believes that people shouldn’t settle for a job they don’t love to do. Gurley is a forklift operator, but aspires to be a fitness trainer one day. He’s planning to invest the money that he earns at his current job into starting his own fitness training center. He has done so in the past, but he was not successful the first time around.
“You’ve got to realize you’re going to fail, but you have to get back up and do it differently — that’s how you learn,” he said.
He described the desire for a dream job as “wanting what you want so much it is like trying to breathe.”
Gurley has been training body builders for more than two decades, but didn’t realize for quite a while that it could be a paying job.
“It didn’t seem practical to me. I was taught in school that you had to get a job and work at a corporation — that’s enslavement,” he said. “For many years I did it, I went to work and worked different types of jobs, and every job I go to, I’m good at it for a little while, but then I become uninterested because it is not what I love.”
Management expert Allen said high job satisfaction doesn’t necessarily mean people work harder, “but it does tend to mean that people pay more attention to the quality of their work and are more likely to go out of their way to help customers.”
Malvin Massey, 63, said “satisfaction” is exactly what working in radio gives him — it isn’t always about the money.
“When I started in 1988 I wasn’t getting paid, I was just a volunteer,” he said.
In fact, he didn’t get paid for 10 years before he became an official employee at the University of Memphis. “I just like being associated with jazz. It’s not like being president, but it’s important to the culture.”
He has worked other jobs in the past to keep things afloat financially while volunteering at WUMR on campus, but when the opportunity for him to become general manager of the station came along five years ago, it was an offer he couldn’t refuse.
“The main thing about it is that I went from using my muscles to using my brain,” he said.
Amber Coburn, a college dropout, works a full-time job at FedEx as a material handler. She dreams of becoming a computer technician. She said she dislikes her job, because she feels as though the company does not care about employees.
“They work you like a slave — it’s hot and we get no water,” she said.
She said many employees avoid reporting being hurt on the job.
“If you get hurt, it’s an automatic write-up — they feel like it’s your fault,” she said. “You could lose your job if you get hurt.”
Although Coburn isn’t pleased with her working conditions, she doesn’t mind continuing working because “it’s a job.”
For University of Memphis math major Ephraim Graham, 19, tutoring middle and high school children isn’t just a job.
“If I help a kid [with math] and [he or she] goes on to become an engineer or a math teacher, I’m indirectly responsible — that makes me feel good,” he said.
Graham began tutoring in March to help prepare students for the Tennessee Comprehension Assessment Program. Although he receives payments for his service, Graham feels getting paid for it isn’t necessary.
“It’s helping someone, and that’s what I’m all about,” Graham said.
