I am finding it increasingly difficult to have motivation for work. I feel as though everything I was told growing up is just a lie or untrue. I’ll never forget being told on a consistent basis in high school “people with a college degree make on average a million dollars more in their lifetimes than someone without one.” So from the age of 18-24, I worked on getting a degree. Even though I was lucky enough to have parents who could afford to pay for my college and leave me debt free, I feel that I did nothing but waste my time and their money. No one cares that I have a college degree, if anything I’m “overqualified” for many jobs, but under qualified for others bc I lack experience. Experience I may have gotten if I wasn’t trying to get a degree. The typical responses I get to this would is, “well, it’ll help when you get a job in moving up the ladder”. Fast forward a year after I graduate and am trying to figure out what I want to do, I decide to try working in cannabis. I got hired right after it became legal in CA. (Found out later on they almost didn’t hire me bc I had a degree) Thought, “if I work hard, show them how serious I am, I’ll be able to manage a dispensary for this company one day or open my own.” Well, the opening my own isn’t super realistic, bc the requirements needed for opening a dispensary are basically in the millions of $ range. So I focused on working hard to move up in this company. Got promoted to shift lead after 6 months, worked 12 hour shifts regularly, stayed when people couldn’t make it, went the extra mile whenever I could, and did everything I could to stand out. How was I rewarded after a year and a half? By having someone who was in a lower position than I was, who did not have a college degree, who did not even have a drivers license bc they had been convicted of a DUI, got promoted above me simply bc he and the manager played Call Of Duty together. They like him more. And did they straight up promote him over me? No, they held a “competition” where I was in that position for two weeks, then they had the other guy work it for a couple of weeks and tried to delay that he officially “won” by saying they were still deciding, allowing them to not have to pay one of us more. Then they gave me some BS reason why he won, saying that I could have been doing more, even though no one gave me any feedback during this “competition” and was told I was doing great. Despite ALL OF THIS I Still I stayed for another 8 months after that while having someone less qualified than I was be my boss, only to be fired for basically having a poor attitude. How do you expect someone to have a positive attitude when you royally fucked them? I was never late once in my 2 and a half years of working there, but that didn’t matter. Now I’ve been unemployed for a year, and I feel like the last 10 years since I turned 18 have been a complete and utter waste. My college degree doesn’t help me, my experience doesn’t help me, and I’m right back where I am looking at near minimum wage jobs despite my education and experience. Besides the obvious need to survive, I find it difficult to be motivated or even hopeful in my future professional prospects when all of my accumulated experience has lead me to be no better off now than when I graduated high school. Sorry for the rant and complaining when I know other people have it a lot worse. And I want to work, I really do, I just don’t want to work and not feel like I’m wasting my time, efforts, and my life. I don’t want to spend my time at a job that doesn’t appreciate the hard work I put in, and I want that hard work to eventually be recognized. But right now I’m just angry, bitter, and lacking hope for the future.
TL;DR: did everything you’re “supposed” to do in order to succeed, got a degree, worked as hard as I could at a job. Still got fired and now I’m no better off than I was when I was 18.