by Chauncey Kenton

Created on: July 20, 2008   Last Updated: October 11, 2008

My job has great pay and benefits, and I telecommute 50% of the time, working out of my home office. But what if I told you that most days I wake up, and cringe at the thought of walking across the hall to that office, where I feel chained to the computer? But it is true - and I feel so ashamed and overwhelmed with guilt to admit to those feelings. I read somewhere that having a good job and hating it meant that you were imprisoned by "golden handcuffs."

Part of my angst has to do with the structure of my job - there is an uneven distribution of the work load, and I feel that on my so-called "team" of 4 individuals, I am doing more of the work because I am an older female who does not feel that I have an equal voice with my male counterparts. I am a professional worker, and the "guys" like to delegate the clerical aspects of the job to me, because, well - as we all know - clerical work is women's work.

While I am slaving over the clerical aspects of an accounting system, many times the "guys" are out on the company floor, oohing and aahing over the latest products. We work on tight deadlines, so I am usually the one who is steering the ship, trying to get the work done, while they are chewing the fat over last night's baseball game, the upcoming horse race, and the newest tech toys coming into the marketplace.

I would be much happier working by myself, but our jobs are not structured that way. In my 35-year working career, I have found that it is not always the work that causes one to look for a new job, but rather the management and the co-workers, the dreaded "office politics" of the situation.

I have tried to voice my concerns to my manager in a diplomatic way, and I have asked for more challenging work assignments, but my pleas have fallen on deaf ears. I can't figure out why he can't see that the work load is so unfair! There is a quantitative way to measure my work, and on one project, I completed 75% of the work by myself, while the other 3 guys did the remaining 25%. I was told that I needed to work smarter, not harder - and I have no idea as to what that means, since the same amount of work is there to be done, no matter who tackles the project.

I have 10 years to go to retirement, and I am praying that joining this website and exercising my creative writing skills will give me an outlet for my stress, and enable me to develop other marketable skills.

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