How to Deal When Your Day Job Makes You Do Pointless Shit

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We’ve all been there: You’re sitting at your Day Job minding your own business when your boss or some coworker comes up and asks you to attend a boring meeting, fill out a pointless report, finish some useless project, or take on a new task that you know will absolutely 100% never benefit anyone or anything.  It’s times like this when you sit back, throw your clenched fists in the air, and voice that familiar lament we’ve all felt a million times:

Why do I have to do this????

Being handed pointless tasks at work reminds me of being in middle school when a teacher needed to fill a lesson period and would give us some hastily photocopied worksheet that didn’t even try to teach us anything or hone any skills.  Instead, the whole point of the worksheet Continue reading »

What Kinds of Workers Have to Get Overtime Pay?

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A few months back I wrote a piece about American overtime laws and how they set clear boundaries about what kinds of workers need to be paid time-and-a-half for any hours per week they work over forty.  These laws were enacted to 1)Create more jobs by giving employers incentive to hire more workers at the regular rate instead of paying their existing workers the time-and-a-half rate, and 2)To help workers maintain a better work-life balance, because working a lot of overtime sucks hard.

The rules are laid pretty clearly in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act, which I first learned about when my old job as a school secretary overloaded me with more work than I could possibly handle in a 40-hour workweek and I started doing some research.  While the Continue reading »

Day Job Basics #5: The Real Reason to Have a Day Job

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So in Parts 1 through 4 I went through what makes a Day Job different from a Real Job, the philosophies involved with working that Day Job, and how to find which Day Job best fits your current goals.  I talked about money, time, and handling your energy, but there’s one really, really important thing left.

Working a Day Job serves absolutely no purpose if you’re not also working toward your creative goals. Continue reading »

Day Job Basics #4: Your Ideal Day Job

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So like I talked about in Part 3, there are all different kinds of Day Jobs, and they all place different demands on your time, energy, and sanity levels.  You might still be on the hunt for a bill-paying Day Job, you might have what you thought was a Real Job until you decided to make that mental switch to the dishwashing philosophy Continue reading »

Day Job Basics #2: What Makes a Day Job Different From a Real Job?

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Sometimes Day Jobs look a lot different than Real Jobs, like when people work as waiters (or, increasingly, as Uber drivers) in Hollywood while they audition for acting roles.  Sometimes, though, it’s hard to tell whether you’re working a Day Job or a Real Job, especially if you’re not sure what your goals are.

This is a tough question, so let’s talk about washing dishes instead. Continue reading »