"Careers" don't really exist in the way we were led to believe at high school "Career Day" events.

When you get right down to it, a "career" is really the life/work/learning path a person sets for oneself, rather than the glamourous-sounding job titles that seemed so attractive when we didn't know anything about what they actually were.

There are a lot of soul-destroying jobs as well as evil people out there, and it's not just the bad bosses who can make your life miserable. This is an unfortunate reality in too many cases, but I don't believe it is the complete picture. Work is often hard, but it does not have to be brutal.

Here are my suggestions for LW:

1) The "work world" is just other people getting stuff done in return for pay—just like you.

Some of these people are terrible, but many, many people "out there" in both large and small organizations are good, decent, intelligent people who are worth knowing and working with. It is not always easy to find these people, but we must make the effort to seek them out. One of our biggest "jobs" in life is working towards bringing the positive, supportive, inspiring people into our life and reducing our exposure to the negative, toxic and destructive people. There must be SOME good people at your company. Find them and learn from them. People love to talk about what they do.

2) Is it your boss who is the problem here, or are you in the wrong organization, or doing the wrong job? Are you even in the right field?

This might be the real question. Many "careers" are impressive things to BE: it is great to "BE" a doctor, an engineer, a marketing executive, etc. But are the tasks in those jobs really what a particular person wants to DO during their workday? This distinction is not really discussed enough in high school or college. But it is the ONE THING you must figure out about yourself if you are to find satisfaction in your life and work.

3) Do you need to upgrade any skills?

Many college programs prepare us in a general way for work, but it can take more time and study (and money) to prepare us for a specialization or niche that helps us become more "valuable" to an employer. You didn't mention what your skills are presently. Are they skills that thousands of competing applicants have, or are they relatively rare? Can you start fine-tuning your best skills? Now might be an ideal time.

4) Can your work be done on a freelance basis? Can you work even a few hours a week from home?

Freelance work can be a good source of income if you have the personality for it and have a good client situation. It does take some preparation, planning, organization, and more than a bit of trial and error, but it has been working for me for 4 years, so I know it can be viable. You have to treat it like a job, and you still have to deal with people and their personalities, just as you would in the office, but it gives you more personal control over the situation and it can become a good source of income.

5) To state the obvious—the economy sucks right now. Many people are in the same situation: stuck in a lousy job and not a lot of opportunity banging on the door.

But it is still worth making the effort to really start figuring things out: where you want to go, what you need to do to get there.

Get your finances in order. Think about what kind of community you want to live in. Where ARE the jobs for people who do what you do? Read up on job-search and resume advice. Keep applying for better jobs, keep meeting people, keep improving what you have to offer. Apply at organizations who don't even have jobs advertised right now. People do retire, quit, move away, go on maternity leave . . . jobs can (and do) open up very suddenly.

And start researching what skills will be in demand in 2-5-10 years time. This recession won't last forever, and you need to be poised to take advantage of the new opportunities that will be there when things pick up again.

There are no magical easy answers to this problem, but I think there are small things that you can do now that can help you improve your situation when the time is right.

Good luck!

Seriously -- I have had to deal with the employee who always had a bad boss, who changed job after job looking for a good one -- and probably failed when they found me :-(

I remember in an office in Tokyo dealing with two young associates, one of whom (she wanted to be a litigator) had decided: (a) not to talk to another -- at all; (b) to give him nervous breakdown by spreading rumours about him (i.e., that he was (i) Korean and (ii) a Communist.) Admittedly he was a bit of an asshole, but she really was a batshit incandescent bitch, and worse still a crap lawyer (had she been marginally talented I might have been tolerant.) In any event I was stuck with the job of straightening them out (after the Senior partner told the young male that (a) if he was Korean that would be a good thing, since we had lots of clients there; (b) and that as long as he was a good Communist like senior partner's father, that was OK).) I learned she was not just a bad lawyer, but just plain stupid ... at one point I asked her what she thought of [opposing lawyers name], answer "really unpleasant and unethical, [co-counsel] really difficult and bad tempered (from her that was rich) -- and I asked her the tough question -- suppose M was you opposing counsel in court, would you not talk to him still -- "Yes!" Stunned I asked, how do you think that would go with the Judge ... no answer.

The law may be an odd place -- there are a lot of strong personalities and contentious people -- but you have to deal with them. You cannot just "nyah-nyah." But so is the rest of the world -- customers come in nice and nasty, friends in easy and difficult, colleagues in supportive and untrustworthy, and that is the way of the world. I worked for years with a managing partner I detested (so many people detested him that 20-odd partners at a recent firm announced that it was him or us -- and he went (not Mike Hausfeld.)

What worries me about this letter is that it seems to illustrate someone who lacks the essential ability to cope with this fact of life, to "suck it up for a while." I love my job/business, but I still find some people tricky and difficult to deal with -- some of my partners can be awkward on occasion. None of these things will make me quit.

Now here is the big one -- if I was an employer and a resume crossed my desk from someone who was just a few months at a job, I would wonder what was wrong. Was this person not competent at the job they are at? And if the explanation was, my boss is a jerk ... well I would conclude that they lacked a key employment skill. I am not saying that you have to put up with sexual harassment, racism, etc., but the everyday obnoxious, marginally competent manager or co-worker -- I want to know you can deal with that, and I would want to see 12-18 months at a job. If I see a lot of job-hopping, especially from someone recently graduated, I get worried. Being a student is much easier in terms of who you have to deal with (the odd nasty Prof for a class or two just) than a job.