Job Sastifaction

Job satisfaction, like the tomb of Cleopatra, proves to be just as elusive. It is perfectly possible to have a "dream" job and be miserable, or to be in a lowly position and still be happy.

Just as the archaeologists spend inordinate amount of time to figure out the location where the pulchritudinous pharaoh, an army of psychologists, psychiatrist, behaviour analysts, are employed to study the phenomenon. Volumes of complicated findings notwithstanding, we are nowhere near to any plausible conclusion.

Which brings me to the topic of research.

Sure there is a general consensus that assumes that every research is beneficial, and that knowledge gleaned from research is similarly significant. However, most research is pushed to the margin even before you can pronounce the name of the researcher in one breath, and some, just like those in regard of job satisfaction, are useless; it has a lot more to do with the chase for gravy train and grovelling hierarchies than it does with unearthing the truth.

So where are we now in regarding to job satisfaction?

We are perplexed when they reveal its findings: low-paid workers are apparently happier than the higher paid, that the self-employed are happiest everywhere, that those who work very long hours are actually very happy, that job satisfaction fluctuates hugely over the course of careers, that job satisfaction fluctuates even during the course of the average working day, and that the things make people happy at work are good pay, decent hours and promotion prospects.

But to generalise empirically, from growing up to the griping of the parents to listening to friends and colleagues whine about their work, best jobs are simply that those where (i) you are allowed to develop; (ii) mutual respect and liking amongst your colleagues and you; and (iii) you can measure your performance in some way.

But I digress.

Say what you want about "job satisfaction", it is ultimately an abstraction and may not be simply summed up in research papers, or neatly summarised in a quantitative fashion for that matters. So why is it so hard to refuse the temptation to decipher why we are or aren't happy about our work? Maybe because talking about why aren't we fully satisfied in our works possibly is our parodoxical mechanism for stress relief; a way for us to divert our anger when we are fulfilling our potential.

We may not be happy, but boy do we know how to think of work-related topic to kill time at pantry room idling, water-cooler chat and general dilly dallying.