5 Signs You Should to Quit Your Job. Like, Today.

A recent survey I pulled out of my ass indicates that the average person will spend 10.3 years of his life at work. If you don’t think that’s a long time, picture yourself hooking up with someone 10.3 years younger than you. Shit, that was easier than I thought. Let’s try another angle.

A wise man once told me:

The definition of Hell is on your last day on Earth, the person you became meets the person you could have become.

Ok, I read it on a homeless man’s sign outside of a 7 Eleven. Regardless, that shit’s brilliant and earned him half a Taquito because I’m a giver and can use it as a tax write-off.

The point is: I doubt that better version of yourself would waste 10.3 years of his life merely existing at an unfulfilling job. You 2.0 would relentlessly seek out his passions and exploit them for monetary purposes. You 2.0 would come in early and leave late instead of constantly blaming his tardiness on the unreliability of public transportation. You 2.0 would have the corner office overlooking the river instead of that glorified IKEA box you work in now. You 2.0 would also probably not be reading this article. So fuck that guy. Pretentious prick.

Here are 5 work red flags that are clear indicators it’s time to turn You into You 2.0: Pretentious Prick Version.

Spending Excessive Amounts of Time in the Bathroom Stall

If for you the old saying “shit or get off the pot” translates to “shit and stay on the pot for 47 minutes looking at videos of piglets slipping on ice” on your iPhone, you should probably update your resume. If instead of decorating your cubicle, you start plastering pictures of your loved ones on the bathroom stall dividers, you’re probably not going to get that fat bonus that’s been eluding you for years.

But I guess I’m being a little hyposhitical because I’ve waited for a Comcast representative for less time than I’ve spent locked inside my work’s bathroom stall. Like instead of writing “Matt Was Here” in Sharpie on the stall, it would be more realistic to write “Matt Never Left”. I couldn’t tell you if the dude from Accounting is named Tom or Tim but I know he wears a size 10 Sperry and eats Mexican on Thursdays.  Bottom Line: if the best part of our day is subjecting ourselves to a shit-smelling solitary confinement, let’s work to find an occupation where shitting is less of an escape and more of an inconvenience.

P.S. Billion Dollar Idea: Flat screens on the inside of bathroom stall doors. I’d name the company Shit Show, LLC. There isn’t one person reading this that wouldn’t watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy on company time with their pants around their ankles. Shark Tank would have granted me an investment if I didn’t show up drunk and call Herjavec a pussy. He wouldn’t know what to do what that Zuckerberg money anyway. 

Loathe Talking about Work with Outsiders 

“Hey Matt, nice to meet you. What do you do for work?”

“Well let’s see, Chad. I stroll into the office at around 9:42 am every morning after snoozing my alarm 16 times and immediately pull up my emails. Fuck it, I’ll get back to them after lunch. Then, I go for a 30 minute coffee break and force myself to drink something that tastes like ball sweat. I return to my 2×2 cubicle where I will wait to shit. I shit and sit for about 45 minutes until my group meeting at 11 pm. I sit in the meeting pretending to take notes but I’m just writing my signature over and over again “Matt Keohan #21, Follow Your Dreams” because naturally youngsters are standing in line to get the autograph of a Corporate Slug (#21). That brings me to my next 2 hour block: lunch time. When I’ve eaten till I’m even sadder, I return to my desk. My mom always told me to wait 30 minutes to swim after you eat, and I don’t see how doing work is any different. Then, I’m ready to use that invaluable college degree I “earned.” I begin to answer long overdue emails with phrases like “Pending Confirmation”, “Best Wishes” and “Kill Yourself.” Corporate douches love most of that lingo. After about 8 minutes I reward all of my hard work with a stroll to the kitchen for a cup of water where I will get cornered by Bill about who fucking cares. When I shake myself free of Bill’s suffocating halitosis, I return to my work cell where I have trained myself to stare at an irrelevant excel spreadsheet with a perplexed look like I’m trying to figure something out or holding in a fart. The before I know it, BOOM: 4:50! Quittin Time! I know you’re going to tell me anyway so uh, what do you do.”

“Well, I love my work. I work in finan–”

“Fuck you, Chad. Fuck you.”

Looks Aren’t Everything, They’re Nothing. 

In my experience, one’s appearance at work directly correlates to his productivity. If you have fewer outfits than Doug Funny and/or you consistently look like the pigeon lady from Home Alone, you probably suck at your job and the only reason they’re keeping you around is because everyone else looks fly in comparison.

Take me for example.  If it weren’t for my mom buying me work clothes on my birthday as a passive aggressive gesture to instill career-confidence, I probably would just roll into work with jean cargo shorts and a wife beater. Come to think of it, that’s actually not a bad idea. Because who’s going to bark orders at a guy who lifts chest in a yellowish wife beater and JNCO’s? A fuckin lunatic with a death wish, that’s who. Because there has never been anyone in history who wore that outfit and had something to lose. Only because it’s impossible to lose anything in those cargo pockets. Them shits are like stylish armored Brink trucks.

So I amend my original statement: in order to get what you want in the work world, you gotta look really good or really fucking intimidatingly bad. The danger zone is that middle ground: the wrinkled work shirts with the rips in the elbows, the tight ass work pants that you bought before your creatine cycle, those all black velcro sneakers that cause people to wonder if you actually work in the office or just there to empty people’s trash.

If any of these characteristics resonate with you, update your LinkedIn profile.

You Think You’re Better Than Everyone in the Office

You’re Charles Woodson on the Oakland Raiders. Your “teammates” make more money than you but you’re still on your rookie deal even though you’ve been with the squad for 5 years. More money equals more responsibility and you’re planning on getting picked up by a contender any day now even though you haven’t updated your resume since the NFL was the AFL.

For those non-football fans, you are the type of person who fears becoming that well-dressed old guy in the office who is content with his manager role and has been for the past 16 years. You pity his very existence. The irony is that old guy has a house, a car, and a nice watch and you have poor credit and herpes. But it doesn’t matter if your credit cards are maxed out as long as your bench press is too. That old fart doesn’t even lift. Poor old man.

Clicking on this Article to Begin With

I mean I don’t click on articles entitled “Makeup Tricks to Make You Look Younger” or “Grow Your Penis By 2 Inches in 2 Weeks” because they don’t apply to me. I don’t usually wear makeup and I need a lot more than 2 inches. Reading this sorry excuse for an advice column is all the indication you need to revamp that job search that you promised yourself you’d start 8 months ago after you took a nap under your desk.

All of this coming from the guy who’s writing this from his tiny cubicle at a job an obedient monkey could do. Oh, the irony.

Matt Keohan Avatar
Matt’s love of writing was born during a sixth grade assembly when it was announced that his essay titled “Why Drugs Are Bad” had taken first prize in D.A.R.E.’s grade-wide contest. The anti-drug people gave him a $50 savings bond for his brave contribution to crime-fighting, and upon the bond’s maturity 10 years later, he used it to buy his very first bag of marijuana.