Top 6 Consequences of Hating Your Job

Amy Taylor March 31, 2014

Do you hate your job? If we consider what many studies suggest, you probably do (they claim a significant percentage of workers, between 20% and 40%, are miserable at work). Well, there are many reasons to hate our job. They could include low salaries, unfriendly colleagues, irate clients/customers, abusive bosses, boredom, etc. The list goes on.

In some cases however, these reasons are actually just secondary to one big problem – work-life balance. Many people think that the only way to be successful in their career is to work long hours a day, forget about sleep and relaxation, and sacrifice everything else, including their personal relationships.

It turns out though, that this way of thinking only makes your work life more miserable. It can also make you sick, as in. So before you find yourself spending the rest of your life in the hospital bed, you better start changing your perspective about work. Assess if it’s really the job itself that is making you unhappy or is it the way you think. Once you figured it out, deciding whether to quit your job or simply develop stress-coping strategies gets easier.

Here are the top 6 consequences of hating your job:

Weak Immunity

You probably know how important your immune system is. When you hate your job, it follows that you feel so stressed when you are in your workplace. And that’s where trouble begins. Persistent high levels of stress hormones can weaken your immune system. It is widely thought that workplace stress comes from being too busy at work or working too many hours. But researchers from the University of Manchester found it comes from near-constant state of negativity, for instance, feeling bad most of the time at the office. So if you work really hard, but feel appreciated at work and see your efforts paying off, you’re not as likely to become stressed. But if you are being treated badly, and you spend most of your work days in frustration, worry and depression, you can get stressed even though you only work 30 hours a week.

Poor Sleep

New studies are beginning to clarify the real impact of sleep on our health. Most recent studies on sleep suggest that lack of it can cause havoc on our health and make us more vulnerable to a host of diseases, including diabetes, heart disease, dementia and cancer. Even if they’re not working on something, people who are stressed at work find it harder to fall sleep. Over time, this could develop into sleep disorders that affect both your physical and mental health.

Weight Gain

If you’re finding it hard to manage your weight and you hate your job, you can assume that the two may be linked. In a research published in 2007 in the journal Obesity Research and Clinical Practise, it was found that unhappy work life robs you of the energy you need to exercise and make good dietary choices. That’s it, after a long, stressful day in the office, you are more likely to plunge in a big bowl of ice cream and watch TV than nibble on carrots and walk on the treadmill afterwards.

Higher Risk of Chronic Illness

With all the terrible effects of work-related stress, you can expect to develop a serious illness if you don’t act on it the soonest. In fact, researchers at Harvard School of Public Health in Boston consider job stress to be as dangerous as smoking!

Bad Relationship

Another important fact about job-related stress is that it doesn’t just end the moment you leave the office. It follows you to your home, and up to your bedroom. Feeling miserable and unhappy in your job can greatly impact your relationship with others, especially with your significant other. In a 2000 survey by the Grazia magazine, it was found that women who are unhappy at work have less satisfying sex lives and more problems in their relationships than those who are satisfied with their jobs.

Poor Mental Health

Aside from the physical effects of hating your job, it also causes significant effects on your mental health. First off, it reduces your level of concentration, depletes your motivation, and interferes with your cognitive processes, affecting your decision-making skills. Furthermore, work-related stress could cause you anxiety, feelings of helplessness, constant sadness and other emotional problems that can over time lead to depression.

Your job is important, everyone knows. But your health is important too. Learning how to practise stress-coping mechanisms is one way to achieve work-life balance. But make sure it’s not just stress alone that’s keeping you unhappy at work. If your work environment is not conducive to your health and well-being, you might as well start finding another one.