You don't need to know that I hate my job.

Post date: 2021-03-04 03:04:12

I have a well-paying, secure, kinda fancy job that is frankly aspirational in my country. People make admiring noises when they hear where I work, and want to know how I like it. Anticlimax (or probably not) below the fold.

I hate my job. I HATE it. I have a terrible, sexist, condescending boss (Nieshka, you do know how to google, yes?). The work environment is toxic AF and has gotten significantly worse over the last few years. I dread workday mornings. It requires me to work very very far outside my aptitude/actual skill set and thus every single day is an exhausting comedy of trying to bend my brain to parse stuff it is simply.not.good.at. It makes me ill to think of progressing in this career because this feeling of inadequacy would only get worse, I think. Unfortunately, financial security and job stability are things that I cannot sneeze at, especially in a post-pandemic world.
I hate my job so much that I segued quite a bit away from my actual question into a rant. Huh. Sorry.
It so happens that even if all these things are true...there's no real point to griping at everyone. Or telling the unvarnished truth to what is just a casual question. And I am fully cognizant that it can come off somewhat tone deaf to complain about what from the outside looks like a sinecure.
What is an appropriate response when people ask me about my job? It's a question that comes up in interactions with new folks, acquaintances, relatives, even immediate family from time to time (as in how's it going etc. Thank you for asking sibling, today I wanted to set fire to everything, yesterday it was fantasizing about changing my name and running away. I'm exaggerating but not by a lot). I'm not interested in sharing the crappy specifics, but I cannot seem to work out a bland answer that still feels honest, and there's NO WAY I can make myself say I enjoy it or love it. This feels like a really small thing to be bothered by, but as I said, it comes up a lot.
So. What do I say?
Thank you for reading and your inputs.

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