Never Feel Like A Sucker For Caring

Caring is a virtue. If you have it, be grateful.

The pain of feeling you’ve been taken advantage of is unique.

It’s sharp and it’s angry.

You care about your work — you don’t own the business, but you really want the best. You take pride in what you do and strive for improvement.

But you’re the only one. Your boss is apathetic. Your co-workers retired a few years ago but haven’t left yet. It seems like you’re the only one there who cares.

And eventually, you just feel like a sucker — a sucker for ever giving a shit what happens. You feel like your co-workers are watching you bust your hump day in and out while they sit back and contribute nothing but reap the same pay.

It’s learned helplessness. You know that no matter what you do, nothing will change and your team will just watch you flounder.

Sucker.

So long as you’re doing the work, they don’t have to. It’s still being done because you’re carrying the weight of ten people, all of whom could be fired with minimal impact on the overall organization because their contributions are so meaningless.

Sucker.

But you’re loyal. And you have work ethic. So you plug along.

It’s easy to hate your company and hate yourself.

Self-hatred and feeling like a sucker may be valid feelings, but are they accurate?

It doesn’t have to be a company; it could be a partner. It could be a child. It could be anyone. If you have this relationship with one person, I bet you have it with several people. And in that case, where exactly is the problem?

Regardless of what’s making you feel like a sucker, there’s one question:

What are you going to do about it?

There’s something odd about Gen X (of which I’m a member) where we got the message that caring was uncool. I think I heard it on NPR — For millennials, everyone gets a trophy. For Gen X, we don’t care about your trophy because it’s stupid anyway.

Related posts:

Iam leaving; and this time for good. Please, don’t be sad; don’t make it harder than it already is. Of course it’s my fault, how could it be yours? You already know it, I’ve told you too many times…

While reading Em Hoccane’s lovely piece about siblings, I couldn’t help remembering my own childhood and the fascinating stories my mom regaled me with stories about her childhood and her eight…