Bad Job vs. Good Job

I recently went on a job interview. I desperately need a new job, but as a Christian I also want what I do to have some eternal significance, so I posted my resume on Intercristo which is a specifically Christian job search engine. It's not just for ministry work, it also has 'secular' jobs, but it is for both employers and employees who are Christian, and looking for the same. Anyway, the person I interviewed with had seen my resume on Intercristo and contacted me because of it.

Now, I will be the first to say that I don't really know anything about the office culture, and the day to day interactions that take place there. However, there was such a striking difference to me between the values, mission and vision of my current job, and the place I interviewed at.

I currently work at a place where no one (and I do not exaggerate - absolutely no one) enjoys being there. I will say that I do actually enjoy WHAT I do, and a good deal of my interactions with customers and agents. But it is a horrible place to work. My immediate supervisor complains loudly and crudely about practically every call - calling people names, swearing at them, exclaiming over how stupid they are. There are constant comments about how people hate working there (mind you some of these people have been complaining about this for years and years). When somebody in my department voices a desire to move into a different department, my supervisor threatens them and tells them they can't do it. Management is constantly putting new rules and regulations and requirements into effect, so that rather than making anything easier, and more palatable, the effect is to make it more difficult, complex and time consuming. I actually overheard one co-worker tell another one that he was going to dress as her for Halloween - he was going to "put on a long black wig and sit around and piss and moan all day!" And they pay at the lower end of the scale for my job, despite the fact that they are the largest company of their kind in the world. There is also a pervading sense of dishonesty throughout the company. When faced with telling a customer something that might cause more work, I've actually heard co-workers encourage others to lie, and then cheer them on when they did just that, exclaiming over how good it feels to get away with it and not have to do the extra work. In general it is a place of dishonesty, disrespect and chaos - not a pleasant place to be for most of your week!

In contrast was the company I just interviewed with. It's a smaller company (only 14 employees) and I was interviewing with the owner of the company. From what he said, he truly values the contribution of each employee and wants to compensate them fairly for what they do. He wants to take 25% of the profits and donate them to mission/ministry work, 25% to "pour back into the employees", 25% to continue to build the company and expand it. (Yes, I know there's another 25%, but I can't remember what he said he wanted to do with that.) He wants to hire Christians, because he wants people who have that eternal perspective, and who share the same values he does, but he also wants to hire non-Christians - both because he doesn't want to be exclusive and because he wants to have opportunities to witness at work. You occasionally have to work on Saturday, but when you do the company provides breakfast at a restaurant down the street before work starts. In general he was very down to earth, respectful and peaceful, and I got that same sense from the other people in the office that I met, however briefly.

These two stand in stark contrast in my mind at the moment, and I find myself hoping and praying that I will get offered this new job, and that it will pay enough that I'll be able to take it. I have the job I have now because I desperately needed a job to support my family, and I knew even going into it that I would not want to stay there for very long. But I need a place where I can look forward to coming into work, look forward to my interactions with co-workers (not just customers), feel good about what I do - a place that I can stay at for a while, a position that I can grow and progress in. I've been developing a very keen sense of what I don't want in a new job - and by extension what I do want - and this new place seems, so far, to fit in well with both of those. I don't know yet if I will get it - but I do know that I cannot stay for very much longer where I'm at!