unemployment vs job you hate

What do you prefer?

I was informed today I'll become unemployed next month but for some reason I don't ffeel sad or angry or anything. It was 2 years and half doing the same thing and I was already hating the job. 1 year with unemployment insurance and a good bonus for end of contract. Can't complaint

What about u? Do you prefer working on something u hate or be unemployed?

Depends on your financial responsibilities, how much you have on your bank account and whether you have a partner who can cover for you until you get a new job. I'd rather have a job I hate than seeing my family go through a hard time.

Can't even imagine what's fun about being unemployed.

No cash, no motivation, very little social aspect, no routine, if I were to be without a job, I'd go and rough it as a chicken farmer on the Soloman islands.....but then even that's a job.

I hate where I currently work. I'm not really learning anything new; it's a bunch of rinse and repeat. I would describe the work place atmosphere as lethargic. Nobody seems to care about whether something is delivered on time.

Unemployment isn't an alternative for me. I would rather look for a new job, which is exactly what I've been doing.

Get up off that ass and find a job. Most people hate their job. They have a support group for that, it's called happy hour....

I would rather have a job I hate. When you have financial obligations, nothing is more stressful than worrying about money.

Well I'm responsible adult with financial obligations. I'd rather hate my job and have money than be unemployed.

It really depends on your situation I suppose, personally I would rather be working as unemployment is terrible. When I was on it back in 2012 for a couple months (got let go without severance) it only paid $35 a week. Since then I have been doing contract jobs with the exception of one full-time position that didn't work out and that was the job I truly hated. I don't know if I would ever go back there, but I wouldn't sit around and do nothing either.

@Justinps2hero yeah the nothing to do aspect of unemployment will definitely drive you nuts.

I think both should be temporary. I know people that doesn't have both and aren't getting unemployment since it ran out and can't work because of illness. It sucks, so you just have to enjoy life.

job you hate while looking for job you like.

Losing a job you hate can actually feel good if you have a financial cushion. If you're living paycheck to paycheck unemployed is worse than the job you hate. Don't stay unemployed too long because it makes it harder to get a job. Employers wonder why you were out of work for so long and usually decide to pass on you.

My job is kinda boring not gonna lie, but hey, it pays well so can't really complain

Yep.

If you have enough money to drink at the end of the week then having a job you hate is worth it.

@Justinps2hero: personally I have cash. In 2 years and a half I managed to save a respectable amount of money. And I still have a right to unemployment insurance so money is the least of my concerns for the next year. I couldn't give a rat's a** about social aspect and honestly you speak of a "routine" as something positive which I don't. I was tired of doing the same shit over and over again.

If I had someone dependant on me then Yeah, I would be concerned but I don't. I'm single and young so new and hopefully better opportunities will come. Not to mention I was working far from home and had barely anyone in the town II'm currently living in. So yeah, I prefer to be unemployed than miserable. What's the point of having a job if you're not happy? That's just wasting years of your life being miserable. No thx

Oh, and Im also writing a book and I'll finally have the time I need to focus on that So it's not like I wI'll be doing nothing

Thankfully i have only been on unemployment once for 6 months. Bastards would not give me more then that, even though i had been working for about 12 years or so. Not i hear you get one year at least, must be nice. Sounds like you got a good deal. I can actually choose to get unemployment, and a bonus right now, but i'd rather keep working. I do think about it. School, while collecting seems like a good idea. But how hard is the market for IT these days ? I think its best i stay working for now.

Take some time off and climb Mt. Everest or something. Enjoy yourself. Unless you have dependents or pressing financial concerns then there's no reason not to.

If I could live without a necessity for a decent paycheck then sure why not. But if i needed a job to pay the bills then it doesn't matter how much I hate the job, I'll likely take it, that is until something better comes along.

Yeah, had a feeling unemployment/not working definitely isn't what its cracked up to be. But then again currently doing a job you hate can often mean that is quite stressful as well, yeah sure, still, money/good pay, but, I don't know, seems like there can be quite a bit job situations out there where bosses or what-not make going to work every day such a living hell, that suddenly getting money isn't even worth it, especially if the job does not actually have that good for pay.

Tough to decide I think really.

Depends on your own personal situation. You should only work if you want to, or have to. If you can get by and enjoy your life without being a corporate/wage slave, more power to you.

If you can afford to be unemployed then I think a lot of people would consider that preferable. A while ago someone I know fell victim to a round of redundancies at their work place and they just seemed happy to be out of there. And in the years since it seems the company was still struggling so staying on would only have continued to expose them to the uncertainty over their job.

Was only unemployed once, for like 8 months in one of the busts mid aughts. That "insurance" amounts to a hill of beans compared to a real salary. I've been lucky enough to avoid jobs I "hate" but when I was in HS and college age I certainly worked jobs I disliked.

Job. No question. I was unemployed for a LONG time, and the amount I missed out on because I had hardly any money was horrible. I was stuck at home all the time while my friends got to do stuff like go on Holidays together, go out drinking every night, go to theme parks. Occasionally I managed to scrape some money together to go with, but it wasn't very often and I feel like I missed out on some of the best moments of my life simply because I couldn't find a job. Though one thing I would say for it is that I appreciate and enjoyed the times I did get to go a lot more than my friends because it was a rare treat rather than a constant thing.

I worked for 6 years in a kennels from 1998 to 2004. The day my kidney failed and had to go on dialysis 4 times a day. I have had a kidney transplant 7 years ago and not worked since 2004. Sometimes I want to work then other times I don't when I see people full of cold and with my immune system low with tabs and other things im on I always think no. Am I wrong in not working?.

There was one job I had like that many years ago. I was fresh out of the military, had a new family to support, and was trying to find work to start my new civilian life. Having military on your resume looks good but other than the positive perception most people have about the military "I shot guns and jumped out of planes" doesn't exactly translate into the civilian world experience wise.

I did end up getting a job at big box electronics store as their customer service lead. I looked at it as a great opportunity as it paid pretty well ($15/hr, which is a lot in my eyes at the time) and I figured it would be a nice stepping stone into management as well.

I lasted 2-3 months.

Basically I discovered I am not the type of person who can deal with shitty people on a daily basis and that's exactly what customer support is. People would scream at me, curse me out...I even had a old dude throw an old cell phone at me. Mind you, he was pissed I couldn't take back his 3 year old cell phone and there was literally nothing I could do about it.

At first I tried to just take it in stride, and to be honest it was somewhat comical and I kinda laughed off the situations. After a few weeks though it started to get to me and in a big way. Here I am fresh out of the military, 4 months from getting back from Afghanistan, and I am sitting behind a desk getting berated by nasty 40 year old women because I can't take back their old piece of crap that she purchased 6 months ago. This place had a 30 day return policy, and yeah sometimes it could flexed a bit if it was like 35 or 40 days...not 6 months though.

Oh, and these freaking soccer Mom's were the absolute worst. I am glad I never have to deal with this type of person on those term again. I wish I was a chick with nothing to loose because I would have loved to jump over that counter and rammed their crummy item down their throat.

Anyways final straw was this one soccer Mom type...she basically wanted to return an item (was within 30 day period), get the same item again. That wasn't a big deal, but the issue was that item came with a promotional item (which she didn't return). The same item had a new promotional item, and she wanted that too. That was against policy, but I asked my direct manager anyways...she said no. I relayed I could do the exchange but she can't have both items.

At that point the Bertha Lovejoy look-a-like went into a frenzy and started screaming at me. The service line was getting long though so I told her I would try and get the store manager but I needed to take care of other customers. She stomped off like the T-Rex from Jurassic Park and I thought that was the end of it. It wasn't.

She ended up finding the store manager and told him all sorts of lies, including that I wasn't helping her and that I was on the phone talking to friends. This was a complete lie. Didn't matter, customer always right, yadda yadda yadda. I told the store manager to check the phone records which would prove it but he said it didn't matter, long story short the customer was upset and that was my fault. I wasn't going to be fired but I did need to take some re-training classes. I don't know why but at that point I just had enough...took off my store shirt, told the boss to find someone else, and walked out.

I had a family, and looking back it wasn't the most responsible thing to do. But I just couldn't take it anymore...nobody deserves to be treated like that and as a veteran I am certainly not going to take that kind of abuse from these selfish and venomous people.

In essence, I agree with the folks who say that typically it's more important to be responsible and to hold a job. With that said, sometimes enough is enough.

Happy ending...I went back to school, found a great profession, and now love my job and make tons of money. I think that experience really shocked me into getting my ass in gear so I would never have to work a job like that again.

I have spent the last 9 months of my life unemployed and was given the opportunity to take a training course I couldn't have afforded on my own over the past 6 weeks to become a professional truck driver. I'm going for my pre-employment road test on Monday and will be starting work on the 23rd of March. I'm also guaranteed 2 years of work with the company that sponsored me and will be making a minimum of about $50,000 a year over that time. After two years, I should be making about $275 a day gross for a combination of Canada and US driving.

i work in a oil related industry. I went from working sometimes 70 hours a week or more last year making almost 100k to this year having a 3 week layoff and coming back finding out my shift is gone. The moved me to "security" working 32 hours in a little booth. A lot of people took a voluntary 6 month layoff.

Do you invest part of your earnings in stocks, bonds, and other assets? If not, why not?

I was a Gamestop manager for 5 years, and let me tell you- when I quit and was unemployed for about 6 weeks, it was a great feeling. Some jobs are just so sickeningly terrible that unemployment just feels like detox. Obviously depends on your financial situation, but during those 6 weeks I put a lot of time into cooking, which is a great life skill to have.

Find a job even if it's suck. You don't want too much downtime on your resume unless you are going back to school. Gaps in employment for no good reason is not good from a hiring manager standpoint.

@emil_fontz: well other than my 401k and company stock we buy at discount and some given to us depending on years worked no.