In “The Three Signs of a Miserable Job,” bestselling author Patrick Lencioni makes a compelling case that all bad jobs are tainted by the following:

• Anonymity: Does your manager refer to you by a 17-digit number instead of a first name?
• Irrelevance: Do you heal the world one transaction at a time? No…? You’ve got company.
• Immeasurment: It’s not an actual word, but it refers to not being able to even tell if you’re doing a good job. Just imagine getting a ‘Q’ on your report card.

We only bring this up because no one exhibits these unfortunate characteristics better than Pixar animated star WALL-E (Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class). I won’t give any spoilers for the summer blockbuster. But as the last “resident” of a futuristic Planet Earth, WALL-E the robot spends the day compacting trash and building rubbish skyscrapers, all by his lonesome. All he has are his cassette of cheesy show tunes and his pet cockroach. And those are the job perks. Yikes.

Is your job like WALL-E’s? Does your nametag just say, “Guy?” Would anyone notice if you just stopped showing up for work? And was your last performance review written on a napkin?

If so, it’s time to start your job search. Take some inspiration from WALL-E, get off your sprocket, and look for part-time jobs now.

This entry was posted on Monday, June 30th, 2008 at 12:57 pm and is filed under Jobs, Work, Careers, Motivation and inspiration, Pop culture, celebrity workers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.