You Were Warned: How You Know You’re Not Meant To Work For Other People

Disney to remake Pinocchio, but in this one he works at an ad agency where his compulsive lying gets him promoted instead of shunned.

— Meeting Boy (@MeetingBoy) April 9, 2015

I waited too long to start making money for myself. Honestly, I should have known way earlier that I was a poor fit as an office employee. (You may have a similar story.)

I don’t say that in wishful hindsight — I got a pretty clear warning, really early in my work life, that working for other people wasn’t the best way for me to make a living.

Young, Eager, And Full Of Denial

I took a job in customer service at a local power company after my first year in college. Decent pay, decent hours, and that weird mix of career-adults and temporary-college students you find at any call center. Of course there was also awful training to get us all started…

Annoying ice-breakers, team activities, and group projects…hell for an INTJ type like myself. But I pushed through…excelled even. After one apparently difficult activity, our Dilbert-escapee trainer pulled me aside…

“Megan. I am very, very impressed. You’re going to go far in this company.”

My stomach turned. It turned again, 10 years later, when called by my SVP.

“Megan, you’re one of the up-and-coming leaders in the company.”

It’s difficult not to look back and think, “I should have known”. Those are phrases that would send most organizationally-normal people into frenzied productivity. Me? I questioned the very purpose of my existence.

There were quite a few other red flags that I wished I’d tuned in to earlier. They wouldn’t have meant immediate change, but clarity would have been nice…

• Staying up RIDICULOUSLY late watching the most frivolous TV possible (it’s why I have a soft-spot for the Cartoon Network to this day)


• Not bringing decorations of any kind…not even small ones…to my office/cubicle (didn’t want to put down roots)


• Crying in the bathroom on breaks


• Wild shifts in eating habits (I started eating 1200 calories a day — Looked great. Dying inside.)


• Crumbling relationships (Boyfriend of 3 years left me. It was for the best and he was selfish, but my mood had changed…a lot)


• Not signing up for company insurance because I didn’t want to feel connected to them (wasted a lot of money, but it felt worth it at the time)


• Feelings of boiling disdain every time a CEO opened their mouths


• An obsessive investment in hobbies and social circles outside of work I didn’t fully enjoy (the hobbies were great…the people? Eh.)


• Crying before work


• Feeling a deep connection with office rebels (always in the IT department…always)


• Finding Sunday evenings crushingly depressing

Forgiving My Younger Self

I try not to be too hard on myself though. Even if I had fully accepted the meaning behind my chilled spine at hearing that second, emphatic “very”…what would I have done?

Internet businesses and income were definitely happening, but they weren’t as easy to get going as they are today. Knowing who I was then, I probably would have taken a course in entrepreneurship or bought a ton of books on starting your own business, but even that would have only partly answered the question…most materials and activities around “entrepreneurship” just unplug you from one culture (the one of cubes) into another (the one where you exchange business cards, attend workshops, and post Tony Robbins/Tim Ferris/Guy Kawasaksi quotes every morning on your social media accounts).

I wasn’t just put off by corporate environments, I was slowly and internally rejecting connection with a scripted life. Sure, the journey of the “entrepreneur” isn’t as common as that of the cube-dweller, but it’s still uniquely predictable and mundane, much in the way reality TV is…unscripted, but definitely not fresh…definitely not for me.

And that’s what I needed…a path to take my talents and assemble them into a life that fit my needs, strengths, and desires. The funny thing is, that possibly meant the same health administration degree…the same MBA…even the same career. The big, important difference though, would have been knowing I had a bigger purpose in all the torment of my job.

So do I regret some of my career decisions? Yep. I believe regret is awful, but also powerful and important. I can now spot other, ill-fit people a mile away. I can see the frustration and sometimes, resignation, like a black cat on a snow bank. I love these people. They see the world differently and perhaps most importantly, because they’ve worked inside the system, they know what needs to be changed and probably, a few great ways to make some of that change happen.

If you’re one of those people (or just think you are), stick around. This site is just for people like you.

You Were Warned: How You Know You’re Not Meant To Work For Other People