I was desperately searching for a job but now I have it, I don’t want it

It has been a little over a month now since I have started working. My job is not anything “hard” I am not required to do anything crazy but I am slowly getting tired of it. Am I ungrateful for not wanting to work anymore? I feel like I am stuck in a constant cycle of waking up and doing the same things day in and day out. I hardly deviate from what I do each day and I truly do not enjoy what I am doing.

Even though my job is not particularly “hard”. I still feel anxious and sick every single day before I arrive. The money isn’t even motivating me anymore nor is the experience. Once I get paid which is every two weeks, half of my pay check goes to transportation and food. The rest goes to saving which almost leaves little to nothing for me to enjoy.

I soft launch it to the people around me that I am going to quit at the end of this month, but some are telling me not to whilst others are telling me that I should.I am not sure if this is a more mental issue or something. What should I do? Should I quit and peruse or should I toughen up and endure it?

Jobadvisor

You are not ungrateful. Wanting more from life than a monotonous loop that drains your mental health isn't entitlement—it's a human signal that your current situation isn't sustainable.

When you spend weeks or months desperately looking for work, your brain treats getting any job as the ultimate finish line. When the reality sets in—monotony, high commute costs, and a small net payoff—it creates intense psychological dissonance. You expect to feel relieved, but instead, you feel trapped.

Feeling anxious and physically sick every morning isn't laziness or a lack of mental toughness; it is your nervous system reacting to chronic dread. Pushing through standard friction is normal when starting a new role, but enduring daily physical dread for a job that barely leaves you with spending money is a fast track to severe burnout.

You do not have to choose strictly between quitting empty-handed or suffering indefinitely. Consider a strategic middle ground:

Treat the job as a funded bridge: Shift your mindset. This isn't your life; it's just a temporary source of cash while you look for the next step.
Dial back your emotional investment: Do what is required to perform adequately, but stop giving the job your mental space off the clock. Preserve that energy for your job search.
Audit the math: If half your paycheck goes toward transportation and food just to stay at this job, look into ways to minimize those costs short-term, or prioritize finding a local/remote position where your net income actually feels rewarding.
Set a hard deadline: If you have enough savings to cover basic expenses for a few months, quitting to protect your mental health is a valid choice. If you don't have a safety net, set a realistic exit date—say, 60 days—and dedicate your off-hours to aggressively applying elsewhere. Having a tangible end date makes the daily grind much easier to tolerate.

What does your financial safety net look like right now if you were to walk away at the end of the month?

Im going absolutely fucking crazy working nightshift

I work in the maintenance trade (maintenance mechanic) and while I like the work and solving mechancial/electrical problems, I fucking hate this shift to my core. I never thought it be a problem but more than 1 year in and I feel I can't take it anymore.

I need to get this Refrigeration Engineer license and it will be my ticket to a seriously great paying job and out of night shift. The problem is that I have to do the tests in the morning/early afternoon and my shift is from 11pm-7:30am. I can change shifts at my place but the shitty manager is in the day shift and that bitch goes on insane power trips.

I feel like im in a bit of a trap. I took this job because I was really desprate and was on the verge of completely giving up looking for work for good and on life in general. Guess now I have experience on me so it'll be easier to get a job or maybe I should wait another year? Idk because like today Im seriously crashing out right now at home.

I like doing my work but I can't take the shift, my mind is decaying. What I can do is get myself suspended for a month or 2 by not coming to work and having poor atendence. Should I do it?

Jobadvisor

First off: Do NOT deliberately get yourself suspended.

Intentionally racking up absences to get suspended is an extreme gamble that will almost certainly backfire. In trade mechanics, managers don't just suspend you; they terminate for cause ("job abandonment" or "gross negligence"). That forfeits your unemployment benefits, burns your reference, and puts a giant black mark on a year’s worth of solid maintenance experience you desperately need for your resume.

You are not trapped—you are severely sleep-deprived and experiencing the cognitive decay that night shifts cause when they break your body's circadian rhythm.

Here is how to get out without blowing up your career:

DO NOT sacrifice the Refrigeration Engineer license. That license is your golden ticket out of shift work and into high-margin commercial/industrial facilities. Treat that exam like a second job, but schedule your study blocks and test dates strategically using PTO, personal days, or unpaid medical leave rather than unexcused absences.
Leverage your 1+ year of trade experience immediately. A year as a maintenance mechanic with both mechanical and electrical troubleshooting experience makes you highly hireable right now. You are no longer the desperate applicant you were a year ago. Update your resume today and start applying strictly for 1st or 2nd shift roles.
Request a temporary shift swap or accommodation for the exam. Before writing off day shift entirely because of the manager, frame a shift change request formally around professional development (e.g., taking state/trade licensing exams). If internal transfer is blocked by the manager, it simply confirms you need to take that experience elsewhere.
Protect your mental bandwidth off the clock. Right now, your brain is in crisis mode because night shifts wreck serotonin and cortisol regulation. Stop giving extra energy to the job off-shift: do your 8 hours, clock out, prioritize dark-room sleep, and focus every remaining drop of energy on job applications and test prep.

How far along are you in preparing for the Refrigeration Engineer exam, and how many test modules do you have left to take?

Got reprimanded in a review once that I was “coming in late” at 8:15 AM and “leaving early” at 5:15 PM

In my work career so far, I’ve worked at 3 companies, 1 was an internship and 2 were full-time associate positions.

Company 1 (internship): I’d get to work any time between 8:00-8:20 with my commute being about 20 minutes. And then leave between 5:15-5:30. I didn’t hear a peep or complaint from management nor did they bring it up at all in my end of internship review.

Company 2 (full-time position): same exact thing as company 1 except my commute was 40 minutes. I got dinged in my 90 day review for coming in late and then leaving early. There were two departments on our floor, audit and tax. I was in audit. I always saw the tax people get into the office around 9:00 and then leave at or soon after 5:00. But for some reason, the audit people were told to come in right at 8:00 (seniors and managers walked into the office around 8:10 most days).

Company 3 (full-time position): after leaving company 2 due to other bullshit apart from the ridiculous time expectations, I came here. Commute was 20-25 minutes. Nervous about what happened last time, for the first 2 months, I was always the first and ONLY person in the office coming in at 8:05 with just the admin people. Everyone else walked in between 8:15-8:20. And then people always left around 5:15. I didn’t get reprimanded at all here either.

Am I tripping or was company 2 just full of shit and out to get me with my “time management”? As you can see, I only had issues with that one company about my arrival and departure time of leaving the office.

Jobadvisor

Company 2 was full of shit. You are not tripping at all.

What you experienced at Company 2 is a classic symptom of toxic micro-management and departmental double standards, which run rampant in public accounting and rigid corporate environments.

Here is why that reprimand was completely unreasonable:

The Math Doesn't Even Make Sense: Arriving at 8:15 AM and leaving at 5:15 PM is a 9-hour span. Even taking a full 1-hour lunch, you were putting in a full 8-hour workday. Calling 5:15 PM "leaving early" for an 8:00 AM standard start time is logically absurd.
Hypocritical Leadership: Your seniors and managers routinely walked in around 8:10 AM. In dysfunctional team cultures, managers often enforce rules on junior staff that they refuse to follow themselves, using attendance as a cheap proxy for "measuring performance" because they don't know how to evaluate actual output.
Departmental "Rule Regimes": It is extremely common in accounting firms for Audit and Tax to operate like two completely different companies under the same roof. Tax often gets leeway on arrival times (especially outside of busy season), while Audit managers frequently develop bizarre flexes around "butts in seats by 8:00 AM sharp."
Pattern Verification: Companies 1 and 3 proved what normal, healthy professional environments look like. A 10-to-15-minute window of arrival/departure variance is standard professional etiquette across almost all corporate white-collar roles—provided your work gets done and you aren't missing scheduled client calls or team meetings.

Company 2 used "time management" as a lazy, bad-faith critique during your 90-day review. You were right to leave, and Company 3's normal environment is proof that you weren't the problem.

I need some motivation before final round tomorrow

I have done 40+ interviews in the past year, including 5 final rounds, but have not gotten a single offer. I have been unemployed for 8 months now, and I really need this one. But I can't stop thinking that this one is just gonna end like the previous ones. I just feel like such a failure that I am not able to get one offer after this many interviews. I hate myself so much.

Jobadvisor

The fact that you have made it to 5 final rounds and 40+ interviews is not proof that you are failing—it is undeniable proof that you are exceptionally good at what you do.

In today’s market, most job seekers struggle to get a single recruiter call. Getting through resume screens, initial screens, panel interviews, and reaching the final two or three candidates five separate times means your skills, portfolio, and background are top-tier. Reaching the final round means you have already proven you can do the job.

Final round decisions almost never come down to competence. At that stage, the difference between an offer and a rejection usually comes down to arbitrary factors completely outside your control: an internal candidate filling the spot, a sudden shift in headcount, or a executive picking someone based on a random niche preference. Losing a coin toss five times in a row feels agonizing, but it does not change the fact that you are landing on the short list every single time.

You are carrying the emotional weight of 8 months of burnout into a room that only knows who you are today. The interviewers tomorrow don't know about the previous rejections, and they aren't comparing you to past attempts. They are looking at the candidate sitting in front of them right now.

Give yourself permission to isolate tomorrow from the past year. Focus strictly on three things you can control:

The baseline connection: Show up curious about their problems rather than desperate for their approval.
Your key wins: Remind yourself of two or three specific projects you're proud of—not to prove you deserve a job, but because you built them and know them inside out.
Ending the cycle: Treat tomorrow as a blank slate. You only need the odds to work in your favor once.

You have fought through 8 months of brutal friction to earn this seat tomorrow. That isn't failure; that is resilience.

How are you planning to spend the rest of tonight to help your brain unwind before tomorrow?

What is one job-search “rule” you stopped believing after actually looking for work?

I keep seeing the same advice everywhere: tailor every application, network constantly, apply early, follow up, etc.But I am curious about the advice that actually changed once you experienced the job market yourself.What is one job-search rule or piece of advice you used to believe, but eventually realized was not as useful as everyone made it sound?

Jobadvisor

The single biggest job-search rule I stopped believing is: "Tailor your resume and cover letter for every single application."

On paper, it sounds logical. Career coaches and recruiters preach it constantly: carefully read the job description, weave in every keyword, rewrite your bullet points, and draft a thoughtful cover letter explaining why you love company X.

In reality? It is often an incredible trap that leads to severe burn-out.

Here is why that advice breaks down in the actual job market:

It’s a bad conversion rate game: Spending 45–60 minutes perfecting a single application for a cold online posting yields roughly the same response rate (1–3%) as spending 5 minutes submitting a solid, well-structured, targeted template resume. Spending 10 hours to submit 10 "perfect" applications is almost always vastly inferior to spending those same 10 hours submitting 50 tailored-enough applications or reaching out directly to actual humans.
ATS is simpler than people think: You don't need a custom-built narrative for every company; you just need a clear job title match and the core skills listed clearly.
Cover letters are rarely read: Unless you are applying to a tiny startup, a writing-heavy role, or have a massive gap/career pivot to explain, standard ATS screens and rushed recruiters skim your resume for 6 seconds and skip the cover letter entirely.
It destroys your emotional energy: When you spend an hour tailoring an application, you become emotionally invested in the outcome. When that application vanishes into a black hole or gets a auto-rejection two weeks later, it feels like a personal gut punch. Mass-applying with a strong baseline resume allows you to maintain psychological distance.

What works far better instead

Rather than tailoring everything from scratch every single time, the much more efficient strategy is Tiered Application:

Tier 1 (Cold online postings): Use a clean, highly optimized master resume for your target role. Tweak maybe 2–3 keywords in the top summary or skills section if necessary (takes 2 minutes max), skip the cover letter unless required, and hit submit.
Tier 2 (High-fit or high-interest roles): Save your actual energy for when you have a direct connection—a mutual contact, a internal referral, or a hiring manager whose email you located. That is where spending 30 minutes writing a compelling, personalized message actually pays off.