Starting from the day I tested positive, I basically gave myself three solid days of rest. I really should have gone back to working and studying at full speed today, but I wanted to sneak in one more lazy day, so let’s call today a tiny holiday too XD.

Not because of the symptoms. This was purely an outbreak of lazy-person disease.

Still, I can’t deny that COVID made my usual case of permanently tired disease even worse. I was already in the terminal stage of tiredness—how much worse was this supposed to get?

I thought about quite a few things during those four days. The first was what kinds of “push” a job might have for me.

By a job’s “push,” I do not mean the force that drives me forward. I mean “the reasons that make me want to quit.”

The opposite is a job’s “pull”: the reasons a particular job attracts me and makes me want to do it.

Push and pull feel a little like “rights and obligations” in law—two sides of the same thing, although perhaps they are not really that similar after all.

I started thinking about this because, after the second-stage examination in October, I planned to enter a field completely unrelated to cram-school education. I also had a lot of different skills—marketing, project management, legal work, front-end web development, public health, and data analysis—so there were many directions I could try.

What field did I actually want to try first? What kind of work did I want to do? What factors should I consider? I wanted to sort out my own thoughts a little.

My ultimate career goal was to become a freelancer: to work on things that interested me and collaborate with lots of interesting, formidable people.

To reach that goal, I would have to keep pushing myself to improve so I could become more versatile and more capable. The skills I had been building were all part of that road toward freelancing; each one could grow into its own freelance path.

In that case, I decided to use elimination first and think about what kinds of jobs would make me not want to stay—what would make me want to run away.

And that is how this article came to exist.

The Work Crosses My Principles or Moral Boundaries

I am not actually someone with a huge list of principles that must be defended at all costs. But whatever the job is, I believe it should have a certain proper form and a minimum line it should not cross.

Take teaching. For me, “teaching seriously” is the most important principle and baseline. Personal conduct is relatively subjective, so I will leave that aside for now. But a teacher’s job is to teach, and the depth and breadth of the material—as well as the way it is taught—should meet a certain standard.

That is something worth insisting on. I believe every profession has professional standards of this kind.

When a workplace starts creating an atmosphere of “only idiots work seriously” or “you can coast and still collect your salary,” I begin to think it is probably time to leave—or that it is simply not a good working environment.

And of course, if a job begins to cross moral boundaries or even drops below the line of legality, that is absolutely unacceptable.

The Job Does Not Provide Suitable Equipment or Working Conditions

A craftsperson must sharpen their tools before doing good work. That does not mean every workplace needs the most amazing CPU or a luxuriously decorated office.

At the very least, though, the equipment should be fit for the work. If even the basic tools are inadequate, a great deal of time gets wasted waiting for computers to respond or converting files, and productivity drops badly.

I once worked somewhere whose computers were so outdated that they could not open a .docx file. A task that should have taken moments turned into repeated file conversion and retransmission, wasting an enormous amount of time.

The Time I Give and What I Receive Are Out of Proportion

What I “receive” here includes not only salary, but also knowledge and skills I can learn.

If I put a great deal of necessary, productive time and energy into a job but receive neither proportionate pay nor knowledge and skills I did not already have, I start to feel that the job is not a suitable one.

Honestly, though, if I can learn a lot of knowledge or skills I did not have before, I can completely accept a lower salary.

I interpret it as paying a little tuition in exchange for learning.

In some sense I really do love money. I love the feeling of money arriving in my bank account, even if I do not necessarily want to spend it XDDD.

So naturally, job titles are not a particularly important factor for me either. If the work is interesting and I can learn from it, I would be perfectly happy even as an assistant!

The condition is that what I learn must be worth what I sacrifice. Knowledge or technique are both fine; anything that helps me improve counts.

I Can No Longer Grow or Improve Through the Work

On the surface, this sounds a little like the previous factor: no longer getting anything from the job.

But they are different to me. A job may no longer directly give me new knowledge or skills, yet if the work remains difficult enough that I have to improve other knowledge or techniques in order to do it, then I am still progressing.

If a job makes me feel that I could use only the knowledge and skills already in my hands for the rest of my life, without ever having to improve, that is when I think I should leave.

I like being outside my comfort zone—getting thoroughly outclassed, getting flattened, and then gradually climbing upward. Stay in the comfort zone too long and you forget what competition feels like; eventually, you become complacent.

I have always remembered something my criminal-law teacher told us: “If all a teacher can do is teach, then the longer they teach, the worse they become.”

I believe the same principle applies here.

Too Much Energy Goes into Office Politics Instead of the Actual Work

I actually find office politics relatively interesting. I do not necessarily mind spending energy on it, but when the job is already exhausting, having to deal with this as well makes everything even more tiring.

If we are really going to play that game, I want the other side to bring their best too. But I often see terribly clumsy tactics: I make the smallest move, the other side gets countered and collapses, and watching it all just makes me more tired Orz.

At that point I start wondering, “Why not put all this energy into improving the actual work?”

The Capable Are Overworked While Everyone Else Lies Flat and Waits to Be Carried

I once heard someone say, “They have not been here long, so they do not know how to do anything. Try not to give them work in case they mess up. You should just do a little more.”

I can roughly understand the logic, but my reaction is: if someone does not know how to do the work, should a person who knows it not guide them through it?

If every task eventually goes to the people who already know how to do things, while those who do not know simply lie there, make mistakes, and wait for the capable people to clean up—

then do the capable people not just become even more capable, receive more and more work, and burn out, while the incapable people remain sprawled out collecting their salaries Orz?

That does not seem like a very healthy cycle, so I see it as a sign of a poor working environment.

The Workplace Does Not Care About Employee Health

An employer’s protection of an employee’s life, physical safety, and health is an ancillary obligation under the employment relationship and may even rise to the level of a secondary performance obligation. Occupational safety and health rules and the Labor Standards Act also contain relevant requirements.

If a job often requires people to enter dangerous places without providing adequate protection, demands excessive and habitual overtime, or allows an emotionally volatile supervisor to create constant psychological pressure, I would consider that an unsuitable working environment and would not want to stay there for long.

After all, there really is no job worth trading your life for, right?

The Actual Job Content Does Not Determine Whether Something Becomes a Push Factor

Some people may feel that a gap between the job they applied for and the work they end up doing should itself be a reason to leave.

I feel differently. Even if I take on many tasks that were not originally mine, it can still be wonderful as long as I learn something, receive proportionate pay or benefits, and continue to improve.

Even an extremely repetitive job can be good if I can get a little better each time.

Honestly, as long as it is legal, I do not have much pride to protect. If there is money in it, I can do it.

But everything has a price for me. That price does not have to be literal money; I can also accept knowledge or technical skill in exchange.

Thinking it over, that is probably about it.

I have always been fairly easygoing about the exact content of a job. Every job must have something interesting in it and some opportunity to learn or improve.

During the pandemic, having a stretch of time when I was unlikely to be interrupted—and too drained to deal with all the things that usually felt ready to explode—gave me a chance to think carefully about what I actually wanted. That was honestly pretty great.