Hard Work Pays Off—Right?

Growing up, we were told that if you work hard, it will pay off, so we've lived our lives by the rule that we would work our hardest so we could follow our dreams. I never wanted a position of power, I just wanted to succeed and make a way for myself. I'm not one to be carried. I feel worthless when I'm not working. My first real job was at Target. I loved it. I worked hard, did great, got ahead working 60 hour weeks pulling doubles. After two and a half years there and being promised things that never came, I knew it was time to move on. We were always led to believe that, if you are good at what you do, you will advance in your endeavors.

But years past and countless jobs later, I'm finding out that all hard work gets you is twice the work load and none of the perks. Currently, I'm a year and some months into a company I fought hard to get into. After agreeing to train In a particularly undesirable area of said company (as relief and or back up), I learned that, once again, I would be stuck in an area I didn't like simply because I could do it well, so I buckled down and figured as long as I was there, I might as well be the best I could at it so I could, when the time came, get a full-time position.

Going into every job I've ever had, the advice I got from countless people said that experience, know how, attendance, and performance were the key things you needed to focus on to advance in your profession. That is apparently the wrong piece of advice to follow. I recently, once again, seemingly wasted another year of my life trying to make good. After temporary, I got a part-time position, which I was stoked about. Eventually, I interviewed for a full-time gig in the position I had held for a year and made sure that I knew all that I could about, only to be told that in spite of my experience, tenure, attendance, and performance... I would not get the position, but be expected to train an employee who had been there only half the time that I was and who didn't know anything about the customer service desk. I was told that I had lost the position because of the interview, which hadn't gone well due to anxiety in spite of three weeks prep time for said interview.

I was told that, regardless of my proof of performance and dedication, because I couldn't explain in this interview all of my high points, I had not only lost a much needed full-time job, but I would also need to train someone on my time who was less equipped to handle the position. As you might imagine, I was, to say the least, disappointed. I felt like my work, time, and dedication to this company was shrugged off and then mocked as a result. When I requested constructive criticism, no one had any pointers—only that, because I had gotten noticeably nervous and had not been able to brag about myself in great detail, I was stuck.

Now, anyone in the workforce knows that the ones who claim greatness are usually, to be quite frank, egomaniacal and full of it. But now I suppose talking out of your rear and having no experience at all somehow has become the holy grail of the corporate world. But then you have to factor in the cliques and the family favors and the pressure of making the call of what's right versus what's popular. If you ask me, it's sad that proven adequacy to do a job is snuffed out for tall tales and empty promises. I was told that it was unfair to newcomers that I get the position solely on experience, and that it was not by any means unfair to me that I had essentially wasted time learning my skills to be passed up. But hard work pays off, right?