Take This Job and Shove It?

My mom gave me the full-court press today on quitting my day job.

When I first started interviewing with law firms, my law school's career services office talked a lot about the "culture" of particular firms. I always thought they were bullshitting me. How can an office have a culture? Now that I've worked at a few places, I see they were right.

My day job's culture is not a good fit for me. I can't tell if I'm a lot smarter or a lot dumber than my co-workers, but I find myself feeling like I don't get it and don't fit in. For example, in our document review, there's a side issue we're supposed to keep an eye out for, and, if we find it, we're supposed to tag the document as highly confidential. I thought this was a tangential issue, but we've been getting emails with sample documents attached every day this week. I can't tell how any one group of documents materially differs from any other, so I'm wondering if I just don't get whatever it is I'm supposed to be learning or if the rest of the group just enjoys repeating themselves. If I'm making mistakes on this coding issue, then continuing to send these documents is not correcting the issue. If I'm not making mistakes, then there is no need to waste my time with these documents. This is just one minor situation, but it provides insight into my basic problem with this job. It's like having someone tell you a joke that you don't think is funny even after you hear the explanation.

Mom's thinks that my dissatisfaction with the job will lead to my having a bad attitude and getting fired for something like insubordination. I hope that I manage to avoid taking a surly tone with anyone at work (the fact that I rarely see anyone else from the group and communication is typically by email has to help me), but I can't swear that I haven't. Mom contends that, since I have a night job that provides me with an income, I should quit my day job.

I don't like being clubbed about the head with my mom's opinions, but she has a point. If you hate your job, you aren't going to do a good job at it. But right now, I don't feel comfortable handing in my notice because I don't have a replacement job. I was able to live on the income from my night job before I had my day job, but it was tight. With two jobs, I'm able to work on paying off my credit card bills. If I succeed in finishing that project, I hope to save money. I need to get a little more excited about finding another job though because the situation at work is not untenable yet, but I could see it going that way.