More Than Money: Ditch Your Bad Job to Reclaim Professional Dignity

There are many ways that bad jobs can be truly disastrous — bad pay, a toxic work environment, inhumane hours. But there is one thing that almost every bad job shares: they ask you to sacrifice your dignity in addition to your time. So, for example, not only do you have to take the graveyard shift on a support line, you also have to gracefully accept the abuse misdirected towards you by irate customers. 

It doesn’t have to be this way. You can have a career that is both well-paid and dignified. In fact, it might be easier to make this pivot than you think.

Institutional disrespect

A person’s sense of professional dignity doesn’t have to be tied to external factors such as how well they’re treated — honest labor is dignified regardless of what job someone has. But it’s easier for workers to achieve a sense of professional dignity when institutions treat them with respect. And for many positions, that’s not a sure thing.

In Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America, Barbara Ehrenreich temporarily ditches her middle-class life and goes undercover to see what it’s like to be a low-wage worker. Not only does she find that one of these jobs is far from enough to cover her minimal expenses, she’s also exposed to mistreatment that is, in a word, humiliating. Take the first Friday she spends as a server, for example.

A mandatory meeting is called. She and her coworkers shuffle into a break room where they each have lockers to store their personal belongings. Their manager reminds them that these lockers can be searched at any time and goes on to announce a change in policy: now, when workers are not on the clock, they’re no longer allowed to eat at the restaurant because this leads to “gossip,” otherwise known as employees just talking to one another.

Four days after that, everyone is called into the kitchen for another meeting. “Drug activity” was reported, so all new hires will have to go through pre-screening for drugs. In addition, all current employees will also be subject to random testing. Even though Ehrenreich wasn’t the source of the “activity,” she nonetheless blushes. This all leads her to reflect:

I haven’t been treated this way—lined up in the corridor, threatened with locker searches, peppered with carelessly aimed accusations—since at least junior high school. Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America

The employees are adults. But, as Ehrenreich rightfully points out, her manager is treating them like children. And when she goes on to other positions such as an aide in a nursing home, a cleaning person, or a retail worker, this institutional disrespect repeats.

There are glib and facile responses to this situation — these people are getting a foothold that can bring them to better work, everyone needs to start somewhere — that ignore a core reality. Work should be respected. In fact, a 2023 American Psychological Association (APA) survey found that 95% of respondents said it was important for them to feel respected at work. Of that percentage, 66% said it was very important.

None of this is surprising. And taking a step back, the fact that the APA thought this was a subject worthy of study is concerning in and of itself — do we truly wonder if people value dignity in work? 

Nearly every type of labor is worthy of respect. And yes, that includes the low-paid “unskilled” work Ehrenreich took on. That doesn’t mean we as a society follow through on that belief.

Wage theft

Disrespect is a hard thing to measure because it’s a subjective quality that can vary depending on who you’re talking to. However, we can measure one institutional way companies mistreat their workers: wage theft. Basically, wage theft is the practice by which employers hold back on the benefits or pay a worker has rightfully earned. To clarify what that looks like, here are some examples:

Each of these on their own may seem like a small, unremarkable violation, but, according to the Economic Opportunity Institute, “wage theft… is the most profitable form of theft in the United States.” In fact, according to an Economic Policy Institute study from 2017, employers steal an estimated $15 billion annually from workers. The amount lost in property theft? It’s a thirtieth of that — an estimated $500 million. 

We can even see the industries in which this unfair treatment is most common thanks to The Wage and Hour Division of the U.S. Department of Labor, the section dedicated to fighting wage theft. It launched investigations that recouped more than $274 million in back wages and damages, with these industries standing out:

We can’t say for sure which industries are most disrespectful toward their workers; like we said, that’s too subjective to measure. We can say that a practice indicative of systemic disrespect is all too common for medical aides, builders, farmhands, sales associates, waiters, and HVAC technicians.

Still, there is one thing that we are absolutely sure of. Just because you’re currently in a position where you feel divorced from a sense of dignity doesn’t mean you have to stay there.

Education is the door to dignity

We’ll repeat that every role deserves dignity. Regardless of how much a job pays or how prestigious it’s believed to be, when a person puts in a day of work, that labor is worthy of respect.

This is where values clash with reality, though. As Ehrenreich and the industries with stand-out payouts demonstrate, some positions — maybe the one you’re in right now — just don’t afford workers a sense of dignity. So that leads to the question: how do you reclaim this?

Agitating for legislation that protects workers can be a good option, but that can take a while, maybe even years. If you need to get out of a bad job right now, what can you do?

The quick answer is: start learning. According to The Survey Center on American Life, more education correlates with more dignified work environments. For example, the Center found that, “College-educated workers appear to have more positive work environments. Two-thirds (67 percent) of workers with a bachelor’s degree or higher report that they are ‘often’ treated fairly, compared to 55 percent of workers with a high school education or less.”

In addition, “More than half (52 percent) of workers with a college degree report that their boss expresses appreciation ‘often,’ compared to 42 percent of workers with a high school education or less.”

Keep in mind that these stats asked about the absolute basics: being treated fairly — not well — and hearing a “Thank you for the work you do.” Regularly expressing gratitude is a simple act that can help someone recognize their importance to the organization and feel that their contributions are valued. And not even half of respondents with a high school education or less said they experienced this.

The money side of things

So far, we haven’t really pulled focus on salary (this is about “More Than Money”), but pay is also a factor, and it ties into the importance of education. Here’s the NCES’s 2022 curve of median annual earnings for full-time workers aged 25-34 based on educational attainment:

If jobs such as those Ehrenreich took on at least paid well in exchange for the lack of respect, that might somewhat balance the scales. But the roles in which workers were less likely to feel appreciated or treated fairly were the same roles that ranked lower on the NCES’s payscale.

So if you need to get out of a job as soon as possible, your best shot is to gain new knowledge and skills. But you might not be able to afford a college degree — both in terms of money and time. What can you do?

A bootcamp can help you land a dignified, well-paid job

You can complete a tech bootcamp in under a year — and in some cases, in less than six months. That’s a fraction of the time a college degree would ask of you. In addition, bootcamps can be orders of magnitude cheaper than a traditional college education.

And they work. How are we so sure? Look at our grads’ outcomes: 87% of them land jobs within six months of finishing their programs. This high rate is the result of us tailoring the education to the exact thing employers are looking for: skills.

See, in a survey of over 1,000 decision makers, we straight up asked what they wanted from candidates, and skills topped their list.

And because bootcamp grads finish their programs with the targeted, in-demand know-how employers are looking for, survey respondents were also enthusiastic about bringing these candidates on. In fact, 86% were either confident or very confident in hiring bootcamp grads.

Best of all, when we talked to decision makers, we also discovered that nearly eight out of ten of them were already hiring people from non-traditional backgrounds — such as those who graduated from a bootcamp.

So yes, you can make this change. In fact, you’d be following a well-worn path. TripleTen has helped everyone from box throwers to salespeople achieve new, rewarding careers.

And we’re realistic about it. Bills need to be paid, so maybe you need to keep working while studying. That’s what our bootcamp was designed for — it’s part time, so you don’t have to quit your current job to launch your next one.

A job that treats you fairly is absolutely within your grasp. We can help you get there.

Is a bootcamp right for you?

Discover if a bootcamp is your way to reach that well-paid, dignified, and impactful career by taking our quick bootcamp quiz.