Would you take a job you hated for a paycheck you loved?

Let’s say you have a job you love. You find this job to be extremely rewarding and everything about it is great. When you get up in the morning, you are happy to go and sometimes you even stay late because everything about the job is great. However, there is a catch…your “awesome” job doesn’t come with an “awesome” paycheck. You are being paid way under what you are worth either per hour or on a salaried basis.

As a contrast, let’s say you find another job. This job isn’t rewarding to you. You go to sleep dreading waking up just because you hate the job. You don’t have great coworkers and your boss isn’t someone you would send a Christmas card to. There is nothing particularly rewarding about your job and at the end of the day you don’t feel as though you have contributed anything to society. However, this job has an amazing paycheck. So, when you do come home, you come home to a nice house with all the things that you want.

So, which situation sounds better to you?

In my opinion, there has to be some middle ground here. There can’t be just an awful job that makes amazing pay and a great job that has me stuck below the poverty line. The truth is, most people have aspects of their job that they dislike; maybe it is a coworker that may or may not fly off the handle at any time of the day, maybe it’s a boss, who would rather you quit than to reprimand the coworker for his outlandish behavior. Perhaps it is something even smaller than either of those factors such as there is never enough coffee in the break room, even when you made it yourself.

Then again, there are plenty of jobs out there that pay very little and offer nothing in the way of job satisfaction. These jobs often find their employees stuck at the bottom of the job pool and never given the chance to climb up the ladder. Worse yet, they are stuck there being paid just about minimum wage. I’ve had too many jobs like this one.

At the end of the day, however, if I had to pick one of the extremes, I believe I would feel better and more accomplished if I enjoyed my work even if it was for a smaller paycheck. I would likely hold a job like this for awhile then move into a job that I wasn’t as happy with for a bigger salary.

So, which scenario do you think works out better for you?