In the summer of 1988, I was getting ready to go to college. I had no scholarships and no one to pay my tuition, so I had a couple of jobs. One of those jobs was building electric signs. I loved that job because every day I was building something.

I learned early, that not everyone I worked with loved their job. In fact, most didn't. Some of them were highly skilled, some of them were laborers just working for a paycheck, but most of them didn't really like what they were doing.

I'll never forget walking over to a group of coworkers one day and asking, "What are you building?" and them looking at me like I was stupid, and then replying, "A sign." but not adding the obvious, "that's what we're all doing, idiot."

I guess they thought they were going easy on the eager college kid, but they missed my point entirely.

See for me, when I got a work order to build a sign, the first thing I did was find out, who it was for and where it was going to be installed. Because I wanted to know if I'd ever get to see my electric sign, lit up against the night sky.

So when I asked, "What are you building?" I expected to hear, "I'm building a sign for a Ford Dealership in Phoenix, Arizona." But nope, they were simply building "a sign".

What are you building? What are you creating? Which lives will it touch and where do they live? Even if it's not a sign, or a bridge, or a rollercoaster, you're still creating. You're still doing something for someone, and HOW you do what you do makes a big difference.

And if you don't like what you do, if you find no joy in it whatsoever, then it will impact HOW you do it and indeed, WHAT you create.

If you hate what you do, I will always narrow the cause down to this, because there's plenty of science on my side, and it really is this simple. Job haters, Monday haters, however you want to refer to them, are working under one or both of these conditions:

1. They've selected a job for which they have no talent

2. You have a bad boss

Some of them have both problems, but it's usually one or the other.

The worst part is that just about all of them have decided to just deal with it, and I find that really sad.

I've been preaching my gospel of "love Monday just like Friday, but for a different reason" for a long time. As a manager I've built some of the most engaged teams the world has ever known - really, I've been able to compare them to tens of thousands of other teams. The hard part about being me, is that I'm coming to believe, we've been in this job hating hole for so many generations, that nobody believes there's a way out.

If you're among the non-believers, I feel badly for you. If you want to believe. We should talk. No charge, no pressure, no hassle. If you think that work is to be hated and stressed over, you're dead wrong.

The question is, how long are you willing to go on being wrong?