SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : INTRODUCTION : If you want more from your job, need a challenge, long to do something different, maybe it’s . . . : Time for a Change : Why am I DOING this?

What a frightening question. No wonder we avoid asking it!

No wonder we turn away from our yearning for a more satisfying job with rhetorical head-slaps like: “It’s not supposed to be fun. Why do you think they call it work ?”

Outside the vortex of our frustrations, in the rarefied seminars where people try to bring order to chaos, massive amounts of lip service are being paid to the notion of building a happier worker.

This is, after all, the era of EI (employee involvement), as the seminars call it. This is the era of benevolent bosses who practice MWBA (management by wandering around), as the consultants call it.

Your company cares about you and your career--that’s the enlightened approach that employers like to trumpet these days.

And yet . . . .

What about the tens of millions of us to whom this enlightenment has yet to trickle down?

What about the tens of millions of us for whom “the workplace,” as our less-than-tidy factories and cubicles and classrooms are now tidily known, represents a gnawing knot in the stomach, a sinking feeling of lost chances, a blackboard filled with daunting challenges--a situation best summarized not by studious consultants, but by that popular bumper sticker: “I Owe, I Owe, So Off to Work I Go”?

Ask American workers whether they are satisfied with what they do for a living, and a slew of contradictions hits you in the face.

In a Gallup poll released on Labor Day, 89% of 796 employed adults said they were satisfied with their jobs to some degree. Yet a significant number groused about pressures on the job, low pay, lack of opportunities for promotion and the medical benefits their employers provide.

And 40% of those surveyed looked upon their jobs as just a way to make a living.

Satisfaction? It’s a lovely concept, but too often it has to wait in line behind a host of other considerations that sculpt what has become an ultra-pressurized existence--not just for two-income families, but for anyone who reads the morning paper and recognizes how lucky he or she is to have a job that is steady and protected.

Sure, employment is relatively high, but consider the headlines--the mergers, the purges, the deadly euphemisms-- restructuring , organization transition plan . If they’re not trying to squeeze your medical benefits they’re introducing “engineered work standards” and telling you that if you don’t operate at 96% of that level you’ll be disciplined. Some days, it’s satisfying enough simply to feel secure.

Does it have to be like this? Isn’t there a way to slow the world down and reflect, with some modicum of optimism, on the bigger questions, like whether you feel respected in your job, whether you feel it’s important, whether you’re learning, whether you’re positioning yourself for advancement?

Yes.

Too often, what separates us from job satisfaction isn’t the powers that be or the intangible economic forces or the assistant manager who wanted to hire his girlfriend but got stuck with you. It’s us. It’s our willingness to pull ourselves out of life’s frustrating inertia and do something--to take night classes at the community college or consult a career counselor or rewrite the resume or make the phone calls, to summon the courage to think that maybe, just maybe, we’re capable of more, and we should--we must, we will--find out.

The articles that follow are intended to chip away at your doubts about what you can do. They will not solve your problems. But they will make you think.

hey will make you think about job training, about the bridge into management, about negotiating for a raise, about increasing your education, about changing companies, about scoping out a prospective employer not only on the issue of money, but matters such as vacation policy, medical coverage and other benefits.

Some of us are lucky. We came of age with this sort of laundry list in hand. Someone--a parent, a professor, a mentor--prepared us. The rest of us, the vast majority of us, have gaping holes in our game plans. We have all seen opportunities slide through these holes. What remains now is to close the gaps, cover the bases, widen the field of vision.

The pursuit of job satisfaction is an attitude dance far more subtle than the race for success. It is a test of introspection, a challenge to sit down for a while and mull the present and sketch the future and see, in your mind’s eye, a way to bring those two images closer together.

Read on, and explore.

Editor: Linda Finestone * News Editor: Paul Zieke * Art Director: Matt Moody