Disappointment at work is an everyday experience for most of us. It happens when work fails to live up to our hopes or expectations. We don’t finish everything on our to-do list. Only one person attends the online event we planned. Customers prefer our competitor’s product to ours. Our boss tells us that our report needs another round of revisions. We overcook the chicken—again.
It’s all frustrating. But for the most part, we can deal with that level of disappointment. We re-examine our priorities and brush up our time management strategies. We receive the one attendee with hospitality and gratitude and think about how we might better promote the next event. We do some market analysis to re-assess our customers’ needs. We dig in and fix the report. We finally buy a new oven.
But sometimes the disappointments are more profound. I think of a 2019 Indeed commercial that depicts a group of professionals standing in a conference room (You can view the 2019 Indeed commercial at www.popisms.com/ TelevisionCommercial/211533/Indeed-Commercial-Promotion-Indeed-US-2019). At the front of the room, we see Claire, gleaming in expectation as her boss prepares to announce the name of the company’s newest vice president. As soon as the “m” sound rolls off her boss’s tongue, Claire’s face begins to fall. The promotion went to her colleague Michael. We get the sense that she had been passed over before. She’s crushed.
In 2022, news outlets began talking about the “Great Resignation” because people in the United States were quitting their jobs in record numbers (Maury Gittleman, “The ‘Great Resignation’ in Perspective,” Monthly Labor Review). They quit their jobs during the Great Resignation because work had become a Great Disappointment. The Pew Research Center found that people who quit their jobs during that period tended to do so because of low pay, no opportunities for advancement, and feeling disrespected at work (Kim Parker and Juliana Menasce Horowitz, “Majority of Workers Who Quit a Job in 2021 Cite Low Pay, No Opportunities for Advancement, Feeling Disrespected” Pew Research Center). Patrick quit a job for all three of those reasons.
He was working as an adjunct professor for a small college. From the outset, the pay was terrible. Patrick had dreamed of becoming a professor for years and thought he could tolerate the low pay for a season in exchange for an opportunity to get his foot in the door. At one point, he did the math and figured he could have been making about the same amount working retail. That was rather infuriating since the teaching job required a doctorate; still, he was willing to accept it for a while.
Understanding Work Disappointment: Why It Affects Us Deeply
But soon, the possibilities for advancement went from slim to nil. He felt like some people in the university didn’t respect him. Others made him feel like he had nothing to contribute to the school beyond the few tasks they had asked him to do. Patrick’s disappointment became so profound that it festered into resentment and bitterness. Like a poison, it started seeping into his relationships and his work. Even his students began to pick up on his cynicism. He knew he should quit but needed the money and wanted to hold out hope that it would get better. But it didn’t. Things got worse. And he left. To Patrick, it felt like a bad breakup, like waking up to the realization of unrequited love. And it hurt.
Overcoming Work Disappointment: A Biblical Perspective
When work wounds us, sometimes it leaves little cracks—cracks small enough that we can mend with patience, time, and care. Other times work smashes us to pieces. When that happens, we can stay on the tear-stained carpet for a while. But even though it feels safer on the floor, where there’s no way we can fall any further, we can’t live there. Eventually we need to get up and survey the damage.
The Bible offers some insight on how to stand up and examine all the broken pieces in and around us after work demolishes us. There’s a place in the Bible where we see God’s people leveled, their city reduced to rubble. And there’s a man who finds himself left to take in all the destruction. Maybe if we study his response, we can glean some wisdom for what to do when work tears us apart.
Adapted from When Work Hurts by Meryl Herr. ©2025 Meryl Herr. Used by permission of InterVarsity Press. www.ivpress.com.
