At what point does a job shift to become a career?

A little over 10 years ago, I joined my current employer’s ranks.  I was in my late-twenties, and had just escaped from a 5-year stint working at Chapters.  Escaped may be a harsh term, but I’ve never hidden the fact that I was not happy for the last 2-3 years of my time there.  I had been part of the store’s management team, working under a string of seemingly increasingly inept General Managers (I think we went through 6 GM’s in the span of my 5 years there, including a good 6-months with no GM at all).  We started off as a leadership team of 7-8 people and then got down to 3 for an extended period of time.  Needless to say, I was burned out when I left.

Until this point, I had gone from job to job since the age of 16.  Some lasted a summer, some lasted a couple of years, but the simple fact remained that they were just jobs; a means to an end.  I worked the job, they paid me.  Upon leaving Chapters, I then took a job at my current employer – a health insurance company.  I was a seasonal hire in their contact centre and eventually ended up being hired full-time.  I didn’t like the job in the call centre, but it was a job.  There it is again… job.

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