Burned Out or Burnt?

I've been burned out on a job. Five years of tech support did it to me--twice. Burnout is now a pretty well recognized effect of extended continuous thankless stress in any kind of work (r play, for that matter), especially if you find that it really wasn't your life's ambition to do this thing.

"Burnout" is also a shorthand phrase increasingly used by managers to identify a reason for less than enthusiastic performance by employees. However, I've been here too, even with a type of work I genuinely like doing, and I suggest that it's just lain old "burn," something quite different.

Excluding contract jobs, I've worked in what I consider major jobs at a bank, four software companies (one of them twice), and a web commerce company. The bank laid me off after seven years; the first software company more or less tricked me into resigning after three years; the second software company laid me off once after five years and disappointed me in the second, three-year, stint; the third software company strung me along for a year in a job I hated; the fourth software company laid me off--on my birthday--after a year and a half; and the web commerce concern laid me off after two and half years.

After this string, one might be forgiven for being a bit cynical when a company expects "loyalty," and for keeping an eye on the door and the job market, even in the face of continuing optimism on the part of company leadership. In fact, one might even be considered an intelligent being, practicing the most basic of self-preservation techniques. After being a team player on more than a few teams, and being kicked off of those teams with no warning, one might be less than enthused about jumping in with both feet. The employer might call this "burnout," but it isn't, necessarily. It's just the effect of the repeated burn.