When you’re in a job that makes you unhappy, it can be easy to start thinking about making a move elsewhere. Maybe the work’s not as fun any more, or you’re not advancing when you should be. While there are plenty of good reasons to leave, there’s one that shouldn’t enter your mind: Not liking the people you work with, even if it’s your boss.

It doesn’t seem like something you’re likely to be able to get past. You deal with them every day. But don’t think that you can go to a new job that will be jerk-free.

The jerks of the world follow you around. Remember how there were people in school you didn’t like? And then in college there were people just like them? And then your first job, you get a new set of people, most of whom you like, but some are jerks, too? They are everywhere.

What’s more, they move around. You can be in a perfectly swell department, with a great boss and great co-workers, and blammo! In comes some socially stunted goober who screws it all up. Or who can’t code his way out of a paper sack. Or maybe your boss decides to take off and gets replaced by some micromanager who calls you “Pal”.

You might think a bad boss is a bigger deal than a bad co-worker, and it is to a degree. When a boss is bad, it has bigger effects on you than just an incompetent co-worker in the next cube, so that much is the case. When you dig deeper, though, it’s more an issue of the company and company culture than about any individual person.

Imagine working at the Scranton branch of Dunder-Mifflin (on the US version of the TV show “The Office”). It’s not that so much that Michael Scott is a terrible boss, but that he’s allowed to keep his job in the face of his egregious shortcomings. Michael has problems, but the company doesn’t care, or doesn’t seem to care. You take pride in your work, but why doesn’t the company show the same pride?

The distinction between the bad co-workers and the company that allows them to work is an important one. The bad co-worker or bad boss may go away over time, but the company is a larger problem that may be well entrenched. Before you make for the door, make sure you know what the problem actually is. If it’s just a person or two that rub you wrong, you’re probably better off to live with it for a while until things change.