I was talking to somebody at the weekend who got talking about her job as a programme director when she said that she works extremely long hours and she “Loves” her job. She even repeated it twice. I was struck that such an impassioned term could be applied to a job that entailed her working long hours, travelling all over the country in rush hour traffic and having impossible deadlines continually forced on her. I have no doubt that she was fairly good at what she did, but I had to question what else she had going on in her life that resulted in her loving her job. I was at a loss at why a healthy, fit, young woman would have a love for something that required most of her time and energy but I doubt provided her with much creative or spiritual expression.
Perhaps I was looking at it from my own experience, where I've always thought of 'jobs' in terms of there being more to life than work at a job. I've never related to aggressive managers or targets, I've found the rules and policies stifling and I've never worked in an office building that is anything more than oppressive, even the buildings that have installed sofa's and painted the walls funky colours. To me having a job is a bit like necessary slavery. Necessary because you have to earn money, which is really just derivation of warmth, food and shelter converted into handy digits that you can exchange for life’s necessities and, if you are lucky, some additional consumer items that make you feel whole and happy for, hmmm, about 20 minutes. The job satisfaction and additional empowerment or self actualisation that you achieve tends to be very contrived and only available to those who demonstrate their commitment by working 60 hour weeks.
I once read an article in the company magazine that Peter, an account executive, had been recognised as employee of the month and received a £50 gift voucher because he had successfully delivered a project that required him to work extremely long hours, away from home for weeks at a time. I wasn't sure if it was just me reading between the lines, but at an estimate his £50 bonus was probably worth around 0.01p per hour for the amount of unpaid overtime he'd done. Let's not be sardonic here though, the article was about recognition and Peter was presumably supposed to be happy about receiving a pat on the back and his picture in the company magazine. Company life is full of such insincere attempts at making employees feel more wanted, when in reality, if there is an opportunity to cut costs and make the balance sheet look better by shutting a factory or a site, all of those highly valued employees will be discarded without a care in the world. It's happened to me a couple of times.
There are of course the lucky few, usually those who work in creative industries who are able follow their passion and will no doubt love the creative experience more than the money that pays for it. Woe betide that they end up in an organisation though, where the head of creative, more an accountant than a creative, starts demanding more and more aggressive deadlines and higher performance. The penny pinching and accounting mind set soon detracts from the love of creation.
In large organisations we face a barrage of performance management, targets, endless stressful projects and aggressive managers. If you aren't even a bit stressed you clearly aren't busy enough. Productivity seems to be more about how many hours you spend running around like a headless chicken than it does about delivering anything of value. If someone is able to deliver a new product that pays for their months salary they still have to work the rest of the month doing something else. Another person might deliver nothing of value and yet is expected to work the same hours. Why have 9-5 (or more like 8-6 plus evening and weekend email catch up time) hours per week if some people are more productive than others? If I can deliver a weeks work in a day, why can't I take the rest of the week off? If I work for myself I can. It's because organisations are designed to keep you occupied and busy. Surely there is no better example of slave labour than this?
I work for myself now and the freedom feels like being able to breath again after 20 years of water boarding! No more managers looking over my shoulder, no more annual performance management reviews, no more trying to negotiate my holidays, no more frustration over 0.5% pay rises, no more manipulation and passive aggression from peers and managers hoping to get one over on you so they can grasp the next rung on the ladder, no more sitting in long traffic jams for hours just to stare at a screen in front of a grey wall all day, no more derisive looks from colleagues for looking out of the window for a minute or spending 5 minutes longer eating my lunch. For the time being at least the rat race is over for me. However, I am still forced to deal with the corporate system. There is a certain etiquette and protocol that I must adhere to to sell my services. I don't much like it but I still need those digits to feed and clothe myself.
I have to accept that many jobs are a necessary requirement for a functioning society. We need people to drive the trains, collect the rubbish, maintain the power stations, grow the food and provide a bit of entertainment. What we don't need are asinine manipulative managers, long stressful hours, impossible performance measures and targets, miserable office spaces and rules, so many rules! People are naturally creative and they should be allowed to flourish and express themselves. They should be able to go to a job, knowing that they will meet and chat to friends, do some fulfilling work that delivers value and come home to spend time with their family at a reasonable hour.
There are enough skilled unemployed people in the world and huge profits made by massive corporations to make work a nicer place to hang out. Why drive people to an early grave just to get a bit more profit, when two people could do the job.
So did I love my job? Absolutely not. It was a means to an end and I never had any doubt about that whatsoever. The girl who did “love” her job? (I've put “love” in quotes for a reason). I think she was just trying to tell herself that she “loved” her job to make it more bearable. People need to be more honest with themselves if they want to find true freedom and passion in life.
Image source: Pixabay
