Since I have been furloughed, I’ve come to thinking more and more that workwise, I’ve made horrendous errors of judgement for the majority of my life. I perhaps should’ve realised this at uni, where I spent more of my time working as a chef than attending lectures and doing my coursework. I guess some people are cut out for practical work with a tangible end result, however brainy they may be. Unfortunately, being told you have academic talent is tantamount to being told you’d be wasting your life doing a manual job, and doing society a disservice by not reaching your ‘full potential’. Those who buck the trend and do what exactly what they are suited to rather than what others think they should do have my utmost respect.
Most of my peers who skipped University and obtained a trade are far better off than myself and several other of my friends educated to Master’s level in subjects with limited opportunities that are in much demand.
Yes. I have an MA which I enjoyed and did my own thing on, but don’t want an academic type job. My next move will be a distinctly practical, mechanical one. I find such great satisfaction in mending and improving things, and the lockdown has given me the chance to immerse myself in such tasks!
quodabiit
3 years ago
Hmm. You paint a world of work I simply don’t recognise. But then, I’m neither middle or professional class. I would remind you that productivity in the industrial sector was largely kept up during the three-day week period by having the country divided into those who worked Monday, Tues, Wednesday and those who worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Since almost everybody went from eight to twelve hour shifts, this meant that most people were working only four hours fewer than during a regular five day, eight hour shift week. What’s more, most people received dole for the days they didn’t work – so we were on Thurs, Fri and Saturday working and were paid dole for Mon, Tues, Wed. I was quids in. Didn’t want it to end.
Fraser Bailey
3 years ago
The extent to which this article is beamed from a galaxy far, far away is such that one could mock or knock almost every line. Just a couple:
‘Out went gold plated pensions’. As if that was a choice. This arose from a combination of Gordon Brown’s hatred of the private sector, various other legislation, and a globalism that most people now understand to have been a disaster on most levels.
Then there’s stuff about sleep pods and break-out zones. Now, I have spent my life in and around all the nonsense of ad agencies etc, but even I have not experienced these things.
Anyway, work is not supposed to be fun, even if we present that to be the case. If work was intended to be fun it would be called ‘Play’. Or even ‘Fun’. Most work consists of doing something unpleasant so that somebody else doesn’t have to do it. Directly or indirectly they pay you for taking that burden off their hands. You can then have ‘fun’ with the money they pay you, outside of your work hours.
Yes, I agree, work may not be ‘supposed to be fun’ or ‘play’, but that does not mean it cannot be also enjoyable, playful, or satisfying. I don’t think work need necessarily be unpleasant – though it contains effort, which is often arduous, laborious etc… but it also ought to contain purpose, contribution to society, and individual satisfaction.
It also isn’t the case that in work one is mostly “doing something unpleasant so that somebody else doesn’t have to do it”. People in the work force usually have particular skills to offer that others cannot do -carpenters, surgeons, signwriters, bike mechanics, accountants, dentists etc…
I think there is a disingenuous type of modern employer who tries to make it all look like cool fun and play (usually in the interest of extracting more of your time and effort). I feel this is the counterpart though to the more Dickensian sort of employer who made work an unending thankless drudge. Both are cliches, but with some basis in reality. Both these scenarios are about employers though and I think there is a distinction to be made between ‘work’ proper and employment.
I think in work (proper work) one is entitled to find something which delivers a sense of Self satisfaction. Work is also a contribution to our humanness, and so the elements of our work ought really to contain some expression of that humanness.
Yes, I agree with that and I concede that I was being somewhat hyperbolic. My main target was indeed the type of modern employer who tries to convince people that working in some or other office of digital enterprise can be ‘fun’.
Strange I’ve been a labourer, HGV driver, Outward Bound Instructor, Social worker, businessman, company director, in decades of work around the world, but I do not recognise the people the author fixates on. Perhaps it’s a sector of the Westminster civil service? I hope someone can educate me.
vince porter
3 years ago
For those who write about it, “work” has become the office. Those outside the office, still a vast and heterogeneous diaspora, have not only scattered, they have seemingly disappeared. Forgotten are the assembly lines that still assemble, fishers who still fish, farmers who farm, miners who dig lithium from the deeps, cleaners here, there, and, everywhere, and, truckers delivering all the tactile stuff while the world sleeps. None of them are coming in from cold anytime soon; changing diapers and hard rock mining is just not a “fit”. Unfortunately, they remain invisible except when crisis rears its ugly head, or, a scapegoat is needed for the carbon conscious class.
Good point – we’re far too ready to equate work with the middle class experience of it.
Road workers, construction workers and oil riggers too.
Adamsson
3 years ago
It is handy that we stop pretending we love our jobs because with 8 million unemployed and counting most won’t have jobs soon
Chris Upton
3 years ago
I was working a in factory in 1973 and was involved in a time and motion study. We produced more in 3 days than the usual 5. It was sort of Parkinson’s Law in reverse.
Alex S
3 years ago
How can something you do for 8 hours per day not define you? Whether you love it or hate it, it will define you. Hell, even something you’d be doing for 6 hours would define you.
I am fresh from uni and have worked about 1½ year before the virus hit. I even started working 37.5 hour weeks and just got a full 40 hours after about a year. I don’t have kids or a partner.
Now I’m having 4-days weeks but still getting almost full salary. Of course I love it. My brother and friends are hoping they will get it too. If it weren’t for housing costs, I’d be willing to take a pay cut and continue working 4 days per week after this is over.
David Morley
3 years ago
I confess that I tend to think of work like an arranged marriage. Not perhaps what you would have chosen, but you may grow to love it and there’s no doubt you grow through the process. At the very least you may find ways to get on together, even if you’re not really compatible.
ralph bell
3 years ago
Really interesting article and frightening prospect ahead, I agree, since I work in a large office banking role. I am now working from home but always much prefer to interact in the office with colleagues and the city folks around.
Niko Lourotos
3 years ago
Speak for yourself. Some people “find” a job – which they may or may not enjoy. A great many others “create” their own jobs (I am one of them) by turning their passions into businesses – and they, more often than not, love doing them. We’re not all helpless witless drones.
All credit to you, but it’s not the case for everyone. At the very least, most people make some sort of compromise with the job market. And not all passions lend themselves to commercialisation.
Paul Goodman
3 years ago
Its all prostitution.
That is why they call it “Work.”
The only thing worse than an employer is a customer.
Keeps the wolf from the door though.
David Morley
3 years ago
Rents became too high, tuition fees had to be paid back and a global recession was looming. Work became the ultimate realising of the self.
This para makes it sound rather that self realisation was some sort of rationalisation for what was in fact economic necessity. If you like, a fairy tale to keep the serfs at work.
I’ve always thought that the view of work as self-realisation grew up alongside feminism. If work is considered a duty, or obligation, an unpleasant necessity, then its rather hard to maintain the idea that it has been unreasonably hogged by men. As recently as the 70s, people were anticipating a post-work world – a leisure age – and that was seen as a positive thing, not starving people of meaning.
Scott Powell
3 years ago
I’d characterise this more a commentary on ‘the office’, and I’m not surprised that various realities are being exposed because of all the Covid nonsense. Like, how I can do my ‘job’ in 1 to 2 hours per day, for example, but in the fiction-inducing office environment, it ‘becomes’ 8. ‘The office’ is, in my opinion, the least valuable environment conceived by man.
Since I have been furloughed, I’ve come to thinking more and more that workwise, I’ve made horrendous errors of judgement for the majority of my life. I perhaps should’ve realised this at uni, where I spent more of my time working as a chef than attending lectures and doing my coursework. I guess some people are cut out for practical work with a tangible end result, however brainy they may be. Unfortunately, being told you have academic talent is tantamount to being told you’d be wasting your life doing a manual job, and doing society a disservice by not reaching your ‘full potential’. Those who buck the trend and do what exactly what they are suited to rather than what others think they should do have my utmost respect.
Most of my peers who skipped University and obtained a trade are far better off than myself and several other of my friends educated to Master’s level in subjects with limited opportunities that are in much demand.
Yes. I have an MA which I enjoyed and did my own thing on, but don’t want an academic type job. My next move will be a distinctly practical, mechanical one. I find such great satisfaction in mending and improving things, and the lockdown has given me the chance to immerse myself in such tasks!
Hmm. You paint a world of work I simply don’t recognise. But then, I’m neither middle or professional class. I would remind you that productivity in the industrial sector was largely kept up during the three-day week period by having the country divided into those who worked Monday, Tues, Wednesday and those who worked Thursday, Friday, Saturday. Since almost everybody went from eight to twelve hour shifts, this meant that most people were working only four hours fewer than during a regular five day, eight hour shift week. What’s more, most people received dole for the days they didn’t work – so we were on Thurs, Fri and Saturday working and were paid dole for Mon, Tues, Wed. I was quids in. Didn’t want it to end.
The extent to which this article is beamed from a galaxy far, far away is such that one could mock or knock almost every line. Just a couple:
‘Out went gold plated pensions’. As if that was a choice. This arose from a combination of Gordon Brown’s hatred of the private sector, various other legislation, and a globalism that most people now understand to have been a disaster on most levels.
Then there’s stuff about sleep pods and break-out zones. Now, I have spent my life in and around all the nonsense of ad agencies etc, but even I have not experienced these things.
Anyway, work is not supposed to be fun, even if we present that to be the case. If work was intended to be fun it would be called ‘Play’. Or even ‘Fun’. Most work consists of doing something unpleasant so that somebody else doesn’t have to do it. Directly or indirectly they pay you for taking that burden off their hands. You can then have ‘fun’ with the money they pay you, outside of your work hours.
You make it all sound rather bleak!
Yes, I agree, work may not be ‘supposed to be fun’ or ‘play’, but that does not mean it cannot be also enjoyable, playful, or satisfying. I don’t think work need necessarily be unpleasant – though it contains effort, which is often arduous, laborious etc… but it also ought to contain purpose, contribution to society, and individual satisfaction.
It also isn’t the case that in work one is mostly “doing something unpleasant so that somebody else doesn’t have to do it”. People in the work force usually have particular skills to offer that others cannot do -carpenters, surgeons, signwriters, bike mechanics, accountants, dentists etc…
I think there is a disingenuous type of modern employer who tries to make it all look like cool fun and play (usually in the interest of extracting more of your time and effort). I feel this is the counterpart though to the more Dickensian sort of employer who made work an unending thankless drudge. Both are cliches, but with some basis in reality. Both these scenarios are about employers though and I think there is a distinction to be made between ‘work’ proper and employment.
I think in work (proper work) one is entitled to find something which delivers a sense of Self satisfaction. Work is also a contribution to our humanness, and so the elements of our work ought really to contain some expression of that humanness.
Yes, I agree with that and I concede that I was being somewhat hyperbolic. My main target was indeed the type of modern employer who tries to convince people that working in some or other office of digital enterprise can be ‘fun’.
There a few places worse than a modern office.
Strange I’ve been a labourer, HGV driver, Outward Bound Instructor, Social worker, businessman, company director, in decades of work around the world, but I do not recognise the people the author fixates on. Perhaps it’s a sector of the Westminster civil service? I hope someone can educate me.
For those who write about it, “work” has become the office. Those outside the office, still a vast and heterogeneous diaspora, have not only scattered, they have seemingly disappeared. Forgotten are the assembly lines that still assemble, fishers who still fish, farmers who farm, miners who dig lithium from the deeps, cleaners here, there, and, everywhere, and, truckers delivering all the tactile stuff while the world sleeps. None of them are coming in from cold anytime soon; changing diapers and hard rock mining is just not a “fit”. Unfortunately, they remain invisible except when crisis rears its ugly head, or, a scapegoat is needed for the carbon conscious class.
Good point – we’re far too ready to equate work with the middle class experience of it.
Road workers, construction workers and oil riggers too.
It is handy that we stop pretending we love our jobs because with 8 million unemployed and counting most won’t have jobs soon
I was working a in factory in 1973 and was involved in a time and motion study. We produced more in 3 days than the usual 5.
It was sort of Parkinson’s Law in reverse.
How can something you do for 8 hours per day not define you? Whether you love it or hate it, it will define you. Hell, even something you’d be doing for 6 hours would define you.
I am fresh from uni and have worked about 1½ year before the virus hit. I even started working 37.5 hour weeks and just got a full 40 hours after about a year. I don’t have kids or a partner.
Now I’m having 4-days weeks but still getting almost full salary. Of course I love it. My brother and friends are hoping they will get it too. If it weren’t for housing costs, I’d be willing to take a pay cut and continue working 4 days per week after this is over.
I confess that I tend to think of work like an arranged marriage. Not perhaps what you would have chosen, but you may grow to love it and there’s no doubt you grow through the process. At the very least you may find ways to get on together, even if you’re not really compatible.
Really interesting article and frightening prospect ahead, I agree, since I work in a large office banking role. I am now working from home but always much prefer to interact in the office with colleagues and the city folks around.
Speak for yourself.
Some people “find” a job – which they may or may not enjoy.
A great many others “create” their own jobs (I am one of them) by turning their passions into businesses – and they, more often than not, love doing them.
We’re not all helpless witless drones.
All credit to you, but it’s not the case for everyone. At the very least, most people make some sort of compromise with the job market. And not all passions lend themselves to commercialisation.
Its all prostitution.
That is why they call it “Work.”
The only thing worse than an employer is a customer.
Keeps the wolf from the door though.
This para makes it sound rather that self realisation was some sort of rationalisation for what was in fact economic necessity. If you like, a fairy tale to keep the serfs at work.
I’ve always thought that the view of work as self-realisation grew up alongside feminism. If work is considered a duty, or obligation, an unpleasant necessity, then its rather hard to maintain the idea that it has been unreasonably hogged by men. As recently as the 70s, people were anticipating a post-work world – a leisure age – and that was seen as a positive thing, not starving people of meaning.
I’d characterise this more a commentary on ‘the office’, and I’m not surprised that various realities are being exposed because of all the Covid nonsense. Like, how I can do my ‘job’ in 1 to 2 hours per day, for example, but in the fiction-inducing office environment, it ‘becomes’ 8. ‘The office’ is, in my opinion, the least valuable environment conceived by man.