Throw a party, break a few wine glasses, I can replace them with handblown stems even more beautiful. What about your brother-in-law sleeping on that old camp cot? Even if he does stay too long, isn’t it time to buy a new sofa bed? Imagine those tulips arrayed in a perfectly fluted vase or a throw pillow tossed with a pop of daisy orange. I am paid to ignite your consumer desires. My livelihood depends on your compulsion to buy what may or may not be essential.
I am a purveyor of American capitalism. I teach others to buy, sell, and smoothly finagle their way to the top of a sales goal or an organizational chart. I strategize chink by chink, steadily filling the collective coffers. But beneath the façade of corporate hunger lies a guilty secret.
I am personally not motivated money. I like what money can buy. But I am not compelled to work hard or long so that the establishment will pay me big bucks. I work hard and long because I like to work and I like what I do. I pose as the poster child of free enterprise, but I am a sham, a good natured serf. In the cosmic economics class that linked productivity to income, I was distracted, folding dollar bills into origami cranes.
My ironic relationship with money has everything to do with my complicated relationship with working. Work, defined as showing up and accomplishing a succession of activities leading to a superior result, is the foundation of my familial legacy. This value was imprinted very early and over time my attitudes have gone through many permutations, evolving from naïve to angry to interested with each new job. It is no wonder that work has come to mean many things other than simply a way of earning money.
Work builds character.
My father worked his way from poverty to comparative wealth and attributed this reinvention to Horatio Alger-like grit and effort. He remained fiercely proud of his blue collar background, however, and believed that his children must experience a similar if simulated trajectory. He was dedicated to conveying a rigorous, nearly compulsive, work ethic. I have held real jobs since elementary school. My employment history began with an entrepreneurial effort: I filled empty baby food jars with my grandmother’s home grown dried oregano and sold them door to door for thirty cents each. I harvested prune plums one summer and was grateful when I was old enough to babysit every child in my neighborhood. I went on to de-tassel corn, sort machine parts and man a mini-mart gas station. I was indoctrinated with the fear that if I was not working, I would grow up lazy. In my family, this was akin to growing up an axe murderer.
The strange thing is that I can’t remember what I bought with all my childhood earnings. I don’t recall a fabulous bike or clothes or nights on the town. I can envision individual moments in each job but the memories stop at the paycheck. I do remember refusing tips from my babysitting families, righteously repeating that I would only accept the contracted fifty cents an hour and nothing more.
Work is a means to an end.
After punching out of my perfunctory child labor shifts, I came home and wrote stories. I had wanted to be a writer long before the prune gig, but when it came to choosing a career path, I was told by my father that I needed marketable skills. Writing doesn’t pay. What if my husband died and I had to care for myself? The purpose of a college education was to amass credits, graduate with a viable degree and work only until Lady Bountiful husband swept me off the job market entirely. I felt no real calling other than language so I wandered aimlessly through various majors by day and worked at a record store by night. This ambivalence resulted in a diploma that left me ill prepared for any professional option. I had not followed my passion or certified in a trade. Working paid bills and then put my husband through school and then paid bills again. I sat bitterly in the divide between the proletariat life I was leading and the enlightened life I dreamed of: as a scarf-wrapped, Lily-of-the-valley, St. Francis without God, Marx without Stalin, Haight-Ashbury without heroin, free spirit. I was the going through the motions and resented it.
Perhaps if I just continued to work something would happen. A ship full of mythic gold would sail into the harbor. I didn’t care about the treasure; it was the change in circumstance that I was scanning for, the freedom of choice that magic gold would offer.
Work is an escape.
At some point in a communal relationship with other people – roommates, lovers, family – an individual realizes that sharing a life means giving up control. People poop in diapers and have moods and use your stuff. Chaos is one load of laundry away. Going to work became more a break and less the obligatory treading of water. I could escape to a place where people were mostly nice to each other. I arrived at my job on time, I did what they asked, I did it well and people were happy. At work, there can be a direct connection between contribution and validation. At home, contribution is expected and appreciation is sporadic and arbitrary. Performance at work can be measured and accumulated. If I learn the rules and the environment is fair, I can regain a certain amount of control. When I smile at a customer and suggest a candle holder with a matching candle, I make more money for the store and my manager says, “Great job!” Salary becomes an afterthought in the rush of positive reinforcement. My father’s early lessons began to pay off, the stamina acquired from sorting machine parts at fifteen set me apart from kids who merely had to keep their room clean.
Work is interesting and challenging.
Now, my work is it about finding answers to interesting questions. I engage equal parts scrappy pragmatism and intellectual flexibility. Is it possible to improve intangible behavior such as tone of voice or a willingness to serve others? Can natural chemistry between people be measured and replicated? Is there a consistent developmental process to sort visionary leaders from excellent doers? These dialogues fascinate me and my so-called work is more than a constructed role, it is often an extension of how I walk in the world on or off the timeclock. There are aspects of my job that I neither enjoy nor excel at, but overall, it is the closest I have come to fully integrating creativity and responsibility since I assembled my first babysitting kit.
I often forget that I get paid every few weeks. I am so busy it slips my mind.
Work to live, live to work.
Work ethic is one of many values that we dutifully recite at our parents’ command and then spend the rest of our lives trying to deconstruct. As a child I obeyed my father’s obsessive insistence on always having a job and always pushing my efforts just beyond what I assumed I could muster. As a young woman I resented the boot strap advice that left me feeling like a cog in The Man’s machine. The trapped sensation eased as I worked toward being more involved and connected. Today I have to curb my inherited workaholic tendencies, reminding myself to take time off, relax and buy something for myself. Perhaps a glass, a sofa, a vase? Something more pretty than useful.
I’ve earned it.
As a manager/supervisor, the issue of work ethic often crosses my mind. I too was taught to work; if your gonna do the job, you do it right. Not all of my employees see it the same way; its an interesting struggle to encourage productivity out of a person who doesn’t have similiar work ethic. And, unfortunately, when it’s government work, they can’t be easily replaced. Maybe I’ll write a postcard to Postsecret.com.
You’re such a great writer Pandora! I liked this post a lot but I don’t share the same variety of work ethic that your describe. It’s not that I lack work ethic – I think I have a pretty solid one – but you might look at my day-to-day life and smirk with disdain at what appears to be a slovenly and lazy lifestyle.
I go to work maybe twice a week. I work in my PJs a lot. I’ve been known conference call in me undies (shhh!). But I work hard, and my work is always of high quality. Sometimes I wish I had a great office to go to everyday, but I also revel in the fact that I can heat up my lunch on my own stove, work at the cafe on sunny days, and take off to yoga in the mid afternoon. But I am only judged on the quality of my work, not how punctual or well dressed or chipper I am.
I’m one of those new-fangled telecommuting knowledge workers who are collectively changing what it means to work and contribute. What do people like me do to the notion of hard work and the work ethic? What do you think of people like me, and what would your father think?
Brooke, that type of life sounds terrific! As a professor I enjoy a good amount of flexibility, but I do feel the need to be groomed and upbeat in the classroom, because sometimes my students are anything but.
As for what my father would think of you–he’d probably think, “Hm, what would I do with all the time and money I’d save by not commuting a hundred miles a day?” Your life is more sustainable as well as more enjoyable than the norm.
Do you ever miss the community feel of the traditional workplace?
Pandy Brew,
I love that you brought up the question about why we work:
“I am personally not motivated money. I like what money can buy. But I am not compelled to work hard or long so that the establishment will pay me big bucks. I work hard and long because I like to work and I like what I do.”
I like to work for a million reasons.
i like analyzing issues and solving problems. I like building an argument and representing it well–(lots of fussing with PowerPoint!). I like wowing a large room of balding, middle aged white men with clever analyses.
….And, I like the money.
I like money because that green paper makes it possible for me to fly away to Park City for the weekend, get laser eye surgery (I can finally see!!!), or eat at Babbo.
Isn’t it ok to say we like the many rewards that come with working?
I sense an impending discussion on Marxism.
Pandora, you write with love.
#3: Rachel, you didn’t ask me, but I’m gonna jump in anyway. As another work-at-home person, I have to say I do miss the camraderie of an office and a shared pursuit. There’s so much energy to be gained from working with a smart, interesting team of people. And it’s hard to discipline yourself to get to work, and keep working, when there’s no one around to observe if you’re slacking off.
On the other hand, having worked from home for more than ten years now, I have to say, I can’t imagine ever going back to an office. I’d want to only go in when I felt like it, to get that jolt of shared energy, but I’d never want to have to go in five days a week. You really do get used to the freedom. As Brooke and I were discussing when we had brunch a few weeks ago in SF, because I could just zip on up there without asking any bosses. Ahh.
#3: LP said it better than I could have! If I had to go into an office every day, I would definitely seek out an academic setting, a policy type environment or a small startup as the dynamic in those settings seem so energizing and enlightening.
To Brooke and those with more flexible work situations – I define work by showing up in the broadest sense. I love and missed my TGW assignments because they force me to “show up” every fortnight (a homage to my Friday partner) and write something. Growing up, my father spent lots of airtime on the quality of work (I edited this out, I could have gone on). He told us the story of the “$5 job” (anyone in ex-Especially for Mormon land remember that one?) which was about doing your best no matter what the job, big or small. So my father would say you are all working hard (as if, but you asked)
I would say, a million times cool to have conference calls in your undies. Some of my positivity towards my job has to do with it being so much better than it has been. I also have flexibility, never do the same thing twice and do not work in an office. Kind of like – this mac and cheese is better than the saltine I had yesterday. But you guys have the steak (salmon or salad for those not inclined to beef) in that you have created meaningful work in your own terms.
LT – You will be happy to know that PB, MF, BW and SSW had a rousing discussion on Marx just last night. MF assumed the role of JP Morgan.
MF – teasing, teasing. You are right about the money part. My father would agree. Maybe I just need to get me more in order to see the light.
And Dave – when you read this – I am sure that if we could just go shopping together, you would see the light, perhaps become a shiller of shit yourself?
Shit shillers do make considerate houseguests, though.
My favorite part: ‘People poop in diapers and have moods and use your stuff.”
As another perspective from someone who came from a similar father, what seemed most conspicuous was all of the things my father missed by his single minded obsession with work. My father’s work took him away from the family five days a week. In fact, he only had a peripheral hand in raising the younger children and was absent for most concerts, graduations, plays, basketball games, etc for all of us.
He also believed that “success” was synonymous with the size of one’s bank account and, to this day, has an almost pathologic compulsioin to make more money even when he has more than he could ever spend in his lifetime.
To me his “work ethic” was ultimately fueled by his profound fear of poverty, his own insecurities and an almost religious like belief in capitalism because it was a means to escape his past, and, indeed, it served him well.
Luckily, it seems Pandora has been able to glean the positive aspects of her father’s influence and has developed a healthier relationship with work and its inherent rewards, has not lost sight of those things that are most important and is insightful enough to seek after balance.