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Work

September 1, 2020

There’s a new apartment complex being built in town. I’m not sure that more building is best for the town – that’s a subject for a different essay.  I’ve been giving some thought to a new place, and so the curious me went for the tour. The building has central air and amenities such as a pool and a fitness center. The builder boasts of kitchens with stainless steel appliances and granite counter tops as if these products were unattainable by the masses.   Everything about these apartments is modern and brand new. That isn’t a small thing in a locale that is filled with 100-year-old homes. 

Brand new, shiny and uncluttered are attractive features, not only in the age of HGTV, but also because the same four walls have been playing a much bigger part in my life than I ever intended. It’s a little bit cabin fever and a good dose of realization that maybe it’s time for me look at things differently. But as my mind became more Zen, the fuddy dud in me crept back as I read promotional phrase “luxury apartment.”  It was nice. It was brand, spanking new, but not luxury.

I like new. I ready for some more brand new in my life. Sometimes our words and our emotions need to be realigned. For instance, I have always loved my pizza delivery person.  Pizza is the signal for a “let’s hangout”, relaxed evening. Traditionally for me it’s a Friday evening kicking off the weekend. My pizza delivery person relationship for the most part has always been a “hi there, thank you,” kind of exchange. When my delivery person was the son of a teacher, I subbed for during her maternity leave for him, there were a few more lines of conversation.  I hoped my tips gave him some needed spending money.   Kids grow, but the tradition of Friday night pizza is as endless as the stars. I eaten a lot of pizza in my life. 

I like my pizza. I like my town. While the federal definition of small business sees my favorite pizza restaurants and so many other restaurants as microscopic. Since March, the pizza, Amazon, Instacart, and others like GrubHub delivery people have ridden their coattails of their super hero counterparts of the doctors, nurses and EMTs. All have been dubbed essential workers.  Good. It has brought recognition to the trained and the untrained.  Essential is the chosen word, appearing in thank you commercials and signs all over the area.

Recognition is undoubtedly due.  I’m just not sure essential is the correct word.  I think it’s another opportunity examine the same old four walls and dig a little deeper.

Americans have always had a peculiar relationship with work. Work, particularly paid work, is desirable and necessary. Yet, Friday is the most celebrated day of the work week with discussion of those weekend plans starting on Wednesday. The best oxymoron of all; Labor Day is celebrated with a day off!

I’m no different. I love the weekend. Since my first part-time job I’ve always had mostly great work experiences.  I’ve never subscribed to the adage of “do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.”  It’s a saying that comes with a weird sense of grandeur.  That there is a one perfect job for every individual. The advice is less idealist than exclusionary, especially for anyone having a bad day.  I believe that we choose jobs based on the type of nuisance (feel free to insert a stronger word) we can tolerate. 

As a high school teacher, I observed that career exploration lessons were always met with resistance and confusion. In the early ‘90’s, the students thought landscaper was the ticket; by the late ‘90’s everyone wanted to work on Wall St. and buy a Hummer. By the crash of ‘08, so many kids had experienced the downsizing and the layoffs of their parents’ careers.  If one wasn’t born with a particular dream, acquiring one was beyond reach. Their expectation was that they would be miserable in work similar to the work that made their parents miserable. Absent was any thought of matching their skill set, natural or acquired, to a dream or an unusual goal.  The decision about career and work is often driven by nothing more sublime than the need to earn a paycheck. While necessary and desirable, a paycheck is not a life plan. This perspective floods the concept of jobs and work with judgment. 

Hard work comes in two varieties.  First, the crunch time on the job, the close of the marking period for a teacher, the compiling the monthly statement or the accountant, or the revamping of the computer system. It’s the ebb and flow of the job.  I worked college registration before the age of self-registration by computer.  The days were twelve hours long, but there was a sense of triumph at the end of it, the joy of having done the near impossible. The second variety teeters on the brink of a personal pity party. “I work hard to have nice things.”  I can hear the sob, sob in the background.  The inference is their work is harder, better and more worthy.  Maybe their efforts earn them a brand-new car or a vacation home, please enjoy it. Feel secure that the entire world is not vying for one singular, solitary, gold medal awarded for incredible effort.  

It sounds ridiculous, doesn’t it? In the early spring of this year that attitude disappeared for a hot minute. Delivery people, along with the doctors and nurses, had the skill sets that were needed to drag the rest of us through this pandemic. Yes, delivery requires a skill set.  Delivery people can drive, locate addresses and lug boxes out of their trucks and cars up walkways and stairs to the front door.  Some people would call these tasks working independently.  After the third time around the block trying to find an address or a safe place to leave the car, I would call it the “nuisance” (again insert a stronger word) I couldn’t tolerate. Delivery people became essential. Delivery people were valued. Their work was valued and praised. I hope they completed their days with that self-satisfied feeling of accomplishment.

Work is more than that paycheck.  It’s the meaning in our lives.  Although most of our daily work rarely shows us the meaningful end product.  The engineer plans for one system or aspect of a project and has moved on to another project before the total plan is approved, an ER doctor stabilizes the patient for admission to another floor in the hospital, the student prepares for weeks to take the SAT’s and a still more tests await them.  When any of these workers decide the back of their house could use a deck it is the power saw and hammer that builds the meaning. The work produces the, “Aha, I did it. I made something happen. Here it is for all the world to see.”  

Work has always been an avenue to finding meaning and purpose in our lives.  Yet meaning and purpose don’t have a set price point or packaging.  When that deck is finished, I hope there is a party to admire the deck’s construction because it has created a place for people to gather and to share.  When the worker sits back and enjoys the deck alone, I hope it’s with the realization that each person can control their personal attitude towards the world.