kasser speech

The Facades at Work

One of these days I’m going to run out of cheesy puns that I put in most of these entry titles; but for now we’re doing all right.

Rubin has a list of tips for being more productive at work. Happy and productive usually go together in the popular lexicon, and we certainly have jobs such as Business Consulting and Industrial Organizational Psychology, which go along with this obviously true connection.

Be productive. Be happy.

But we know from this blog that it’s easy to bull shit. For example, when I worked in the library, if you simply craned your neck, you could look in and see that one of the librarians was actually just reading People magazine. She just wasn’t doing anything, and she was trying to look like she was doing something.

Doing “nothing” is a job, it’s just a cushy job. I’ve worked both kinds, where I’ve had to use a lot of effort for minimum wage, and I’ve had to work very little for minimum wage. Working at the library was closer to the latter than the former. When I worked at the Skenandoa restaurant, it was closer to working very hard with a huge amount of effort.

When I write effort, I mean strain and stress. This, too, is ambiguous. I mean scrubbing, pushing a broom, and pushing a mop. I had to race around putting dishes away. I had to talk to chefs awkwardly about exactly how much work I’m doing. If there were times for breaks, they would want me standing and scrubbing counters.

I’ve worked as a life guard at a ton of places at this point. I’ve worked at the Skenandoa Pool, the Clinton Pool, I was highered by the Hamilton College pool but I never ended up working there, I worked for the Sitrin Home Camp, I worked for the NCCU pool, and I worked for the Addison Miller Pool in Utica. I worked for the Candler Swim Club in Raleigh and at the Northwoods Mews Townhomes pool in Cary, North Carolina.

Life guarding is even more ambiguous. It’s emblematic of the problem that workers and managers face. Surely it’s hard work, but what kind of hard work is it? You have to be attentive, and you have to keep your mind focused and thinking, yet not bored. When I was working for the Candler Swim club, she would make us do hard labor during the breaks by mowing.

Sometimes motivating ourselves is easy, and sometimes it’s hard. It might be a nice entry later to talk about why people are motivated toward fun, and how they are motivated by fun.

I’ve learned that many jobs are very ambiguous about how much effort and strain are involved. This is especially in the United States.