How Work Has Failed Us

I’ve had over thirty jobs in my life.  I’ve been a ditch digger, a grave digger, a truck driver, a cab driver, driven a forklift in a warehouse, and made tin cans on an assembly line.  I’ve worked weekends and holidays and graveyard shifts.  Once, on a freezing Christmas night, I slipped on a patch of ice, fell off the loading dock, and nearly cracked my spine.  I’ve been yelled at, spied on, insulted, assaulted, fired and laid off. I’ve gotten into fistfights on the job but also made some lasting friendships.  I’ve seen workers cut and bruised, break their arms and legs, and watched as a stamping press cut off a man’s fingers. None of it was pretty or uplifting.

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      I’ve also worked for Fortune 1000 companies with professionals who were well-dressed, highly educated, and extremely motivated toward success.  Yet for the most part, intelligence and a desire to succeed had little bearing on the arc of their careers. 

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      Thinking back thirty years later, what I remember most is that the bulk of my colleagues were frustrated and unhappy.  Some had moments of triumph but those moments were fleeting.  Others attained the success they wanted but only at the cost of friendships and marriages. Many were shocked to discover that the companies to whom they had given their loyalty and commitment cared little for them beyond the immediate value that could be extracted from their services. By middle age, almost all were either out of a job or looking for something new.  Not because they were incompetent but because the world was indifferent to their needs.

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      Business isn’t run on dreams but on the hard calculus of cost and efficiency -- often to the detriment of employee satisfaction and personal gratification.  And that’s a problem.  If work were simply a means to an end, a paycheck that provided us with food on the table and a roof over our heads, then the trade-off, while not ideal, would at least be something we could rationalize.  But work is so much more. 

 

      Ask someone what they do for a living and how they respond will be a clear indicator of whether or not they’re happy with their life.  Are they proud of their accomplishments?  Or do they quickly change the topic or complain about their frustrations?  Work defines us; gives purpose, meaning and direction to our lives.  It’s part of who we are both individually and as a nation; an instinct hard-coded into our DNA by an ethic that views anything less than a total dedication to our jobs as morally suspect.

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      We spend more time at work than we do at home; interact more with our colleagues than with our friends and family; take fewer vacations and work longer hours than any other industrialized nation in the world. Yet study after study reveals that rather than fulfilled most of us are not only stressed by our jobs but feel that what we do for a living is meaningless with no lasting impact on either society or the lives of others. 

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      It wasn’t supposed to be this way.  The promise was simple: go to school, study hard, graduate, then get a job that was lucrative and personally fulfilling.  Like everything else in life, that promise, if it ever really existed, was broken long ago. Why the disconnect? Why are so many people either looking for a new job or ready to change their careers?