this post was submitted on 17 Jul 2023
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AskBeehaw
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Of course work is miserable. If it was fun happy rainbow puppies all day, we wouldn't call it "work", we'd call it a "pastime" or a "hobby" Demand for that kind of "job" would be through the roof. There'd be waiting lists on applications and the wages would be near-nonexistent.
We get paid to do it because it sucks. Maybe not all of it sucks, but enough of it sucks that nobody wants to do it for free, for the love of the craft, for the personal betterment, or whatever.
Even people who work at the circus don't say "Bye, honey, I'm off to spend the day at the circus!", they say "Bye honey, I'm off to work."
...or maybe "don't work a job you don't love!" is some white-collar thinking that I'm too blue-collar to understand.
Nah man. There's nothing inherently shitty about work. Work is energy put to use. My garden is work. Painting the house is work. And my job, which is growing food, is work. And I really like my job. I like being outside, I like solving problems, interacting with plants and animals. The hours can be intense at times, and I've currently got blisters on the palms of my fucking hands, and I make very little money, but it is work and it is not shitty.
The problem is not that work sucks, the problem is that the types of work and the environments in which work is done in our industrialized, financialized, capitalist society are often alienating, dehumanzing, useless, destructive, boring, and pointless.
People finding work "miserable" is not an inherent property of work (which is doing something useful) or even of jobs (which is doing something supposedly useful for money). It's an indication that something has gone wrong with our society.
I have a hard time believing this.
Sure, maybe some people love landscaping, or coding, or whatever. But who's got a passion for forklift driving? Who loves fighting rush hour traffic in a dump truck that, when empty, weighs 13.25 tons, with the pressure of knowing that any small mistake could result in the loss of your CDL and your entire livelihood? Are there actually people out there who would pick boxes in a warehouse freezer even if they weren't getting paid? Are there people who are just thrilled to go empty bedpans for dying old people? Is running a cash register a "calling" for anyone? Is there a subset of folks who just love it when somebody tries to haggle over a nickel, using a 3-year-expired competitor's coupon for a different product as their negotiating leverage, while a line of angry people backs up behind them? Have you ever met anyone who'd go around pumping septic tanks as a hobby if they couldn't make money at it?
I'd venture to guess that the majority of working-class jobs almost entirely comprise piles of misery and shit. Even if there are people who honestly enjoy doing things like 'nam-crawling through 2" of mud in a 12" crawlspace to fix a complicated bit of homeowner DIY plumbing dumbassery, there aren't nearly enough of them to fill society's need for those jobs. The number of people who get off doing cold-calls for a collection agency is nowhere near the number it takes to fill the call centers. Someone is always going to have to be doing a dangerous, awful, body/mind-breaking occupation that gives them only a slight spark of joy when the check comes on payday.
There is significant middle ground between loving something and finding it miserable. And yeah, believe it or not, but plenty of tradespeople take pride in their work.
I'm starting to think you're going well out of your way to intentionally miss my point, so I'm going to disengage now.