Numbers are all about perspective. According to a press release from The Conference Board, half of all Americans are satisfied with their jobs. This could mean that we each have a 50 percent chance of liking our job, but it really means that half of us have a 100 percent chance of hating our job. So if you’re looking for work right now, you know what you have to look forward to. For seasonal students, you’ll hate your job for three months. For you recent grads, well, it will be a bit longer.
But there is a very good reason why people hate work- it hates us first. If we believe Karl Marx, each person is destined to spend life as a labor source, producing products and delivering services in an economic system that erases any trace of the individual’s labor and inspiration. Your coffee this morning could not relate to you the aspirations of the person who picked it. The files you alphabetized show no sign of your efforts to educate yourself. Nobody looks at the floor you sweated to mop and wax and says, “Wow, what grace and expression – that’s an Arthur Nash original for sure.” In effect this system of work transforms the essence of one’s humanity and soul into an abstract exchange value.
When you look at it that way, it’s a wonder anyone retains any motivation to go out and participate in the process. But the other part of the equation is of course the need for the liquid of life-cash. Apart from the few who probably manage to live off the grid out there somewhere on the frontier between industrial capitalism and the Cascades, we all look desperately, fall over each other even, to secure our place in the soul-sucking machine.
College students know this well. Far from being liberated from the cash labor grind, college students not only have to negotiate the summer rush for jobs, but they also have to cut themselves out of the market for most jobs that are not ‘temporary’ or ‘seasonal.’ One may go to college on the pretext of seeking enlightenment and a better world and all that crap, but if you’ve finished even a term and a half you’ve learned that all the world is a slow machine of pain and toil and you’re just delaying the inevitable with a few more years of education. The gears and levers of the machine are patient and they will be there when you get out. When you do leave, or if you have just left, there is that admirable moment of hope when one believes that she or he has truly increased his or her marketable exchange value, but a four-year degree is a meal ticket for a painful few.
Even without a finished degree, you hit the mean streets of Eugene last week with your polished resume and hair just right, and meaningful work, work you think you will like, may be a priority for the first week or two of the search, but in the frantic early summer scramble most job seekers will be edged out and soon you’ll settle for any job at all. When desperation sets in, the system has already won. Look in the mirror and in your pocket book – you’re not even working yet and the little vacuum tubes are pulling hard at your soul. Your 30 or 90 credits, BA or MA may be rounding out your character and expanding your mind, but they’re not paying the bills and filling your accounts.
There’s no way to beat this work thing, but if you want to settle the account a little closer, take a hint from Marx and treat the job market for the soulless machine it is. Sure, it will pay you $7.80 an hour, but it won’t flirt with you or take you home, so don’t try to impress it. Take this little theory to heart – don’t assess the jobs out there against yourself and what you want, assess yourself and what you are willing to do to get the jobs out there. It works like this: You scan the want ads and circle a bunch that you’re nearly qualified for and might get if you can nail the interview. You’d be happy with any one of them because they’re all related to your field of study and the pay is decent. Cross all of these out. You’ll spend hours on applications for naught.
Now circle the jobs that pay a little less than you’d like and are of a type you swore you’d never do again or just plain despise. Narrow these down to two or three. These are the jobs you’ll be reduced to begging for in two weeks anyhow, so now you’re two weeks ahead of the game. Revise your resume and go to the interview ready not to impress them with special skills and future aspirations, but a ruthless willingness to work any hours and no plans to ever look for any other job.
Some may call this pessimistic or defeatist because they say ‘aim for the stars’ and ‘follow your heart,’ but I call it smart – you’ve got to deceive yourself a little to get along in the machine. At least when you hate that job, you have a job to hate and you can move to a better one later.
Hate your job? The feeling appears to be mutual
Daily Emerald
June 24, 2007
Patrick Finney
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