OPPORTUNITY
Phew! That sales clerk sure had an attitude. —Common complaint
Nonprofessionals often seem to resent their place in the social order. Even when they take home more money than their professional coworkers—as when a newspaper editors secretary, for example, is paid more than entry-level reporters—nonprofessionals remain much less excited about the status quo. And if nonprofessionals find society less than inspiring, society is hardly agog about nonprofessionals. The research assistant on Wall Street, the junior copywriter on Madison Avenue, the international licensing assistant on Fashion Avenue— any of these $25K professional-track beginners have more social status than does the $30K secretary or even the $40K administrative assistant.
If pay rates don't account for the nonprofessionals greater dissatisfaction and lower social status, then what does? The culprit becomes clear when nonprofessionals reveal their inner thoughts: Its the nature of nonprofessional work itself. The typical nonprofessional today is a white-collar worker, not a blue-collar worker. But while the nonprofessional workforce may have adopted more fashionable dress, discomfort with the hierarchy remains widespread. Here is Christopher Winks, an insightful office worker, with thoughts stimulated by his first day on a new assignment. He makes clear his dissatisfaction with the very nature of the work, and by doing so hints at the appeal of professional work.
The office in which I was to be working for the next few weeks was a franchising operation that contracted out secretarial services to clients, among other things. But I only found that out a few hours after I had begun work; immediately after I walked in, introduced myself to the supervisor, and found an empty desk, I was put to work transcribing a tedious legal document, dictated by a disembodied individual who sounded as if he made it a habit to speak with pebbles in his mouth.
What struck me about this was that my supervisor had tacitly assumed that what counted in this job—as, no doubt, with hers—was the what and not the why. You had a job to do and you did it. And since that unwritten rule obtained in every other corporation, regardless of whether this firm did management consulting, real estate speculation, or constructing nuclear power plants—what difference did it make if the purpose of it all was known? It came down to the same thing no matter where you worked. This attitude of passive cynicism has always seemed to me to be the most pervasive feeling in offices.
The uniformity of the work process has another consequence that hit home as I struggled to keep up with the unending flow of legal babble: No matter what job you do, you can learn everything there is to know about it in a matter of minutes. After that, there are only details—sometimes perverse, sometimes complicated, but always insignificant in comparison to the basic structure of the tasks performed. About an hour after I had walked in, I felt that I had been working there for months, and I still didn't know what the company did in the first place!
OPPORTUNITY 86
The office consisted of a series of cubicles with tall dividers. To speak to anybody, I had to stand up and peer over the partition. Each cubicle was unbelievably cramped; there were no windows; the ceilings were claustrophobically low; and fans spread the stale air around equitably and democratically.
After a few minutes of dictaphone transcription, I gazed at the crabbed, stilted words that seemed to be flowing from my fingers even though they had nothing to do with me, and was uncertain whether I felt contempt, amusement or utter amazement at what I saw.
As the day wore on, I felt recurrent pains in my lower back. The typed material in front of me would become blurred from time to time as my eyes had to strain more and more under the harsh glare of the fluorescent lights. My head pounded. I craved a stiff drink, or perhaps two or three. I thought I would weep for sheer frustration and rage at having to sit down in a tiny cubbyhole and transcribe bull-shit— useless, pointless bullshit. The split between mind and body that even "easy" work demands—and which I was diligently reinforcing despite my better instincts (which in any case were all locked in a little compartment of my brain lest they interfere with the pace)—was breaking down. The inhumanity of wage labor can only really be experienced when its effects permeate your entire being. 1
When you ask nonprofessionals why they go to work, most don't talk about building a career, being creative or making a meaningful contribution to society. They talk about making money. Yet people whose jobs represent little more than an exchange of time for money are only
momentarily satisfied when they get their paychecks. As the preceding testimony makes clear, the problem is not the amount of compensation for the work, but lack of satisfaction from the work itself. Even at twice the salary, office worker Christopher Winks would still find it hard to keep his mind from questioning his body as his fingers type out "useless, pointless bullshit."
An unsatisfying work life is much more than a 40-hour-per-week problem, because of its profound effect on your morale while you are off the job. You may be pained to think of it as such, but your job is probably the biggest project of your life. It is probably the only activity to which you will ever devote the most alert of your waking hours with such disciplined regularity, day after day after day. During no other period of comparable length in your life will you make an effort of this magnitude on any project of your own. Thus, for all practical purposes, your life's work is at stake, and so it is understandable that your most serious struggles are to control it, not to sell it at a higher price.
A work life controlled by others has severe and inevitable consequences, and accounts for much of the stress that individuals suffer. Powerlessness at work can mean many things, all of which are stressful: difficulty getting assigned to work that is interesting and creative, lack of control over (or even sight of) the end result of your work, lack of control over how to do your work and when to do it, close supervision, lack of control over the work environment, lack of privacy, vulnerability to sexual harassment, lack of respect, and job insecurity. This attractive package comes with the worry (although you try not to think about it) that your blood, sweat and tears are going into work of questionable social value, work whose bottom line is enriching some
corporation, serving the military or bolstering some elite. People stuck with such unfulfilling work often find themselves engaging compulsively in any of a variety of escapes. The escapes themselves are a reliable sign of someone who lacks intrinsically satisfying work: anxiety eating, alcohol and drug use, compulsive buying, vegetating in front of the TV, total scheduling and extreme busyness—anything to avoid the pain of reflecting on your situation.