Another blog about work
When about to begin a new job the other week, I realized the other day that it has been more or less 15 years since I entered the workforce, and I wish I had a happier tale to tell than I have. What would I say to my 22 year old self when about to start my first day as a full time working person that life would be good, that everything was going to be fine, that it would all be alright somehow? Unfortunately I would not say that to my 22 year old self, or any other 22 year old self out there. Work is a universal experience, something that is necessary in order to survive and have some kind of monetary gain coming into your bank account to fund what you would otherwise like to be doing. That’s why it’s called “work” rather than “having fun”, after all. After said 15 years in the workforce, this is what I have learned.
Many have chosen to go a more creative route when talking about work, from literature pieces to sit coms to movies. The nature of work has changed drastically in the last few years in directions we were far from prepared for. A history lesson is in order to fully understand what did and did not happen, because it hit us so quickly that we did not see it coming. Primitive man lived in a hunter-gatherer society where life seemed rather simple and yet just as cut throat as it can be today. You hunted for food, killed the food (whatever that may be), ate what you killed, and that was that. Technology, self awareness and understanding began to dawn upon said tribal people, and in order to settle in one place and become a more stable community; we went from hunting and gathering to that of rural living. Once again, after several thousand years and more of the previously mentioned things took place, we moved into urban living. Along with industrialization came more specialized skills required to work in factories, and then, sometime around the beginning of the 20th century, we began to shift towards occupations that would require as little physical labor as possible and more paperwork. Hence, nothing truly sums up the last forty years’ explosion of social and technological changes in the workforce quite like one thing and one thing only: the heap of dirty dishes in the coffee room sink.
All aspects of our history are in that location. Enlightenment : “I am woman. Wash your own dishes.” Expansion: “Dirty dinner plates must not be piled on top of the filthy latte pot and crusty food processor.” Restructuring : “Please consult the 300 page manual on office policy regarding dish washing responsibilities.” Streamlining: “From now on, only one unwashed coffee mug is allowed per person.” Prioritizing: “I will wash the mugs and cups, but I will not touch that chipped dinner plate that still has Bob’s breakfast burrito welded to it or that rotating platter in the microwave that has God only knows on it.” Teamwork: “Sue didn’t wash the dishes on her day to wash the dishes, so I’m not washing the dishes today.” It is who we used to be (people who were too busy to wash the dishes) and who we are now (people who are too busy to wash the dishes). It links what we dreamed of being someday (a billion dollar corporation with a staff to handle washing the coffee cups) to who we dream of being now (someone who wishes they could sit down and enjoy a cup of coffee). Men and woman finally have equal voices in the world at last when they say “It’s not my turn to do the dishes.”
Look in the refrigerator near that sink and you will see another form of exploration, a brave new world in which we have come from and where we are now aside from the familiar and unfamiliar. The two week old doggie bag from the two martini lunches that lasted three hours have been replaced with the order-in vegan Thai boxes. Stale, half eaten pastrami sandwiches from a local deli have been replaced with stale, half eaten nine grain buns with lite soy cheese and nonfat mayo like spread sandwiches. Moldy cottage cheese has been replaced with moldy Greek yogurt. Look in the trash cans around your office and you will see that even our trash has changed. Once there was the 25 cent, gooey chocolate vending machine candy bars, and now there are $3.50 mega protein bars which promise to boast your energy level and taste like dried grout. Once you would find 16 ounce cans of Coke or Pepsi, now you find 32 ounce cans or plastic bottles of energy drinks that cause mood swings and diabetes. The box of doughnuts the thoughtful employee brought in has been replaced with the giant chocolate chip scone platter, once a 140 calorie indulgence and now an 800 calorie mass hysteria. There are no water coolers in offices anymore. Once this was the original think tank, the gathering point for common meeting ground, now abandoned because those 4.5 ounce cups are a joke for our 2.5 liter thirst. Water is now divided up into individual hydration systems of all sizes and strapped onto individuals like extra appendages on people whose only human contact is opening an email or an IM on their PDA (re: the IPO).
The office sink is the universal in many offices no matter what the task at hand may be in a place of work. It represents the many years of struggling to be, achieve, create, enlighten, and prosper, when it all came to a screeching halt when looking at an icky coffee mug. We are looking at that sink and the filth around it and hoping, believing that tomorrow’s system will get it all under control. In looking at that sink, refrigerator and trash can today, I see where we were and are now. Work is still the center of our existences. It gave us dream, confidence, choices, moved us from the discussion phase and into the doing phase, and also ruined our lives.
I look around the offices themselves and see that so much in them has changed. Remember typewriters, and at the end of the day people would cover them to keep the dust out? Being near a wall, desk or table to make a phone call with a rotary dial on that telephone, and if that party was already on the phone you would hear a busy signal and you had to keep redialing to reach them? If something was urgent to get to another person for some reason, you would put a stamp on it and put it in the mail? Computers were terminals, only had access to some information, was displayed in green and black only, and everything had to be attached to the main brain in order to work? It used to take 3 minutes or longer to make a copy of something, and you had to walk down the hallway to deliver any kind of message to someone else in the same office? Those days are gone, but somehow we did it all without 99% of the time saving devices we now have today. And it seemed like there were 5 more hours of time in a day that we have now.
Then the tide shifted once again, and we stopped being eager yuppies that were there to make a difference and climb the ladder to said greatness we had hoped for and gave rise to the overachiever quitter. After being given so many messages that one should get an education, put off marriage and children in order to have a fulfilling career life, and have as much of a good time as possible, I found myself committed to massive obligations and endless deadlines about the same time that everyone else decided to quit their jobs and become organic fruit farmers. Some may argue that was something that was exclusive to the late 80s and only for those who worked in middle to upper management positions in white collar companies. I assure you that notion is still alive and well today. Years ago at my first job, someone decided to do just that. She up and quit, then a few weeks later called me and said that she was angry with me that I had told everyone that she quit her job, and she didn’t want me to tell anyone inside or outside of the office that she had done just that. It was keeping her from fulfilling her dreams, she said. I asked what those dreams were, and she said “I don’t know”. Then she hung up on me, and I heard that she declared she was going to start an all girl punk band and move to California
Anxiety mounted as we went from an Options Era to an Oblivious Era. It seems like you blinked and you missed it. If you needed, for example, a hammer, you could go to your local hardware store full of experts who could teach you how to use it. Now, if you need a hammer, you go to a cavernous superstore full of complex gadgets that come with instruction books no one knows how to understand where no one who works there knows much of anything about it save for how to ring it up and swipe your credit card. Work provided a fake sense of community because all the cars in the parking lots were there and so was everyone else. On top of a sense of isolation caused by being in a 250,000 acre retail center where there was no one who knew anything anymore save for the location of the bathroom. On top of a massive new insecurity that we could not make the right decision with so many choices before us. On top of a need to appease more and more demanding customers and clients who were as cranky and unreasonable as we were. What was wrong with just a piece of paper and a pen to write things down with? We were as obsolete as an Apple 2GS. And we had no more time left to do anything anymore, and what little free time we did have was just about to vanish into cyberspace with the dawn of the Internet.
And if that wasn’t enough, you realized you had to take everything with you everywhere you went. We used to dread the office, alternately dream of quitting or fearing being fired from it, but now we were taking it with us to our homes. Eventually things you found in your office (computer, printer, scanner, copy machines, filer, etc.) crept into our homes. And because a majority of people come to work not because they like their jobs or want to earn a living it is actually to get away from their obnoxious kids, spouses and/or significant others, offices started looking more like homes complete with recreation rooms, TV rooms, and meditation gardens. You used to take luggage with you when you go on a trip, now you take it everywhere you go. And you find yourself getting angry at someone over someone who is still a size 6.
Our work clothes have changed as well, since we no longer know what this term “office casual” means. You can’t wear flip flops to work because it makes you look too edgy, yet we’re broke and can’t afford to buy shoes. Does wearing a suit mean you’re an out of touch old geezer or a reassuring return to old-world stability? Ask employees to dress up a little nicer than they would say, to a barbeque, and they get angry telling you they are not paid enough to dress nicer than they do. All out demand that the term “office casual” means that you can’t wear jeans, people wear rags and can barely be bothered to brush their teeth.
And then it all came crashing down on top of us. Executives absconded with their severance package and we were told we no longer had a job there, or we were fired, or we were laid off, or they simply decided to “go another direction with that”. Suddenly all our money had been flushed down the toilet, but we really had nothing to begin with. It’s all just nonsense. We were forced to ask ourselves what was more important, our quality of life or paying off the credit cards? We had to put our faith into the losers who were put in charge over us who didn’t know what they were doing. And we just had to literally say “fuck it”. We continue to complain, we continue to slack off just as much as we did in the past, but we were being watched by all around us for the smallest mistake or something they could use against us.
Everyone wants to feel connected to something 24/7, and work is at the center of it all. In spite of global access to a worldwide network, instant communications with everyone and everything, in spite of our deep seeded need to reach out to and be reached, the sink in the office coffee room with forever remain untouched. Instead we go to Starbucks, because they wash their dishes and cups.
Channel raison d'etre and let me know what you find.
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