The Meaning Of Job

My father tells the story of his return from Europe at the end of World War II.  My grandfather gave him a hearty handshake and told him he was welcome to stay with him for at least a week, after which it was time to find a home of his own.  The week was to give my father the chance to find a job.

He returned from Germany a grown man, having done as his country asked of him and his beliefs demanded, and it was now time to rejoin civil society as a responsible adult. The meant he had to work, earn a living, support himself and establish his life.  He appreciated his father’s generosity of a week’s cover.

A lawyer friend of mine, whose name I won’t reveal because he asked me not to, forwarded an email to me sent by his former associate. She came recommended by her law school placement office as smart and interested in his niche practice area. He interviewed her and concurred. He gave her a job. Her first job.

She was awful. It wasn’t for lack of intelligence, or even legal knowledge. It was that she couldn’t produce work. His law office was like every other small firm that does litigation. There are slow times, then an emergency requiring work be done now.  When a motion is needed now, it means work has to be done now. Good work. Hard work. Now.

He would give her a task to accomplish, and direct her to get it done now. And she either didn’t or the quality of her work was inadequate. She decided it was good enough, or that it would have to wait, whether because she had something else to do that was more important to her, or, well, it would just have to wait.

This didn’t go over well with him, and it put him in an awkward and unacceptable position. He needed work from his associate. She bristled at being told what to do and refused to do it.  To her, he was condescending, arrogant and dismissive of her reasons for failing. To her, he was mean.

Then she quit.  No notice, no discussion, but quit. He was at the same time relieved, wanting her gone but reluctant to fire her out of concern that there would be an unpleasant reaction. But quitting a position as an associate isn’t the same as quitting as a barista at Starbucks. He needed to be sure to safeguard his clients’ privileges, and so he needed some outgoing information from her.

As she was physically gone, he tried to call her, but she failed to return his calls.  He then sent her an email directing her to provide the information he needed, and confirm that all the information was accurate and complete.

The email he forwarded to me was what she sent in response.

I do not apologize for my lack of communication with you but I do understand if you need information that you cannot track down. I do not have access to any logins or information anymore and if I do because old passwords have not been changed you have a serious flaw in your business practice. I left you a detailed list of information containing everything you need and you have failed to use it and have instead contacted me.

I am sorry to say that each time I receive a message from you I encounter a very unpleasant flashback to the stress of working in your office. As a new attorney I forgive myself for not understanding the atmosphere of your office but I do apologize for staying too long because of this lack of understanding.

I am not in the position where I can speak to you without anger and annoyance but I am sure this will change with time. Upon the advice and wishes of my family and friends I have chosen not to speak with you. Until I build back my confidence and stability please understand that I would rather not communicate with you directly.

It’s not that this email is offered as evidence that Millennials are all Slackoisie, so before you mutter, “I would never write that,” don’t bother. No doubt you wouldn’t, which is always the case until you do, or some variation on rationalizing why you would be totally justified if you did. But she did.

The employment outlook for new lawyers is, to be frank, poor. There are a great many reasons for this, discussed many times in past posts. But this new lawyer got herself a job. It may not have been the highest paying job. It may not be her dream job, with her name on the wall and a corner office after two weeks. But it was a job. She got to work with an excellent lawyer, enormously well-regarded for his work, and from whom she could have learned much.  But it was still a job.

The job of lawyer involves time of great stress. It involves demands that will be inconvenient and burdensome. As an associate, you answer to the guy who signs your paychecks. When he says jump, you jump. There are lines that don’t get crossed, but hard work isn’t one of them.

Law schools want to pretend they are sending out “practice ready” lawyers. Of course, they’re not. Despite the efforts, new lawyers are nowhere near practice ready as far as their lawyer chops. But there is another aspect of “practice ready” that they are not only failing to accomplish, but effectively destroying. By acquiescing to the notion of trigger warnings, entitlement to their opinions being respected, work/life balance, all of these and more being whatever the squirt decides they are, they are sending out snowflakes too special to work at a job.

My friend won’t be hiring a brand-spanking new associate out of law school to replace the one who quit. He has a firm to run, clients to represent. He needs someone who will do the job.

I was chatting with my 91-year-old dad yesterday about jobs, wholly unrelated to this scenario. He told me,

it’s different today than when I left the service. Back then, every job needed a person to do it. Today, computers do a lot of it, so there are more people than jobs. Kids are going to have a much harder time growing up than I did. Or you did. I worry about them.

I agreed.  My lawyer friend’s associate was one of the lucky ones who got a job.

When she got the job, she posted a celebratory picture to her Facebook profile. A friend commented, “You look so lawyer like in this pic all grown up!” Within the month, she posted that she left the job at my friend’s office and updated her profile pic with a playful picture of her hanging from a tree, like a jungle gym, having fun.  There was no update of her being employed.

56 thoughts on “The Meaning Of Job

  1. Billy D

    We were looking for something Biblical this morning, and you give us this! The Meaning of Job [JOEB] is not the same as the meaning of J-0-B. We read somewhere that the employment participation rate is the lowest since the Great Depression which ushered in WWII. And the rest is history.

    A summer working in construction should cure the arrogance of newbie lawyers. Trust it! We have women there too these days, equal opportunities for all. Just sayin’. We don’t care for lawyers as a class, but we recognize and appreciate hard work, even if it should involve nothing more than polishing a seat, talking on the phone, typing on a keyboard (pushing the proverbial pencil), or standing next to the Xerox machine. It’s a jungle out there.
    91? Go dad, go.

    1. SHG Post author

      I wondered if anyone would catch the biblical allegory connection. I kinda hoped it would have been a little more obscure than it turned out.

      1. Dragoness Eclectic

        …you’re writing in English, to an American audience. It is nearly impossible not to be exposed to Judaeo-Christian literature, symbols and stories in this country, even if you’re not Christian. Why would you think that a Job reference would be obscure?

  2. Max Kennerly

    I’ve see more than a few older lawyers who raised similar complaints about their associates. Closer inspection revealed in several cases that the older lawyer was demanding every single task be done “now” without bothering to give any sense of priority to the associate and without giving the associate enough information to prioritize the work themselves. This type of poor management inevitably produces work that is late, incomplete, and inadequate.

    Of course, in the Biblical story, Job is arbitrarily punished by God for a stupid reason that has nothing to do with Job’s behavior. Is that really the allegorical connection you wanted to make with this story?

    1. SHG Post author

      I always wonder how long it will take before someone disgraces themselves by offering the usual slackoisie response. That didn’t take long at all.

      1. Nigel Declan

        Millennial Job: “Listen, God, I know you’ve been doing the deity thing for a long time, and that’s cool, but I don’t think you understand the whole trials-life balance thing that today’s believers need to succeed. You keep saying that you move in mysterious ways, but unless you start ruling the Heavens and the Earth in a way that recognizes and appreciates just how special and loyal we are, you’re going to end up going the way of the non-Noah antediluvian Patriarchs.”

        God: “Consider thyself trigger warned”

  3. bmaz

    Jeebus. This story and that email response is rage inducing. During my first few years, I often slept in the office while cranking out some massive motion, appellate brief, revised jury instructions, whatever. You just gotta do whatever it takes. Incredibly high quality, but still boutique firm, and there was simply no substitute for you doing the work. No matter what though, when the work was done, proofed, signed and delivered to court, the feeling was so incredibly rewarding. That is simply what lawyers do. Thankfully not often anymore, as I am no longer a young lawyer, but still.

  4. Richard G. Kopf

    SHG,

    I learned something the summer before law school. My teachers were AP Parts and the United Auto Workers.

    In 1969, I took a summer job at AP Parts and was required to join the UAW, which I was happy to do. My job at AP Parts was to bend exhaust pipes for Chrysler autos using a pneumatic device. I was paid by the piece and required to meet a quota. If you totalled up the quota of pipe, you were handling well over a ton of steel pipe a day.

    I thought I was strong. But when the eleven feet of pipe kicked as the device bent and then expanded one end of the pipe, and then the operator had to flip the pipe to do the same thing on the other end, I quickly discovered that I could never meet the quota. Shit, I could barely complete my shift. It was so damn hard.

    I watched young and old men do what I couldn’t do with an apparent ease. I really tried, I just couldn’t meet the quota. I was ashamed of myself.

    The leadman (and a UAW steward) took pity on me after a couple of weeks. He assigned me to drive a forklift and then hand-load trucks. It was hard but doable. I have never before or since been more thankful for the kindness of someone.

    Funny thing. AP Parts and the UAW taught me how to be a decent lawyer. Real work is fucking hard and frequently unpleasant, but there are kind people who will help if you struggle while working hard.

    Sincerely, I feel sorry for the young woman in your post.

    All the best.

    RGK

    1. SHG Post author

      Back in the winter of ’78, I was invited by the UAW to their retreat in Black Lake, Michgan, on the upper peninsula. I was given life membership, and still have the card somewhere. I couldn’t bend exhaust pipes because I had college-boy hands and muscles, so they put me in charge of the in-house UAW newspaper.

      My first headline was that they used J.P. Stevens sheets on the beds at Black Lake. At the time J.P. Stevens was the most notorious anti-union shop in the nation, under siege by all, and here was the UAW using their goods on union beds. They wanted their life membership card back.

    2. David M.

      Most every dime I make pouring coffee, translating papers and helping people move goes toward my college war chest. I may prove to be a terrible lawyer, but God willing, I won’t be a highly indebted one.

      The work I do is a friggin’ joke compared to the factory jobs you guys, my parents,
      and others in your age group held. But the complaints, man, they’re endemic. Everything’s super stressful and the demands our boss makes of us are wholly unreasonable. We get paid to make milk foam and small talk with customers.

    3. Mort

      Couple of summers ago I worked in a factor here in Texas – I got the job mainly because dad is the head design engineer (they don’t like hiring people for only the summer, they want long-term hires). It was a fairly mild summer, but 100+ degrees in the factors was not uncommon.

      The work wasn’t terribly complex, and it wasn’t hard per se, but it was on an assembly line, so if you fell behind you were screwing up the jobs of not just the people after you, but the people before you as well, as pieces would start to back up on the line.

      I wasn’t as fast as everyone else – they had been at it longer, and knew all the little tricks to make it easier or faster or both – all I could do was put my best into it. Dad had told me one thing when I started, “I’m telling you the same thing your Uncle Dick told me when I went to go work at Etnyre – You work harder than everyone else.”

      So I did. I wasn’t the best, or the fastest, but I put more effort into the job than almost anyone else. I never stopped my assigned job until the horn sounded for break, or lunch, or the end of the day, and I never failed to be back at my spot before the “get back to work” horn sounded. I took every job I was given with a thank you while I was there, and when I left I was rewarded not only with a a good sum of money for my wages, but also the Plant Manager telling me that if I ever needed a job I would have one there.

      The second thing still means more, as the money has since gone, but the sense of accomplishment – that a soft, sorts pudgy guy from Illinois could pull his weight well enough to have that said to him by a guy that had been with the company since it started – still makes me smile.

      1. Lurker

        My first job experience was the obligatory unpaid two-week “learn-to-work” period in junior high. Everyone was required to get themselves a place as a trainee. I managed, through luck, to get a place in a small electrical factory nearby.

        Though I would have loved to get on the factory floor, I was never allowed there. That was a job that required actual skill. Instead, I did clerical work for a while, and after they ran out of files for me to arrange, I happened to get a task to work with a database. It was 1990’s, so my job was to translate a customer file into MS Access format. I learned to work with it then. And to give the honour to the bluecollar work. I was doing the unskilled job. The guys on the factory floor were professionals.

        I left with a hearty handshake from the CEO (It was a small company, indeed.) and a promise that I would get paid for doing a Master’s thesis in Electrical Engineering for them, when the time comes. I did not plan to become an engineer at the time, but for some reason, I became one, at doctoral level, later on.

    4. John Moyles

      My step-father: Work is hard. Work is unpleasant. Work is what you do so you can afford to have fun*.

      My mom two weeks before my 18th: We love you, but when you turn 18, you need to get a job and start your own life*.

      And tying it all back to the Judge’s post: Yep, it turns out work is fucking hard.

      * Yee olde time Protestant work ethic from the long, long ago.

  5. Kentucky Packrat

    We’re not doing law, but I’m having the same letdown with a young man I recommended to work. We needed a “technical” administrative assistant for one of my co-workers. This person would call customer sites, schedule out visits by vendor techs, and record all of the calls in a single spreadsheet so that the team lead could know the status at any time.

    This job was important to this young man’s future. He can’t get to college because of his family’s finances, but my employer took a chance on him. He had the potential of receiving on-the-job training over the next couple of years that would set him up for a 100k+ a year career.

    By the second day, he was getting migraines. He said it was something chemical, but he had worked retail clothing (I am not that chemical sensitive, and most mall clothing stores give me migraines from the formaldehyde in the clothing). Instead of going to the doctor (or even the optometrist!) and finding out what was wrong, he gave notice.

    I know I didn’t have a sense of urgency either when I was younger (fortunately, I had people who mentored me through that), but the current group of youngsters seem unusually lacking in it compared to previous generations. I think a lot of it has to do with being unable or unwilling to work jobs to pay for high school and college needs, and with IEP plans and accolades being handed out like candy.

    1. SHG Post author

      My experience is that people who don’t go to college or worse tend to be far more appreciative of the opportunity to work and far less inclined to find work too hard and stressful. Not sure of the cause or correlation, but your mileage (obviously) may vary.

      1. Roger

        Here’s one more for your “personal anecdotes don’t prove anything, but this guy wants to tell his story” file. I slept, joked, and drank my way through college. Stunningly, with that record I was not flooded with job offers when I graduated with my double major in political science and philosophy just as the 1981 recession hit. I spent a year working at a job I was lucky to get in a box factory (being paid a princely $700/month), so when I was accepted to law school it seemed like a dream come true.

        Now, after 30 years of practicing law, it’s still a rare day that I don’t think how lucky I am to do what I do. Causation, correlation, whatever–a certain focus that helps see the rewards that hard work brings to us and, on the good days, our clients seems to come with having had to work hard for not much.

        1. Mort

          That job in the factory cemented in me the knowledge that I was bred for office work.

          It is good, sometimes, to learn your own limitations.

  6. Grum

    This is a hard one. I’ve always had a principle. Don’t work for idiots. That said, try not to be one yourself. Hard to tell who you think is in the wrong here. Not enough info. Apart from not leaving crap behind you.

    1. SHG Post author

      I suspect it’s very hard for you. But that’s not because it’s hard at all. Have you ever wondered why the “idiots” own the businesses and you are the one working for them?

  7. John Barleycorn

    You would really think lawyers, of all people, would have some a pretty rock solid probationary contracts in place for a variety of reasons. And you would think worrying about safeguarding privileged client information, after a flake bails or is termainated, would be at the top of the list for reasons why.

    Next.

    P S. “My friend won’t be hiring a brand-spanking new associate out of law school to replace the one who quit. He has a firm to run, clients to represent. He needs someone who will do the job.” Your friend is a fucking idiot if he can’t see the value of wiping the shit off his boots now and then to find a young apprentice that is worthy of wearing the company boots.

    P.S.S He was at the same time relieved, wanting her gone but reluctant to fire her out of concern that there would be an unpleasant reaction? WTF!!!!!!!??????

    I Hope your friend covered his ass. I also hope she didn’t serioisly fuck anyone inadvertently or via lacking work product and if she did I sure as hell hope your friend makes it right with his clients to his utmost ability.

    Pro Tip: Believe it or not it is still legal to fire people.

  8. Terence Roberts

    My initial reaction was: what was she thinking? But this is a law school thing. First year is hard; the volume of reading is more than anyone has done before; the volume of hard thinking is extraordinary; and the profs are all over you for sloppy thinking. The second year is hard, but not as much as the first because you’ve figured out a routine that works for you. The third year is fun and games with electives, clinics, etc., so the work ethic slows. The law schools need to ramp up the third year so the work ethic never lets down and the graduate can carry it to his or her job. Unfortunately, the profs won’t do that because they don’t want to suffer the slings and arrows of the student evaluation process. I know I taught clinic to 3Ls for 15 years.

  9. EH

    The issue is probably the “first job” affair. Most competent folks started working when they were younger: RJK worked in a factory before law school, but I’d eat my hat if he wasn’t working before that, too, even if it was a newspaper route or lawn-mowing as a kid. I started work at 13, scraping boat bottoms and washing dishes. That’s where you learn to be a decent employee. These days, many folks have LITERALLY never held a job before. Any job. At all. They might have had some coddled volunteer ‘experience,’ or a 4-hour gig as a research assistant, but that isn’t the same thing as getting, and keeping, a job.

    If you want a good employee, you need to either hire or train accordingly. It’s the employee’s fault most of all, but the employer was a damn fool to miss it at the interview/application stage.

    1. Richard G. Kopf

      EJ,

      You’re right. I had a paper route in the sixth grade. I worked at a small restaurant and driving range in Maine the summer following my 8th-grade-year frying clams and chasing balls. I flipped burgers in high school and did lawn work. Then, I worked for the Pennsylvania Railroad summers during college. The summer after I graduated college is when I worked for AP Parts and joined the UAW.

      All the best.

      RGK

      PS to SHG: I know Black Lake well. My first wife (now deceased) vacationed there with her family during the summers. My 1955 Chevy was able to make it to the lake from Toledo so long as I made sure the radiator was full.

      1. SHG Post author

        While having jobs growing up was certainly our experience, I don’t buy it. I worked as hard on my first job as I do now. It was an attitude. It’s hard to imagine that a new lawyer lacks the capacity to grasp the meaning of work and the responsibility they have to their clients and employer.

        While never having a job before may be a factor for some (perhaps in that their shitty attitude hasn’t been beaten out of them), this seems to be more consistent with a narcissistic world view, where victimhood is a greater virtue than hard work and enduring the “stress” of responsibility. For too many, manifests in everything they do, every belief they hold, not just work.

        1. Billy D

          So cynical. The Peace Corps attitude you grew up with has gone the way of the dinosaur.
          What a shame.

        2. Mort

          I frequently hear these days words to the effect of “why should I work so hard, they don’t pay me enough…”

          Was the rate of pay a surprise? Were you forced to work here? Are there press-gangs for regional restaurant chains? You chose to apply here, were informed what they would pay you, and you accepted the terms – either get your shit together, or make room for someone who won’t be a worthless pile of crap…

          1. SHG Post author

            I’ve heard a litany of excuses, all serving to justify why they are entitled to take the paycheck but have no concomitant responsibility to perform. They’re just excuses.

      2. Dragoness Eclectic

        Honorable gentlemen: It’s actually hard to get a job before age 18. I encouraged my (then) teen-aged daughter to get summer jobs, because I felt it would be good for her. Unfortunately, every place she applied (for your basic minimum-wage, unskilled jobs) preferred to hire adults over teenagers, because of the extra legal restrictions on under-18 employees. Basically, she couldn’t get a job at McDonald’s because teenagers were at the bottom of the priority list for job openings, and the economy was bad enough that many adults were “happy” to compete for such jobs. The modern reality is that teenagers cannot get paying jobs to learn how to work in the Real World, because the adults are grabbing them up and companies would rather hire adults.

        1. Jeff Gamso

          The assumption that the only way to learn to be responsible (which is what we’re really talking about here) is through early employment at a low-pay blue-collar job is overly simplistic. Lots of folks manage without anything much like that background/experience.

          Some folks just get it, seemingly by osmosis, from being around people who took the work they did seriously. Some probably absorb the lesson from Aesop’s Fables. Others by being held accountable for their failure to whatever. Some, god knows how, they just get it. And yes, some learn from delivering papers or shoveling snow or working on an assembly line or being made to earn money to pay their own living expenses (including room and board) from the time they’re sixteen.

          Of course, some of those forced to earn their own way do so by dealing drugs or selling their bodies or stealing from their neighbors. (Clients, do I hear clients?)

          Life’s complicated that way.

          1. Keith

            Life’s complicated that way.

            Let’s also not lose sight of the fact that people respond to incentives and we tend to create crappy ones, even if only by accident. Take a bunch of kids that got trophies for showing up and land them in an office setting where the boss admittedly doesn’t want to fire them “out of concern that there would be an unpleasant reaction”, and of course you’re going to get this situation coming up time and again. I don’t work, they still pay me. Talk about an incentive.

    2. Mike G.

      I wonder if part of the problem is that most kids these days aren’t required to do chores around the house to earn an allowance…their parents hand them money willy nilly for what ever they want.

      And part of it I suppose has to do with the increase in the minimum wage. No one wants to hire a high school kid and pay them 10 or 15 bucks an hour to start without any work experience.

      My first job was 2 bucks an hour collecting shopping carts and bagging groceries.

      1. TheHaywardFault

        Wouldn’t be surprised if it was the chores thing. I was born first of four in ’91 and grew up doing extremely basic household chores. Taking out the garbage, cycling dishes (six person family, lots of them!), lawn mowing. All of it irregular, none of it for chore money (parents couldn’t really figure out allowance, every scheme faltered and was forgotten). And really, I wasn’t doing much. Garbage once a week? Cycling dishes a few times a week? Mowing every month or so? (Lawn was messy as hell, we weren’t very good at keeping it up.)

        I was startled to learn that none of the people I went to school with did chores. I never located more than one or two other students that I had varying levels of acquaintance with (out of a couple dozen at most, I didn’t have many friends) who actually seriously did household chores. Several of them I know for a fact the parents did all of the chores and the kids’ only task was study and an endless parade of after school activities. Which is okay, as far as “being a student is your full time job” goes as an argument. It just struck me as… weird. It was my impression as a kid that chores are just something all kids did around the house, which was reinforced by the books and stories and whatever I read/watched/listened to as a kid. Nope. Apparently not.

        Also, I don’t put too much stock in the increase of the minimum wage being much of a factor. It’s only been around as a real thing for… What, barely a year? I live in San Jose and I believe SJ was among the first cities in the nation to raise the minimum wage (to $10) and that was… around a year ago exactly, I think. (Yep, just checked: minimum wage was set to $10.30 an hour on the first of 2015). At any rate, it’s really too soon to tell.

        I’m for a raise in the minimum wage, BTW. The folks around here feel the squeeze a lot tighter than many. Housing is hideously expensive.

  10. Kathleen Casey

    One of my lawyer buddies would hit up the whiners with “What would you rather be doing, working at (GM) Harrison?”

  11. DaveL

    Law schools want to pretend they are sending out “practice ready” lawyers. Of course, they’re not.

    Oh dear, I think you misunderstood. When they say “practice”, they mean “the repetition of a task or skill in order to become proficient at it”, not “regular engagement in a field of work as a professional.”

    It’s an understandable mistake.

  12. wilbur

    A few observations, if you please.
    True, some of us never did household chores for an allowance. We did household chores for no allowance, and no thought of asking for one.
    Nothing irritates me more than hearing someone denigrate an entry-level job. Working at McDonalds is honorable work.
    I started full-time summer work at 13, at $1.25 an hour. It paid my way through Catholic high school.
    I had part-time jobs all through junior college and college, and was fortunate to work summers for the city picking up garbage, a union job and I was thrilled to have it. You had to run to keep up with them, and do backbreaking, dangerous work.
    I took a year and a half off after college and worked for the city’s street department. It paid my way through much of law school, as I was lucky enough to still live at home then. Law school was still affordable then.
    Too much of this sounds like “walking 4 miles to school through the snow”, but there’s something to be said for being raised to appreciate the value of a hard-earned dollar.

  13. Marc R

    Since middle school I worked for my parents and then at a restaurant bussing then waiting then bar tending. It’s physically exhausting work.

    Law is a breeze; air conditioned, not much heavy lifting, and the stress is the lawyer’s job. If you don’t properly calendar things and you wait 19 days to file a response to a motion with a 20 day deadline, of course you’ll be stressed. But that stress is likely half guilt.

    Sure, there’s clients arrested at 2am with 1st appearance the next day, emergency motions need to be filed and heard, but most litigation/trial work has known time tables and the stress is caused by internal conflict or empathizing too much with your client instead of legally helping them. Hand-holding, therapy and taking on your clients’ nervousness will just hurt them. They need an objective advocate not a licensed social worker. Well maybe they need the latter but that’s not a lawyer’s job and would be detrimental to a rational view of the case.

  14. Kalifornia

    WORK:

    An objectionably four letter word for some (think profanity); or…

    For others, its the MEANS & WAYS for the best education in work ethic necessary for independence, the development of the humility to “survive at all costs” no matter what the tasks may require, and the best predictor of one’s future where opportunity presents itself, regardless of whether schooling or practice in the law is involved.

    On its face the scenario presents a reasonable conclusion that the shiny new associate, while apparently book smart and academically adept, didn’t need to work in the conditions of the real world apprenticeship she chose to enter, let alone forge a survival mechanism on her own.

    The bottom line: the four letter word that in the real world is WORK has little to do with the prediction of one’s future resulting from either completion of law school or passing the bar, with all the effort and commitment as those pre-apprenticeship accomplishments require.

  15. Billy D

    On second thought, is it possible that “work” is highly overrated? I mean, we have the greatest discrepancy between the wealthy and the poor in the history of the U.S. Ninety percent of the increases in wealth since the GFC have gone to the top ten percent, or some such number. The stats are out there. The lower classes have fallen behind in recent decades, according to the numbers. The point being: you are not going to close the gap working at a minimum wage job–or by buying a lottery ticket–no matter how hard you try. Having said that, work is good for you, especially the youngsters. It sharpens the mind and makes you “responsible”. “A strong back and a weak mind” is a myth of Sisyphus. The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is our heritage, alive and well.

    We are not going to roll that back, but is it possible that work as we know/knew it is becoming obsolete? Some high tech companies have toyed around with turning the workplace into a playpen. Are we having fun yet? It’s an interesting experiment. At the other end of the spectrum, it is difficult to see how the practice of law might be “fun”, but we assume it has its intangible rewards other than financial for some.

    We here at the House of Bill, are officially retired, but we work anyway. It’s a bad habit and we like to work. Indeed, we look forward and not backwards. Progress is our most important product. Trying to make sense of SJ on a daily basis is also work! The harder we try, the behinder we get? An interesting thread we have here.

      1. Kalifornia

        {Commenter playfully points toward and giggles, visualizing the blog author alone in pajamas in the basement riding the keyboard…}

Comments are closed.