Does Everyone Deserve a Job they Love?
The idea that loving your job is a right is something I recently came across on Simon Sinek’s LinkedIn. It was a short video attempting to inspire people to find a job they love, because they deserve it. My first reaction was “of course everyone deserves a job they love, duh”, I’ve been on both sides of the spectrum of having a job I absolutely love to having a job I didn’t care for. I encourage everyone I know to go find a job they love and do everything they can to get it, or get into the industry, or go to school for said job, but what if they all took my advice? Could we really survive in a world where everyone got their dream job? What about those who would really rather not work?
This question is really asking if people who work jobs that would be traditionally considered undesirable jobs really want to work there. Does anyone really want to flip burgers, stand at a cash register, or work on a factory line all day? Honestly, I think they do. The issue isn’t the job, the issue is the stigma around the job and the money. Considering a job undesirable is the problem, just because it is undesirable to some people, doesn’t mean it isn’t a dream job for others. I used to work a lot of nights and weekends, and people always told me how much I must hate that part of my job, but those late nights and weekends were the best parts of the job. People who enjoy that work are often pressured to do something else because they think that they’re not supposed to enjoy what they are doing, because the rest of society looks down on it. Additionally, when people can not survive off of the incomes of these “undesirable jobs” of course they want to move up in the company or move to a different industry that pays better. These jobs are shifting as is, artificial intelligence is starting to play a bigger part in the workforce, from self checkouts to self driving semi trucks, the workforce is on the cusp of the biggest change since the industrial revolution. So what happens with this workforce then? New technology creates new jobs, these self checkouts need maintenance, the retail stores that utilize them need increased security. Maybe not every single person can work their dream job their entire life, but I would be willing to bet if people cared less about the perception of their job we would have a lot more people doing what they love.
Is there a space for people who would really rather not work? This pandemic has had a massive effect on everything in life, but maybe the biggest and scariest is the amount of people who have decided that they don’t have a dream job and they would simply rather not work. My initial thought when I hear people say that is that they just haven’t tried enough yet, and that if they could make a decent living off of their hobby, would they do that? If you’re not working, where are you spending your time and giving your energy? While I do not think that your sense of purpose needs to be tied to a career I do think it needs to be tied to work. Maybe that work is volunteering for a non-profit, or making inspirational videos on YouTube, or woodworking. Something doesn’t need to be tied to a career to be work, or to give someone self worth. This ties into the conversation above, and I would be curious to know at what age someone's dream job becomes less about the job and more about the money. Kindergartners don’t want to be astronauts because they think they’re going to make $70,000 a year, they want to be an astronaut because it sounds fun. In my opinion it has more to do with society perception than it does with money, otherwise we wouldn’t have such a big tradesperson shortage. So the short answer is no, I don’t think there is space for people who would rather not work. I think there is space for people to do what they want to do, without it becoming their entire life and without it being the “cool” job or the one that is going to make them the most money.
These two factors are the primary reasons I decided to start The Gap Year. I wanted to get more people more exposure to different industries and types of jobs before they committed to something. In high school, I, like most kids, had no idea what I wanted to do, but the careers that were suggested to me showed an extremely small sliver of what kind of jobs actually exist.
The first step is exposure. The second step is to give people confidence to do what they love, even if it isn’t the most prestigious job or the highest paying. The third step is to change the public perception of what a “good job” is, so people do what they love, not what they think they should love.
