Ah Labor Day....so lazy. An entire day to celebrate not going to work. Thank you International Socialism (i'll accept your thanks on IS's behalf and forward them to the appropriate channels) Of course, we should celebrate this day on May 1st, but for some reason having our own labor day in September really set us apart from the communists and showed them good....or something.
In honor of doing nothing, here's an excerpt from Corinne Maier's Bonjour paresse: De l'art et de la necessite d'en faire le moins possible en entreprise
1. You are a modern day slave. There is no scope for personal fulfilment. You work for your pay-cheque at the end of the month, full stop.
2. It's pointless to try to change the system. Opposing it simply makes it stronger.
3. What you do is pointless. You can be replaced from one day to the next by any cretin sitting next to you. So work as little as possible and spend time (not too much, if you can help it) cultivating your personal network so that you're untouchable when the next restructuring comes around.
4. You're not judged on merit, but on whether you look and sound the part. Speak lots of leaden jargon: people will suspect you have an inside track.
5. Never accept a position of responsibility for any reason. You'll only have to work harder for what amounts to peanuts.
6. Make a beeline for the most useless positions, (research, strategy and business development), where it is impossible to assess your 'contribution to the wealth of the firm'. Avoid 'on the ground' operational roles like the plague.
7. Once you've found one of these plum jobs, never move. It is only the most exposed who get fired.
8. Learn to identify kindred spirits who, like you, believe the system is absurd through discreet signs (quirks in clothing, peculiar jokes, warm smiles).
9. Be nice to people on short-term contracts. They are the only people who do any real work.
10. Tell yourself that the absurd ideology underpinning this corporate bullshit cannot last for ever. It will go the same way as the dialectical materialism of the communist system. The problem is knowing when...
My personal favorites are 1, 3, and 4. Every word in those sentences are true. Alain de Botton has a more nuanced take on work and labor in today's NYT. He raises some interesting points.
If happiness at work is now so hard to earn, perhaps it is because our pretensions have so substantially outstripped reality. We expect every job to deliver some of the satisfaction available to Sigmund Freud or Franklin Roosevelt. (break)
This is all sad, but not half as sad as it can be if we blind ourselves to the reality and raise our expectations of our work to extreme levels. A firm belief in the necessary misery of life was for centuries one of mankind's most important assets, a bulwark against bitterness, a defense against dashed hopes. Now it has been cruelly undermined by the expectations incubated by the modern worldview.
In other words, don't expect too much from your job. Like Samir states regarding his new job at the end of Office Space, "It's work." The scene is meant to imply a new-found acceptance, sort of like Botton's message. I think. So maybe the real lesson is: Figure out how to dance to rap songs like Samir and Michael Bolton while singing "Back up in you ass with the res-sur-ec-tion." Yeah.
props to Maxspeak for the post on Bonjour Paresse
Posted by mike at September 6, 2004 10:42 AMI read this post a few weeks ago and have been thinking of it recently, most often while writing cover letters or riding the train on the way to an interview. What would my potential employers say if I just spoke frankly about what I will contribute to their company...?
Alas, I'm still a romantic creative that believes my contributions are unique. It may be bullshit, but it keeps me going.
Oh, and my personal favorites are 3 and 5. I remember the first time a coworker enlightened me about the logic behind 5 (I was a freshman, she a senior, both working security at Wash U Gallery of Art)
Posted by: Lori on September 27, 2004 12:09 AM