Nathaniel

Shockey

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December 10, 2007

‘Who Do You Work For?’ <punch in the face>

“What would you say, you do, here?”

That’s my favorite line from “Office Space” when the Bobs are busy weeding out the unnecessary employees from the iconic computer software company, Initech. It always cracks me up.

“What do you do?” It’s a question we use to judge each other, to compartmentalize, to make everything from this point forward a little easier, and rarely, if ever, just to find out a little more about someone we’d really like to know.

What most of us are really asking is something more like, “How much money do you make?” or perhaps more specifically, “Are you someone I should be jealous of or pity?”

Just once, I’d love to be able to respond with, “I play football. You may have heard of my boss, Bill. He was involved in a ridiculously overblown scandal in 2007. And by the way, that is a man who can hold his liquor.”

Either that, or I’d like to respond by saying “Aahoo! Aahoo! Aahoo!” as though King Leonidas were asking, “Spartans! What is your profession?” But unfortunately, very few among us are Spartan Warriors or professional football players. It’s sad, I know.

Nowadays, if you ask someone from Generation Y this same question twice in a year, you’ll very likely get two different answers. We’re all frantically searching for a career we love, or at the very least, a career we’re proud to mention when we have to answer the dreaded question. It’s a strange time. Granted, it’s the only one I’ve ever known, so I could be wrong, but it’s a far cry from the days when you’d spend 20 years as an apprentice so you could spend the next 40 on the opposite side of the coin.

They say that in Europe, most people, when asked what they do, will tell you what they do when they’re not working. Of course, Europeans don’t typically work as many hours as Americans, but even so, it reflects an interesting hue on the subject. Evidently, not everyone takes work as seriously or as personally as Americans, and I think there is a lot to be gained from understanding this idea.

We work in order to afford a place to live, food to eat and, ideally, the means to enjoy oneself. Although it must be nice to find a profession that seems the perfect fit, about which we’re passionate, something we love – “find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life” – it’s not always realistic. As “Office Space” reminds us, this idea is quite stupid because if everyone did something they loved, “There'd be no janitors, because no one would clean shit up.”

Wasn’t there a time when what you did wasn’t nearly as impressive as who could pick up the largest rock? Somehow, this computer age has managed to completely negate the natural relevance of being physically threatening. If you were a Spartan and someone asked, “What do you do?” the response would have been, “Does it matter? I could kick your ass.”

I don’t think the point here is to stop asking each other what we do. I think the point is to have a little better perspective about what that question ought to mean.

First of all, we ought not take our jobs so personally. If you’re a janitor, it would be perfectly reasonable to say, “I’m one hell of a racquetball player.”

“No, I mean, for work.”

They’ll probably seem sympathetic or embarrassed when you tell them what you do, so the correct response is, “Don’t be sad. Be grateful. I clean shit up for poops like you.”

When people ask what you do, sometimes they just want to get a conversation going, to get to know you a little bit. Perhaps we’d be better off simply saying, “Tell me a little about yourself,” instead of immediately demanding information concerning your profession.

When you think about it, it’s not very far from asking, “Who do you work for?” <punch in the face> “Who do you work for?” <punch in the face> and that would be incredibly rude.

© 2007 North Star Writers Group. May not be republished without permission.

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