BLOG 105: WORK

“Oh the indignity of working. How do I cope with people telling me what to do? Wtf? That's the attitude I expect from a 16 year old.” Moil Drone author of ‘Think of all I'll lose if I don't: Motivation enough for me’

Moil Drone’s weighty book presents us with one theme… If you don’t go to work, you won’t get cash, you will lose everything. For Moil Drone, the cashflow situation is the pressing issue and so what if your individuality has to take a back seat. The lack of individuality in the workplace is what makes the whole cash for labour thing run so smoothly. The lower echelons work to live and the upper echelons need them to have this drive in order for them to turn up and make money.

Cashflow is a big thing for just about everybody.

Come payday, everyone is lord of his own fate for a few moments. Say you clear £2000… whilst this is not a princely sum it sure feels beautiful after the long days of deprivation pre- payday. It feels like a sum worth holding onto. But then your standing orders go out… and while it is lovely you have the roof over your head and your utilities secured for another month, your balance is suddenly reduced to say £800 and the beauty of the available funds is much diminished.

And so starts the haemorrhaging that will ensure it is cashflow that will ensure you will be requiring cash for labour for a good while yet.

After the pre-pay day deprivation you feel you have earnt that little bit of financial freedom that will allow you drinks after work, and luxury treats like the latest DVD or fashions or books. You seem to be always pressing the £50 option at the cashpoint. Until you look at your balance and see it has dropped to under £500 - so you start pressing the £20 button instead. Of course this makes no difference to the steady haemorrhaging of funds cause all that happens is you go to the cashpoint three times more often than before. Which means before long you are under £300 (of course rather than become careful with your funds you simply stop checking your balance before withdrawing money). You have now entered the Russian Roulette stage as you know each transaction could be your last. Your purchasing pattern changes and you think how cavalier you were in your above £500 days and return your recent luxury purchases and use the money for food. You stop the drinks after work only attending if someone remembers your earlier generosity and offers to return an owed drink. You realise that when you first got paid you forgot to buy essentials and you find yourself without toothpaste, or milk or washing up liquid. And just as you feel you REALLY can’t live like this anymore… its payday… and the whole cycle starts again.

You see for most people, work is a means to an end… something they have to do to be economically viable. It’s not about mental stimuli or social interaction… its about paying the bills and staying afloat.

No more. No less.

Moil Drone has a point. Who needs individuality when there are bills to pay?

In fact in Moil Drone’s world for most people the mental freedom afforded by the numbing routine of the workplace and the lack of true responsibility that goes with it is a comfort. I should imagine that most people at the top of the hierarchy would be delighted that the worker-bees exhibit calm resignation and would find their lack of bitter ambition the mark of the perfect employee.

BUT nothing is quite that simple. If the world was as simplistic as Moil Drone sees it – bosses and workers would have no issues and Monday mornings would always be a joy.

Unfortunately… this is not enough for one particular brand of employee… the population of nonentities who exist in the middle of the hierarchy.

There truly is no one in the workplace who takes their jobs as seriously as the promotion-seeking line managers. It is the existence of this strand that sucks the joy out of a honest days toil and introduces the stress of performance (purely in the thespian sense) to your day.

It’s not enough for this particular type of employee for you to turn up, do what you are employed to do and wait for pay day. Oh no. The promotion-seeking line manager requires you to exhibit signs that you are so much more than competent, that they (and it is ALWAYS about them) have inspired you to have no interest in the world outside your work station – that the ONLY hours that count are the ones you get paid for.

Not everyone finds it natural or easy to play act the role of grateful minion. However one is called upon by the existence of the promotion-seeking line manager to chuck in a performance so unnecessary to the actual execution of your daily duty but essential to the validation of their role. Opt out of this hidden requirement and watch how quickly the words bad attitude will be added to your HR file. And who wants disciplinary issues when all one wants is to be paid.

Work to live… not live to work eh?

But who knows… maybe the promotion-seeking line manager has a point. Maybe despite the cash for labour ethos and the low expectations… maybe the ONLY hours that count really are the ones we get paid for.

I think back to the miners strike. I think of those men deep in the crust of the earth doing a back breaking, ailment inducing job and how they fought to keep doing just that. And I look at the way that the world is a changing and see the future where most daily toil is finally carried out by robotics and the more we move towards that future… the more know for sure that we too will prove as reluctant as the miners were to surrender our burden.

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