Who are we without work?

I would "prefer not to" think about it...

Before we begin…

What was your first job? Your best job? Your worst job? How close is the work you have ended up doing to what you expected or dreamed of doing when you were younger? What work have you done in the past that has had the most impact on you or has been the most meaningful to you? 

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Art by Roberto Ricci 

I prefer not to

The first time I read Herman Melville’s “Bartleby The Scrivener,” I laughed out loud. The narrator asks his new hire, Bartleby, to go over some accounts with him and Bartleby just looks at him and politely declines. 

“I would prefer not to.” 

I laughed because it has never once occurred to me to utter those words to anyone who was paying me money to perform a specific task, even if I hated that task and saw no future in the job. Even if what they asked me was uncomfortable, like the summer I worked as a “mother’s helper” and the mother told me to show her 13-year-old daughter how to use a tampon.

Have you ever refused to do a task assigned to you by an employer? What happened? 

Years later, I wrote a novel that centered on an ambitious single mother who had worked very hard and very long in an industry I would have found soul-crushing. To write it, I drew on my experience working in a corporation which prioritized, as most corporations do, the interests of investors and owners and a few executives over the rest of us. There, I learned an incredible amount about human motivations and behavior, including my own. I was paid well, more than I had ever expected to be paid in my entire life – certainly more than I ever dreamed of when I was sixteen-going-on-seventeen and blushing my way through a tampon tutorial with an equally embarrassed thirteen-year-old. 

As I worked on my first novel (and let’s put a pin in that “worked” so we can chat later), I remembered how blurred the borders once were between work and the rest of my life, how difficult it was for me to feel comfortable when I was not working. That job helped me pay for school for my son and to ensure we had health insurance which turned out to be extremely important. The job gave me an identity and allowed me to reassure friends and relatives who had watched me struggle financially through my twenties. The work I did used and honed analytical and communication skills that were useful in other parts of my life. Yet no matter how well I did that job, there was no safe harbor there. My industry was consolidating. Companies merged, added new technological tools, and pruned jobs the way a gardener prunes still-living limbs to make way for new growth. The gardener tosses the pruned limbs into the chipper for mulch. Employers in a culture like ours don’t usually have any idea what happens to people once they lose their jobs; it is not their problem. No job is guaranteed.

I’m thinking about this more and more. Every time I read the news, there are stories about the shifting balance between employers and employees – whether employees will continue to say “I prefer not to” when their companies ask them to return to the office, for example. For years, we have read about the layoffs that pummeled manufacturing and mining jobs and very very little about what work has looked like for these people going forward. The advance of AI now has “knowledge workers” and artists on alert because a machine might be able to write a novel in the style of Stephen King, for example. In the face of technological change that renders human labor less important, cities and countries around the world are conducting experiments with guaranteed income. I’m interested in this idea but I wonder why so many accept the innovations without tackling the transition so many will endure as their work is no longer needed or valued. 

How will work change in the future you envision? 

The story of Bartleby reads like a social experiment conducted by Melville as he pits the baffling Bartleby against an employer who has no idea how to respond to a person who simply and politely refuses to do the job he was hired to do. It does not help that the employer has made his life’s work to take an easy path through life, one that does not involve confrontation. He tries compassion and support until, frustrated, he simply ups and moves his offices leaving Bartleby behind. This does not solve his problem, however, because the new tenants of his old offices insist that he must deal with Bartleby who steadfastly and politely refuses to do anything but occupy the rooms his employer once occupied. In the end, less compassionate and “easygoing” employers remove Bartleby forcibly and he winds up in jail where he curls up and dies. Only then does the employer seek to find out more about him and discover that Bartleby may have worked for the government where he was responsible for disposing of “dead letters,” missives written to people who had died, until he was suddenly removed from his job by a “change in the administration.”

This story holds many little nuggets to explore. Can we claim compassion when we really just want to avoid confrontation? Is our ability to care determined by where we are on the economic food chain? Is Bartleby standing on some principles he never tries to explain? But the question that resonates with me is what happens when the work that gave them a living and an identity goes away. This can happen whether we work for an employer or we are our own employer. An injury may alter our ability to perform the work we’ve been doing, or technology may render us irrelevant as the economy moves in new directions. In many ways, Bartleby’s behavior in the story looks a lot like being immobilized by depression which is one of the more common bits of fallout in the wake of a job loss. He doesn’t just fade away, however. Instead, his behavior forces others to acknowledge him. He is using what power he has. You’ve got to admire him for it even if, in the end, he loses all. 

In my twenties I was unemployed for long stretches. Each time it happened, I blamed myself which then spiraled into a kind of low-grade depression which, itself, made the hunt for work more difficult. The person I lived with at the time owned the house and I did not pay rent but I could not cover my phone bill or the medical bills when my son was hospitalized after Iet my COBRA lapse. Shame followed me everywhere. I found relief in waitressing which was something I had always enjoyed and was good at even though my partner at the time found it embarrassing. Being out in the world, serving food, cleaning up, and pocketing tips restored me at least partially. I had the energy then to seek other work which I eventually found. The experience reinforced for me that work was not just a path for supporting myself and my immediate family, it was a way to contribute and stay connected with the world. 

I’ve been lucky and I know it. After those jobs in my twenties and the corporate job that followed, I was able to leave on my own terms. Then I was able to dive into writing, work that is more than a job and makes me want to get out of bed every morning. I would do this work – I do this work – knowing that little may come of it financially. I am able to make that choice thanks to good fortune and a supportive partner. 

Since taking this step, though, I’ve thought longer and deeper about what makes work meaningful beyond the need to survive. I’ve arrived at this: the meaning lies in the way my work connects me with others and gives me a sense of belonging in the world. When I do something that matters to another person, even one, it makes a difference in how I feel about the work I’ve done. Looking back, I can see more meaning in the jobs I was doing even if I did not love them or even like them. When I was seventeen, I was able to help a thirteen-year-old girl with a tampon, something that was important to her  and that her mother could not handle. As a waitress, I was part of a team that relied on me. When I still worked my corporate job, I brought home a paycheck and spent it on rent, food, my son, books, car payments, etc. Those exchanges joined a stream of exchanges that contributed to the support of grocery store employees, my landlord, their children and other strangers. 

How do you find meaning in your work? 

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Some links

The job to “fall back on” and other day jobs of authors…

During his address to Oberlin grads in 2018, David Sedaris said this:

“My sister Gretchen went to RISD for painting. Then there was Amy at Second City. And boy did our father give us grief about it. “Art or comedy is all well and good, but you need to find something to fall back on,” he’d say.

I hear this from parents all the time when I meet them at book signings. “Our daughter is an aspiring writer and we told her that’s fine, but she needs to find something to fall back on.” “So, she’s a terrible writer?” I ask. “Well, no.” “Is she lazy? Has she shown no improvement since she started?” “Of course not,” the parents will say. “She’s wonderful. Writing is all she cares about.” “Then why does she need to fall back?” I ask. “Are you saying you have no faith in her before she’s even had a chance to prove herself?” - David Sedaris

Still, he acknowledged that parents were only trying to make sure their children could eat and artists of all stripes have worked day jobs to support their writing habit. Cormac McCarthy wrote scientific papers, Margaret Atwood was a waitress. Herman Melville was a customs agent. Stacy Abrams, has held public office and many other jobs while also writing her novels. Learn more here, “10 Authors With Surprising Day Jobs” and here, “20 Authors With Surprising Day Jobs”. 

…Searching for meaning

This collection of TED talks explores ways to look at work including finding meaning in monotonous jobs.

And finally, novels in which the job is a key player. This Guardian list features office jobs (The Circle by Dave Eggers, The Devil Wears Prada and more), while this list compiled by the New York Public Library offers stories involving jobs “more interesting” than yours.

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