For most people, the natural reaction to a day job is revulsion. It’s something that must be done as upkeep, like doing laundry, but is otherwise a meaningless use of time. That was my mindset for too much of my professional career. To be fair, a lot of the jobs I worked were not what I wanted to do in life. Can you blame college students working retail when their minds drift during their shifts? No one goes to college expecting to make retail their career – at least not as anything less than management. For entry-level jobs like this that are designed to give new workers experience in the workforce, I can appreciate the clock-watcher mentality. Just do your time, clock out, and then go do what you really want to do. The danger is when that mentality carries over into your career.
Job Expectations are Nebulous
In a perfect world, job descriptions would encapsulate everything an employee is responsible for and nothing else. The nature of work, however, is fluid. Problems arise, requirements change, locations fall through, personnel turn over, and any other variable can conflict with assigned tasks. In those circumstances, an employee can either fall back on the constraints of their job description or stretch to meet goals.
I think we’ve all worked with the kind of people who only do the bare minimum on the job. They show up to work, do just enough to keep their jobs, and go home. When there’s a crisis, they’re slow to help if at all, and they’ll complain about “extra” work so much that it’s sometimes easier to leave them out of the crisis management altogether. They’re just going to depress and annoy others, and too much time will be wasted combating their negativity. I’m ashamed to admit that I was that employee for too far into my professional career.
While working at Newegg, that mindset was completely turned around by a colleague of mine who was the Creative Director at the time. A problem had arisen that would require extra work for him and his team. I grumbled in sympathy, but the Creative Director simply said, “No problem. I’m here to work. What do you need?” In that moment, my outlook on work completely changed. I was supposedly there to work as well, but I found myself resisting work, minimizing work, and escaping work. The work was still there to be done; I just made sure it wasn’t me doing it.
But after hearing the Creative Director’s words, I realized that work is fluid, and it ebbs and flows. Rather than fight it, I should swim in it and learn its tide patterns. There are only so many hours in the day, and the work being demanded of me wasn’t going to take over my life. In fact, I discovered that I enjoy my job the most when there’s a lot of work to be done. Don’t be afraid of work; embrace it. Be here to work.
The One-way Ratchet
There are limits to the here-to-work mindset. While the nature of work is fluid, the nature of companies is to wring more productivity out of employees without more compensation – or at least not commensurate compensation. And sometimes accepting more work or providing more value only results in setting a new minimum expectation of performance. In those cases, resistance to work makes sense.
As a product content writer as one of my professions once upon a time, my manager’s manager asked me to give her a demonstration of how I write the product content. Thinking that she just wanted a high-level view of what I do for visibility purposes, I gave her a cursory example, rushing through the process, and glossing over some steps. Honestly, who wants to watch someone research and write about products in real-time? Unfortunately, I would later find out that she was actually timing me, and my demonstration was going to be the baseline for my expected productivity.
When I think about that moment, it always reminds me of this scene from Schindler’s List:
When you’re in that kind of environment, resistance to work and productivity is to be expected. But it should be used as a tactical maneuver, not as a default behavior. It should also go without saying that if tactical work resistance is necessary, then it’s time to look for a new job. If your current company doesn’t reward being-here-to-work, then they’ll miss you when you’re somewhere-else-to-work.
