“What do you do” is a common question that takes place among adults during social interactions. I used to use this when I would start a conversation with a girl but once they started speaking, I stopped listening. Most people answer “what they do” in regard to what they do for a living, as in their boring job. Isn’t that sad?
Shouldn’t what you do be what you like doing? If I were asked this question I’d respond with:
- I enjoy not working.
- I exercise regularly so I don’t get fat.
- I drink to excess because this tends to make stories that I never forget (and never remember).
- I think everyone is stupider than me until proven otherwise (and I’m not that smart which makes this exercise quite the battle).
- I watch television shows and then compare them to the Wire. Name one show that is better than the Wire? You can’t.
- I read many books (self improvement, classics, fantasy, business…) when nothing good is on TV or my DVR runs out.
- I maintain this blog which produces 0 dollars and took 1,000’s of hours to create which is probably considered my best work.
These are the types of answers people should be answering when you ask them what they do? Jobs suck. Oddly enough, I feel guilty when I’m not working. Human beings should not feel like this. Life should come first and a job second. It’s a common misconception among people with no money that they need a job. That’s a lie. Money is a high priority in life and a job provides this. My first job is a good example of what you never want to be doing.
My First Job
I signed up as an assistant to the maintenance crew at Upper Dublin High School. I wanted to be part of the paint crew because I had some friends and they said it was cake. This maintenance job paid $5.75 an hour and I was completely by myself. I walked into an atmosphere with 5 workers – a boss, the boss’s sidekick, an electrician, a plumber, and an all around maintenance guy. Work started at 7 but no one left the office until they had finished reading the paper and had coffee at 8:30. What did I care, I had already made 8 bucks.
That summer was perhaps the most boring time of my life. We worked 8 hour days but I probably only did 1 hour of actual work. I used to love driving around in the van because I was getting paid to travel. Some of my duties were to pick up breakfast and fetch tools from the truck. It sounds simple but pride gets in the way because you don’t want to sound stupid when you don’t know what wire strippers are. They’d ask me to get something, I’d run to the truck, spend a few minutes looking, realize I didn’t know what I was looking for and come back and ask them to be more specific. The inefficiency definitely put some bills in my pocket. I was pretty much useless. I did learn how to wrap an electrical cord and change a light ballast that summer so it wasn’t a complete loss.
This is what would have happened if I were Oddjob. Which actually was an odd job for me to be doing,
I did this for the next year when they bumped my pay to $6.25. I’d get more responsibilities each year but I was still a nitwit. One time they left me alone to tile an entire floor and I installed every tile upside down. I suppose I was fairly paid for what little money I made compared to my output. Then I was promised another .50 cent raise the next summer which wasn’t evident on my first paycheck. I brought this to payroll’s attention but they didn’t seem to care that much and I was too young to make a stink about it. My term came to an end when I was helping the electrician and I wasn’t taking the job very seriously. We were messing with live wires and he didn’t take my lack of interest too kindly and yelled at me for being a retard. This hurt my feelings and I quit the next day. As I think back to it, I was pretty big pussy for quitting. In hindsight, I should have quit the day I started.
This story should convey the shittiness of your job. The common phrase you work to live and not live to work should be followed on a regular basis. Next time someone asks you what you do, be prepared.
excellent post. i just read it while eating lunch at my desk at my shitty job.
Much appreciated. The JKash approval means I’m on the right track. Next post will contain Oliver Miller hurling a chair at Shawn Kemp.
Great post. The “what do you do?” question is so indicative of personal and prescribed values. The expected response is never something beyond the scope of employment. The subtext is “Does this person make enough money to start a family?” / “Is this person competent enough in life to have obtained a “good/respectable” job? / “Is this person important enough for me to spend time engaging with?” / etc.
The question itself is almost accusatory. A truer question may be “How is your job going?”
For fun, next time you are chatting someone up and they ask you this – tell them you paint. See if one of their next 3 questions is about how much you make from painting or how many paintings you sell…
We need better questions. Better questions can tell you so much more.