What Does Work Mean

My first job at the age of 17 was a great source of pride. It gave me a feeling of independence and a taste of what the real world outside of school was like. In addition, I learned about Italian meats and cheeses and how to make great deli sandwiches, knowledge that I still retain today. I job-hopped frequently over the next several years, sometimes for the flimsiest of reasons; but every job, no matter how short my stay, taught me something useful: from wrapping beautiful gifts, to checking income tax forms, to calculating payroll checks, to learning to use a computer.

Looking back, I think I changed jobs a lot because I was curious what it would be like to work for different types of companies. It was a way to keep from getting bored once the job became too easy and routine. Still, I always worked and always loved the idea of having a job, if not always the work itself. I enjoyed getting dressed up, getting in my car, and having some place to go every day. My jobs gave me both self-esteem and a community. The people I worked with were often the only friends I had, outside of my family. For most of my working life, the idea of retiring early would have seemed ridiculous because my job, whatever job I had at the time, was my life.

In a wonderful 1974 book called Working, author Studs Terkel interviewed people from different walks of life about their jobs and how they felt about the work they did every day. Clearly, most people consider their jobs a big part of their identity and have a lot of physical and emotional energy invested there, for better or for worse. I, too, believed that I would someday find an ideal job that I couldn’t quite define, though no job seemed to fit the bill. Somewhere along the line, I wound up at a large corporation, acquired a house with a mortgage that had to be paid, and remained with the company for the next 27 years, some of which were relatively happy and some of which were not. Gradually, working became less of a great adventure and more of a chore to be endured as a means to an end.

So what does work mean? At its most basic, we trade our time to perform a service that the employer requires in exchange for a paycheck and, hopefully, benefits to secure our future. At its most ideal, we give our whole selves, our convictions, our talents, our personalities, in exchange for the opportunity to do something we love. Most employers would say they want employees who embody the latter. But do they do anything to earn it? That is the subject of another post.