I started this blog in 2009 when I was off work due to a
combination of factors. Like many small businesses at the time, ours
started skidding downhill so I stepped out to see if I could take some pressure
off the business and get another job, and that took a while. Shortly
after that I started having some heart issues which now seem like a blip on the
screen of my life, but which at the time were pretty serious. I took the
opportunity created by the downtime to write some memories and to comment on
the political stuff that was happening at the time. I really didn't have
the know how or the desire to market the thing to anyone except my family, so I
didn't ever accrue a following.
Now due to the Covid-19 epidemic and the social distancing
edicts, etc. I’ve got downtime during the retirement that has frankly been a
hoot for a couple of years. (Hmmm? Downtime in downtime—I’ll have to think about
that a minute, could be a subject for later).
Anyway, I’ve decided to revive the thing, and I’ve decided to leave the
old stuff up there for anyone who is bored as hell and doesn’t have a
Kindle. My first post is a replay of one I did earlier, and I might do some of that now and then because some of the stuff is
still relevant, albeit dated. This one tells a few things about me, and might explain why I retired about as soon as I hit 65. I never did find work that didn't qualify as work. Here goes:
Work
Disclaimer:
Work
sucks!
There, I said it.
This is a cliché the use of which bothers me
a great deal.
The problem is that there
is no suitable substitute.
Any metaphor
used to take its place is either inaccurate or ungainly.
Nothing matches “work sucks” for
conciseness.
One alternative might be,
“work is a prostate exam,” which is sexist, as would be, “work is like
childbirth,” which is equally sexist, and woefully wrong because childbirth,
although painful and difficult, is also (reportedly) satisfying.
This disqualifies it as a metaphor for work
out of hand.
The June 1 issue of
Newsweek
has a piece that reviews two books on the subject of work.
One is
The
Pleasures and Sorrows of Work, by Alain de Botton in which it is proposed
that the American infatuation with work is yet another dogma handed down from
pre-Revolutionary times and unique to America.
The notion that work is “fun” flies in the face of a conviction held for
centuries that life, including work, is essentially miserable.
This conviction, according to the author, is
a defense mechanism against disappointment.
The other book is
Shop Class as
Soulcraft, by Matthew B. Crawford.
This book extols the virtues of “working with your hands” which has the
benefits of objective results, reduced stress, etc.
(More on this later:
much of this activity is also disqualified as
work.)
I must admit that at this early
date, I have not read either of these books, but I certainly will.
I have the time because I am the victim of a
cruel irony—work sucks worst when you don’t have any.
This is a personal tragedy that only
reinforces the evidence that our relationship with work is a perversion.
“
Eureka!
Hallelujah!
Praise the Lord!, “ was my reaction after learning of these
publications.
In reading one short
essay, I was freed from self loathing as an unproductive, bitter reprobate
slacker.
I was now on the forefront of
contemporary thought—an avant-garde intellectual.
I can sense many of you stiffening and
thinking, “What kind of communist anti-American bullshit is this?
I enjoy my work and derive great satisfaction
from it, and so should you.”
Congratulations!
You don’t have a
job and get paid anyway.
If you enjoy
it, it ain’t work.
It’s entertainment,
or sport, or mental exercise, or something—but not work.
The idea that work worship is uniquely American is
verifiable by anyone who has ever tried to do business with almost any country
in Christendom between mid-December, and mid-January.
The
UK,
South Africa,
Australia,
Italy,
Belgium, and
Brazil—all
closed for the Christmas holiday.
Most
companies do, however, have someone there to answer the phone and laugh at the
American who thinks he actually has a need more pressing than selecting a
Mediterranean beach.
We are universally
regarded as a people that works too hard, too long, and at inappropriate times.
We take less vacation and work more hours
when we are working than anyone I’m aware of.
Voltaire said, “Work keeps at bay three great evils:
boredom, vice, and need.”
This is an attitude born of the same
Enlightenment that shaped American attitudes in the years leading up to our
Revolution.
For some reason it did not
stick in the minds of his French countrymen who are notoriously non-obsessed
with work, perhaps because it is a load of crap.
Boredom is the very definition of work.
Work invites vice:
see white collar crime, our present financial
crisis, and some of the history of organized labor.
The absurd idea that work allays need is
contradicted by the fact that one of work’s primary rewards, money, drives our
thirst for material gratification, and creates the “need” for more work.
An idea came up in a beer driven conversation with a former
construction partner.
I don’t know whether
it was an original thought that Josh had, or if he got it from someone
else.
It seems a little deep for Josh,
but beer does that.
Josh’s idea was that
society ought to be set up so that we all just party and have a good time until
we’re, say 55, and then work our asses off until we drop dead.
This idea warrants some consideration.
George Bernard Shaw said, “Youth is wasted on
the young.”
I would agree, and add that
work is imposed on the young.
Think of
all the youthful creativity and energy wasted on the drudgery of “making a
living”, when what we are really doing is making a slow death.
Think of the money that would be saved on
health care for the aged.
If an old fart
gets senile, he just stumbles in front of a bulldozer, and that’s it.
There
would be no drawn-out humiliating existence in a care facility that takes up
valuable resources and wastes the talent of nurses and doctors—no more images
of emaciated, bed-ridden grandpas with sunken eyes and tubes going in and
coming out.
The possibilities for
societal improvement seem endless.
The
economic stimulant implications are immense.
The young do not take the senior discount, and are less likely to skimp
on tips.
Like most utopian solutions,
this one has some flaws, but it should be in the conversation.
Another possible solution to the problem of work would be to
increase pay based on the degree to which the work is disliked.
The obvious problem with this idea is that it
probably wouldn’t change things for most people.
The office administrator who spends the day
licking the shoes of some self-important personification of the Peter Principle
would still make more than the house painter who will walk off the job and
straight to the bar at the merest hint of bullshit from the boss, reeking of
satisfaction all the way.
An even
greater problem would be the need for some device for measuring
discontent.
We certainly couldn’t just
hand out money to the biggest whiners and starve the stoics.
There would have to be a brain implant, or a
periodic test similar to the personality profile questionnaire you answer when
you apply at Home Depot.
“No race can prosper till it learns that there is as much
dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”—Booker T. Washington:
This is, among other things, a paen to those who toil.
Toil is strenuous labor, but not necessarily
work.
Work contains no dignity.
Some examples differentiating work from toil are
in order.
·
Building fence is great sport: outside, physical, yet requires some
craft—straight, square, etcetera—immediately tangible results, and can be done
while having a few beers. There are many
“puttering around the house” activities that are good rewarding fun. Some are
not.
·
Plumbing under the sink sucks, and qualifies
easily as work.
·
Fixing cars made before about 1980 can be
fun. Working on any car that has the
engine in there sideways sucks. If you
look through the engine compartment and see the ground, there is potential for
some entertainment. If the compartment
is so packed with shit that not even light can escape, you have a black hole,
which sucks in the literal and figurative sense.
·
Sales, which I have done most of my life now,
sucks—rejection, disappointment, catering to assholes, motels, fast food, or no
food, and windshield time.
·
Mining was a kick and didn’t become work until
it made me sick. It was a little kid’s
dream—playing with giant Tonka Toys, blowing stuff up, unrestrained cussing,
and a great espirit de corps.
·
Writing a poem does not suck.
One of the triumphs in my life of
toil came during a summer stint at the lumber mill in
Walden, Colorado.
The mill superintendant was the father of a
classmate.
Kent was one of the class athletes-- good at football and wrestling. Let's just say I wasn't.
I suspect he and his dad
thought it would be entertaining to watch me perform in exceptionally difficult
circumstances.
Dad put me to work sorting slabs and flitches on the
head rig.
When a log went through the
initial process after debarking, it was ripped lengthwise into flat segments (flitches) that would eventually become boards.
Making a round log square necessarily leaves four “slabs”, which are the
ugly outside segments that have jagged limb stubs sticking out, and are often
warped, hard to manage, and always pointed on the lead end. When the ripped log shot onto a chain
conveyor, my job was to, by any means necessary, get the slabs the hell off the
conveyor and let the future lumber go by.
I stood facing the onslaught and dodged lumber while grabbing slabs and
flinging them onto a conveyor going another direction. I was aided in this by a high speed roller
called “the pineapple” because it had beads welded around for traction on the
slabs. The pineapple would grab anything
that touched it and shoot it about 20 feet.
My position was on a little platform right in front of the pineapple,
and I became a virtual ballerina on that deck, dodging and slinging in a rhythm
matching the output of the saw, and all the time avoiding getting grabbed by that
spinning pineapple.
Kent was doing a much more
dignified job in the same area of the mill, and was in position to watch me all
day. After about a week and a half, Kent
said, “You know Grant; I’ve got to tell you I didn’t think you’d make it this
long. We usually give that job to winos
and bums because we know they won’t be here long. They almost always take a ride on that
pineapple and don’t show up the next day.”
I think I gained some respect after that—from Kent, and certainly from
myself. I quit two days later and went
to the mine for an extra 25 or 30 cents an hour.
Now that was good, wholesome,
make me dog-assed tired, toil. And I’d
go back to it in a heartbeat if I still had any ballerina in me. I know some women who get turned on by the
smell of pine pitch and diesel fuel.
