Let’s work it out

I began my working life in September 2001. It didn’t get the coverage it deserved as the mainstream media was preoccupied with events elsewhere.

In all that time I’ve never really had a plan. Never generated towards a particular career or position. I’ve simply tried to earn enough money to do the things I liked, while avoiding workplaces that attract life’s shitbags.

The pandemic has highlighted what we kind of already knew - most jobs just aren’t necessary. Aside of course from the people who can sell you alcohol and those who can look after you when you’ve had too much.

But what about the rest of us? Not all heroes wear capes, but a greater number of us neither own capes nor would be considered heroes.

What is the meaning of work for us now?

Mean less, not meaningless

This doesn’t necessarily make all other work pointless. We don’t just do the necessary. I don’t need a gingerbread latte. Some things are just nice.

Maybe there is something to be said for how important work is to the individual. If you think your work is important and you are adding value to the world, is that enough? Like how some see free will – an illusion that we are just better off going along with, or else we would disappear up our own philosophical arseholes.

Job or career

Growing up people would often talk about getting a ‘real’ job. Real effectively meant leaving behind shops and pubs for office work, like Windows 98 somehow gave you the ability to exit the matrix. I never understood this logic. Surely the work is more real when you spend up to 12 hours a day on your feet.

Google tells me:

• Job: a paid position of regular employment

• Career: an occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person's life and with opportunities for progress

Great, super clear. May as well have asked Jeeves.

In 2010 I followed peer pressure (as one always should) and moved into office work. It’s not without its drawbacks. The thing is I do like money, but I don’t like regularly typing ‘kind regards’ to people I have no kind regards for.

Hit the Esc key

Office work is its own bizarre subculture, totally removed from the rest of the world. I don’t believe in other occupations it is the complete accepted norm to come back from any break only to realise you haven’t a fucking clue how to do your job. What if doctors did this – just came back after the Christmas break and winged it on a few surgeries until they got back up to speed.

Unlike shops and pubs - where people are just trying to get by, here some people are trying to get ahead. There is no low beneath which these boot lickers will not go. For instance, I’ve never worked for a humorous CEO. But I’ve seen them all tell jokes that get a lot of laughs. Funny that.

Over the years, lots of people I have worked with have expressed the idea that they suffer from imposter syndrome – where they doubt their skills and abilities and believe themselves to be undeserving to the point they constantly worry they will be found out as frauds. But surely this should be the foundation of feelings in all these workplaces!

The people we really need to be worried about are the incredibly self-assured ones. You know the type of guys - like some sort of new age soothsayers - going town to town helping people get their ‘ducks in a row’ with their superior thought leadership, not to mention their mind maps.

Houston, we have an issue

Let’s talk about jargon.

Talk of ‘frameworks’, ‘theories of change’, ‘roadmaps’, ‘strategies’, ‘overviews’ and ‘learnings’ was always to me clearly a cover, a sort of get out of jail free card for grown adults, so they can pretend to understand something on a level my poor chump brain could not.

However, having sat though meetings in different businesses and organisations over the course of a decade I’ve realised something much more pervasive is going on. This language is more than a cover. It has become what fans of film franchises refer to as ‘canon’ – accepted as officially part of that universe. Like someone wrote office–based fan fiction on crack cocaine. And now we are all stuck with it.

Don’t make your problems my problems

I bring solutions.

Here are some small changes that would make office life much more palatable:

1)     Recognise that meetings are not work – work is work

• A 45 minute meeting takes 45 minutes, and an hour meeting takes an hour. We all know that kind of consistency is impossible, but we play along.

• If 8 people meet for an hour that’s 1 days’ worth of productivity in the bin.

2)     Managing people alone is not a job

• As the saying goes – the greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world middle management needed to exist.

• If all you do is delegate, you do not contribute. Don’t believe me? Take a month off. See what happens.

• I’ve been unfortunate enough to work with a few of these. Watch out for

  • Name drops people in ‘the sector’.

  • Comes up with suggestions they will never personally implement.

3)     Stop writing papers nobody reads

• I suggest making trustees and senior management teams take random tests on the papers they are meant to have read. Then report the results to all employees. Either make the papers shorter or make management obsolete.

• The focus here is time consuming and just all wrong. It’s like the 3 little bears being worried about some naughty girl eating their porridge. Mama bear and Daddy bear sleep in separate beds, you’ve got bigger problems!

Just so you know, I am not some productivity guru who is desperately trying to fill each second with meaningful graft. I’m just a fan of getting things done. With that in mind, I hereby supply the one and only theory of change any office will ever need:

Outlook is positively operational

Office work isn’t all bad.

I haven’t had to work a night shift and nobody has ever requested I bring them 6 types of shoes in 2 different sizes (I will never forget you, you absolute maniac).

I never had a boozy lunch when I worked in retail. Although, back in the office it’s always devastating to realise I look more like a pissed Frodo Baggins than a suave Don Draper.

Sometimes me and the other pawns (I prefer pawns to subordinates) will sit around talking about how much we hate the bosses. Sometimes a pawn becomes a boss and we hate them too. Ah, circle of life.

Occasionally you get hit with something devastating. Like the time they took everyone’s preferred seats away, but got away with this horrendous act of cruelty under the branding of ‘hot desking’.

Most of the time it’s just navigating the day to day banality – signing Derrick’s card, wishing him the best of luck in his new role (who?) or ignoring Janice’s passive aggressive attempts to get you to sponsor her walk (I do care about the animals Janice, and if you were willing to walk more than 5km I’d think you did too).

Yes, these places have become obsessed with introducing processes and filling out forms, but I try not to overthink it. It’s like Dolly said about this whole working 9 to 5 business: “It’s enough to drive you crazy if you let it”.

Going forward

I would categorise the work I do as a job, not a career. But if I do have a career then it is an identical one to almost everyone I know – that of a professional email sender.

However, after more than a year working from home, staring at the walls, I’ve had time to reflect. 

I’m reminded of something Tim said in The Office: “The people you work with are people you were just thrown together with. I mean, you don't know them, it wasn't your choice. And yet you spend more time with them than you do your friends or your family. But probably all you have in common is the fact that you walk around on the same bit of carpet for eight hours a day.”

Tim is obviously right. Having said that, I met my partner walking around one of those carpets. I’ve met some of my best friends walking around those carpets too. Of course, we will never remember any of the emails we ever send. But some of the people in cc make a big impact.

As for adding value to the world, well who knows. Arnie only has 17 lines in the first Terminator, fewer than 100 words. That’s value.

Hopefully the end of the pandemic gives us all a chance to adjust. We can take this opportunity to make big changes. 4 day week? Bigger! 3 day week! BIGGER! Nationalise Pret a Manger? Now you’re talking.

Seriously though, we can use this as a real chance to focus on what matters. Like wondering if receiving Guinness (and/or Guinness products) as a secret santa gift 3 years in a row is culturally insensitive? (Answer: deliciousness trumps cultural sensitivities every time).

In the future we can leave those who enjoy office politics, and believe they are in a never ending episode of The West Wing, to continue with their utter twaddle. The rest of us can get to the pub early. I guess we will see. I hear good things come to those who wait.