The Work World and Nature, Essay Example

Ehrenreich’s “Nickel and Dimed” describes the degrading and tedious work of manual labor.  Hooks (2005), on the other hand, criticizes the capitalist mentality of Americans who seek work for the sake of obtaining financial reward, and emphasizes that reward can be obtained from work for the mere pleasure of it.  Ehrenreich, however, describes work that employees, considering themselves cogs in the machine, clearly do not love and, in fact, consider meaningless and repetitive.  How can one gain pleasure from such work?

It is possible, however, that the employees can gain satisfaction from such work in other ways.  Here are some ideas:

Firstly, they could link the work to their talents.  An ironmonger for instance might find that the work provides him with exercise, or accords him a chance of augmenting his personal skills.  Some side benefit could be found from the work.  A professor related a story of one of his smartest students who was offered lecturing positions in various distinguished universities.  Intrigued regarding which position he would choose, the professor questioned him regarding his choice of vocation consequent to graduation. Answered the student, “a painter” “A painter”. “Yes. Because it gives me time to think and to do non-stressful, relaxing work whilst allowing me to mentally formulate mathematical equations at my leisure.” The job paid little and would be, predictably, monotonous, yet the student realized that it could accord him a step in the direction that he ultimately wished to take.  Keeping an eye on one’s long-term goal – more importantly knowing that long term goal – can enable one to find satisfaction in one’s present job however dreary that present job may be.  Trollope used the patent office as practice for his novel writing. Einstein used a similarly dead-end job as incubator for his physics.  The job, meaningless though it may appear to be, can be a spring to one’s objectives in life.

Critics of Eherenreich can, I think, provide two alternate solutions to gaining benefit from a meaningless job.  Adam Shepherds spent 10 months in South Carolina with only $25 eventually renting a home and buying a truck.  The focus here can be on the money earned that is then used to move oneself forward to accomplish one’s dreams. As Bell herself writes, “most of us [black women] did not enter the workforce thinking of work in terms of finding a ‘calling’ or a vocation.  Instead we thought of work as a way to make money” (43).

Charles Platt (2009) took an entry-level job at Wal-Mart and described the satisfaction he gained from positive interaction with supervisors and other employees and form incentives.   This reminds me of the book “How Starbucks Saved my Life”, where the author, too, initially saw it as a dead-end job, yet credited it with saving his life.  Seemingly meaningless jobs are not the end of the world; they might be the step-up to a better future, although it might take a Pollyanna to figure out how to squeeze lemon-juice form that sour lemon.

Sources

Gill, Michael(Michael Gates) How Starbucks Saved My Life. New York: Gotham Books, 2007.

Hooks, Bell.  Sisters of the Yam:  Black Women and Self-Recovery. N.Y: South End Press, 2005.

Platt, Charles (February 1, 2009). “Life at Wal-Mart”. Boing Boing. http://www.boingboing.net/2009/02/01/life-at-walmart.html. Retrieved 8/16/2010

Shepard, A. Scratch Beginnings: Me, $25, and the Search for the American Dream. N.Y.: Collins, 2008.