In Defense of the 9 to 5 (Discussion)
Hello lovely readers! It has been a while since there was a post from me, but today I am returning with some food for thought about work and business. Working takes up so much of our waking hours anyway.
Why has the saying "I just really don't wanna be stuck working a 9 to 5 job" become such a common saying in our society? Is the greatest suffering nowadays in one's professional career having financial stability, a desk in a temperature controlled building, and a retirement plan?
I believe that the brand new culture (especially among millennials) and trend that we're witnessing lately, of "influencers" and "entrepreneurs" and "social media" personalities showing off their lives traveling around with their laptops, working on the beach, partying in the middle of the day, and supposedly "living their best lives". So regular office jobs seem to be always demonized as a symbol of all that is boring and lame in a career.
And I disagree. I believe that working a 9 to 5 can be exciting and fulfilling. You can be surrounded with wonderful coworkers, working on projects that could change the world, and making enough to live the life exactly the way you want. And maybe that life is not the typical ideal that would become insta-famous, but it is not a cage that I have noticed it becoming in the perception of society.
Either option can be the right pathway for someone. Either one can be absolutely unsuitable. There are many ways to success, and an office job can also provide the emotional commitment and intellectual fulfillment. Everyone needs to explore one's dreams and preferabilities and not buy into the large amounts of bullshit on social media.
And even though we spend a lot of time working, and it's the way that we can afford to live, it is not the only thing in the world we should care about. We should all make time for other things that matter as well. Cause even in the best jobs, we need some time to rest and recover to be the best we can be.
~Olga
I agree in a general sense with your points. Namely that there is no right answer as to how one should live one's life or what one's ideal career should look like. Human beings are far too varied for there to be a right answer to almost any question that involves happiness or fulfillment.
ReplyDeleteSo instead of debating your points really, I'm going to posit my issues with the 9 to 5 system, and more broadly how we view working and success in general as a culture (in North America).
In North America, we have a troubling relationship with Capitalism. If it was a romantic relationship no one would hesitate to call it out for being toxic, and it assuredly is. As a culture that evolved almost entirely out of the shadow of thrones and monarchs, we created a different social structure. It no longer mattered what deceased white man you were related to or how pure your bloodline was, it only really mattered how much currency you had. The wealthy became the new upper-class, and the poor maintained their ancestral position as the downtrodden and oppressed. This created new problems that had not really existed before though. For example: Under a monarchy, the king's power was largely unquestioned by those below him. His word was law, and because he owned essentially everything, bribing him was nearly impossible. Under our system though, almost no one is above bribery. Most folks have a price and those that think they haven't usually just have one no one has offered yet. It gives almost all the power to the rich regardless of who is elected.
DeleteLooking at America right now, it has reached its logical conclusion. Having worshiped business and money for so long it really was inevitable that one day a businessman would attain the highest office in the land.
The problem with our relationship with money is that the attaining of money has become the ultimate goal we are expected to attain. When children suggest the things they would like to be when they grow up, they choose solely based on their interests and what they think would make them happy. When you ask them again in their 20's, most of them have changed to something that will make them more money. I can't even count the number of people I know that wanted to be writers until someone important in their life crushed the dream out of them for being unrealistic because it wasn't "a real job".
We have abandoned the pursuit of happiness culturally, for the pursuit of money because we are told that having large amounts of it will make us happy. Which plainly isn't true, at least not for everyone. So we accept this pursuit of an ideal life as what we should do, and we work ourselves to death pursuing it. Hell, there are countries where working 40 hours a week is considered being overworked but here it's considered the bare minimum that someone should be doing if they are an adult. If they don't want to work that much we tend to look on them as lazy. It's an economy built on the backs of institutionalized slavery that is so insidious that we choose our own shackles and show them off to our neighbours, elated that they are of a better brand name than theirs.
So in conclusion, I think the issue with 9 to 5 jobs as a concept, is that they are the embodiment of the entire system that drives our culture. It's considered normal that someone should have to sell 7 hours of their life, five days a week so that they can afford to live and hopefully enjoy some of their time when they aren't working. But what price would you consider fair to buy such a large percentage of your remaining time on this earth? I'm unsure there is one that wouldn't seem too small for something so finite and precious. If you can find something that brings you joy and also happens to pay you for seven hours of your day, then a 9 to 5 day might be perfect for you. But the dangers of normalizing it is that it forces people that never will be happy under such a system to just accept that it's the way things are and the way they always will be; which is the mantra that makes itself true in the repeating.
-Damien Sprigg
Sorry for the long winded response, I've never been good at summarizing. (Also there's a character count, so I had to split it up)
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