Happy Work Life

It would seem to make some amount of sense that part of one’s hopes for the future would be to pursue a happy work life. But a happy work life can vary from one person to the next. Happiness is a perceived notion and when put under a career context, to me it would mean a balance between a challenge and insignificance. To me, that means I would love to have a job that is able to balance my stress and workload with my social and family time. As we have learned from Erich Fromm and Jill Fraser this idea of a happy work life and a balance of work and play has become less and less prevalent.

Both Fromm and Fraser explain that there is a new idea of worker alienation which is when workers are no longer directly linked to the product they are creating. Sad as it was, workers would sell their labor and know they would be exploited but did it anyway simply out of necessity. The worker needed to feed himself and his family and working in the factory was the only way he was able to do this. Unfortunately this is one of the main causes of worker alienation. Worker alienation is often linked with lack of creativity and unfulfilled satisfactions. Fromm describes that “work, instead of being an activity satisfying in itself and pleasurable, became a duty and an obsession.” Fromm attributes worker alienation to this; because work became about the profit and no longer about the craft, workers were exploited by managers. After the assembly line was introduced during the industrial revolution workers were no longer required to know anything really. All jobs and tasks became so simplistic that those who owned and ran the factories could afford to exploit their workers. This series of events illustrates how workers no longer have pride or feel a connection to their job or the product they are creating.

Jill Fraser brings the idea of worker alienation into a more modern context. Fraser refers to the longer work days of the new collegiate graduate who is on the fast track to management so she experiences job spill. Job spill is when your work life spills over into what should be your social or personal life. In the 21st century we have much experience with job spill due to advances in technology and communication. We are more connected than we have ever been before and it may not always be to our benefit. Our lunch times are no longer our own we are meeting clients or discussing agendas over lunch if we are even taking a lunch at all. We also have cell phones which keep us connected to our family and friends but are also connecting us to our boss and co-workers. More than just spilling over into our work day, our jobs have begun to spill over into our weekends and our holidays. Travel is expected and working Saturdays is expected, it seems nowadays that giving up a social life is expected. Fraser also speaks to the fact that there is much less time to unwind and the stress is piling up on us.

So what does this all mean to me or to the average collegiate graduate worker? Personally, I fear that in today’s society there may be no way to avoid the exhaustion and the job spill. Today, I feel that our society exploits the “hard worker” or the “type-A” personality. The work force gets as much out of them as they are able promising success and promotions and raises. If there were any way to possibly avoid these forms of “exploitation” I think it would be personal. One would have to set limits and standards that they would abide by. Personally I am not sure I would want to make this kind of promise to myself though. I may avoid exhaustion and exploitation but I am that “type-A” personality and I want to give into the notion of success. I am, along with millions of others out there, the reason why our society is able to demand so much out of our workers because we are willing to give in to those demands. So maybe there isn’t a balance of work and play but my strategy is going to be to find a job that I enjoy enough so that my work is my play. I won’t mind working weekends and traveling to distant countries for a Saturday business meeting because I want to love what I do.