Why take your work so seriously, when nobody around you does? This is the question my wife asks me, worried that I’m going to let my job make me ill.
I’d say it’s precisely because others don’t take it seriously that I feel I have to. Because we are paid to deliver a service, and right now we’re failing completely. Somebody has to step up to try to move things in a more positive direction. I’m not prepared to suffer such mediocrity.
But of course my wife has lived though years of this by now, tolerating those long working hours to meet a deadline and my dinner-time rants. Job satisfaction, it would seem to my beloved, has been at an all time low for an age.
Still, I tarry on, thinking one day there might be a breakthrough. Perhaps things will soon turn around. This my constant refrain. But my wife is less convinced, thinking it more likely the stresses will soon damage my health irreparably.
Stop trying to fix everything, she petitions me, and just focus on doing your own job to the best of your ability. That’s easier said than done. The everything is intrinsically linked to the specific. How can it not be taken seriously?
Last modified: 22 September 2024
