A vocal portion of older generations have looked down upon Millennials and Generation Z work ethic, saying we, “Just don’t want to work.” This isn’t anything new. For hundreds of years, older generations have fumed at younger ones for their work ethic. I am a Gen Z, born 1999, so this narrative of the “lazy generation” is something I have heard my entire life. I’ve thought a lot about this classification and why I think it’s wrong.
Personally, I love working hard. I feel immense satisfaction from solving issues and fixing problems. I love creating, innovating, and doing the things I’m passionate about. I’ll often work on weekends, after-hours, and on holidays. I am a hard worker. But it isn’t easy to apply that work ethic to ill-structured corporate cultures with unhelpful (or straight-up harmful) goals. And that’s the crux of the issue. I’m not “against work.” I’ve re-prioritized what type of work I think is worth doing.
The most common work-related sentence I hear among my generation is, “I don’t like my job.” If you’re older, you might think something to the tune of, “Too bad, everyone hates their job sometimes. You need to do it anyway.”
And I can’t say they’re wrong – if you quit your job, even if you hate it, and don’t find other work to support yourself, there could be repercussions like falling behind on mortgage payments and not being able to put food on the table. The alternative is staying in a job you hate which doesn’t sound fun to me either.
I also can’t ignore the fact that Americans work more than most other developed countries with far fewer benefits and personal interaction on average. But if I call that out, I’m a part of the new swath of anti-corporate warriors who forgot what it meant to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
Obviously, I have a problem with that.
Right off the bat, I will admit that some people are lazy. They genuinely don’t want to do any work even though they can work. Those people, rightfully so, should be criticized. A part of being in a community is helping that community. If you want to depend on your community’s healthcare, infrastructure, and education, then you should provide something in return. Unless a person has a physical ailment, I think, they should be ready and willing to help their community and the people in it.
Americans are souring on traditional corporate culture. But the issue is deeper than culture – there’s a problem with the work itself.
One Stupid Man's Opinion on Why Work Isn't Fulfilling Anymore
People aren’t feeling fulfilled by spending the vast majority of their time working. And it’s not for obvious reasons like how we’re notoriously underpaid or, even if we do spend all our time working, we still cannot do things like own a house, buy a new car, or afford health care or childcare. Those things are all, sadly, accurate… but it’s also about community and impact.
I think this problem boils down to two things:
- Our work is no longer a place where people find community
- It is getting harder for people to see a positive impact in the world from their work
Let’s tackle the community aspect first. In school, I learned about the “richness” of media, which means how well an interaction displays emotion, information, and subtext. Face-to-face is the richest, followed by video conferencing, then phone calls, then messaging, and so on. In previous generations, everything was “rich.” You worked with physical things and talked to people face-to-face, and you did this in your personal and work life.
Then, technology came along. Work became more virtual, less personable. Instead of working with real things and talking with real people, you called them and worked on a computer. You were further removed from your work, its benefits, and the people around you. This has only gotten worse. People need people, and people need to feel like their work is productive. If you stick someone in a cubicle to stare at a screen, only once in a while launching a video call that may or may not even show another person’s face, that person is not going to be fulfilled in their work. What is the benefit for them outside of a meager paycheck?
Furthermore, corporations are trying to re-introduce community in all the wrong ways. You cannot build community by forcing workers to return to the office if they don’t want to. You cannot build community by having a team-building budget that’s only big enough to throw a pizza party once a quarter.
Corporations want to place the burden of building community on employees when they need to act as a catalyst. If you ask me, employees shouldn’t need to be required to return to the office – it is the company’s job to make the office preferable to an employee’s home. Don’t get me wrong, that’s difficult to do. But it is possible.
Now let’s talk about impact. In corporate America, there is a strong and persistent push against factoring in corporate ethics into your job search. That’s no accident. The shareholders own public companies and shareholders love nothing more than quarterly earnings reports.
Companies want to believe they can achieve infinite profit growth every quarter. And, if they don’t have a novel product to place on the market, their strategy to increase profits is probably minimizing expenses. Their employees (if they’re not laid off already) can’t be creative and innovative because shoestring budgets and unrealistic delivery expectations hamper them. If I had a dollar for every smart, driven person I’ve seen reduced to an apathetic number-cruncher, I’d be able to quit the rat race altogether.
This emphasis on profit bleeds into virtually every portion of how a business operates itself. Perhaps the most potent effects it has are on things a company should do even though it won’t make the company more money. It is far more difficult to be profitable if you also need to help the planet or improve the working conditions of employees your consumers don’t seem to care about.
We cannot rely on companies to do the right thing simply because it’s the right thing. That’s a problem. And I think money is at the root of its evil.
The Problem With Everything Being About Money
Very few jobs today are centered around helping the community and the people in it. They’re centered around making money. Now, you could argue that making money is inherently useful, and the point of most companies, but it’s a selfish way to view work. Isn’t the true goal of working to provide something useful to society?
Our society places value on work by how much money it makes, which is interesting because, in most cases there is an inverse relationship between the amount of money you make and the positive impact of your work. This is no accident. Perhaps one of the least useful things you can do with your time is to make wealthy people more wealthy. You are not solving any problems there. But, in modern-day America, that is virtually the entire basis of how much you earn. If you make someone a lot of money, you have more of a reason to ask for a cut of that money.
As a teacher, you’re not making anyone money. If you’re helping homeless people, you’re not making anyone money. But that work is certainly more useful than helping a billionaire skirt his taxes.
Does this obsession with money make our society worse? I think so. As we continue to privatize healthcare, the system gets more expensive and the quality of care decreases. As we defund education and social programs to pay for corporate tax breaks, our country gets dumber and poorer.
These problems come at a time when corporate culture and job responsibilities are simply not cutting it for younger people. Call it privilege if you want, but there is a wide-reaching trend in young America that is attacking the “traditional” corporate culture that holds merit. Should Americans be expected to work two jobs to survive? Should we settle for a pizza party after setting record-high profits for our CEO? The work culture that became the norm over the last 50 years or so is no longer cutting it.
My Three Issues with The Stereotypical Work Mindset
Some criticize The Otherwhere Project because it can be perceived as anti-work. After all, I don’t focus on money, power, or materialism, but on life. I believe valuable work is a great compliment to a valuable life. I do not believe that work is, or should be, the pinnacle of it. If being a “hard worker” means you are giving exorbitant time simply in the pursuit of wealth, anti-work is exactly what I am. However, I have three problems with that description.
- A 40-hour work week is over a third of our waking hours, and most Americans work more than that. So sue me, but I think you should be able to make enough money to be happy if you are sacrificing more than a third of your waking life for a job. There is also so much more work baked into our week outside, on top of traditional work. Exercise, cooking, cleaning, taking care of children, and spending time with friends and family are all staples in most of our lives. These things are worth doing and should not be sacrificed for money.
- To quote the most famous phrase in my middle school friend group, “You only live once.” This is our life, and we’re only young once. We should not settle for spending decades doing things that aren’t productive or meaningful. I don’t feel productive putting numbers into spreadsheets or creating PowerPoint decks. You know when I do feel productive? When I’m volunteering, exploring, writing, being creative, and helping people.
- It is said that youth is wasted on the young. Older generations wish they would’ve traveled more, not spent so much time in the office, or not cared so much about material things. I’m trying to listen to them! I want to get out of my bubble, travel, be uncomfortable, and realize the value of my youth. I’m trying to be consciously aware of the things I will wish I prioritized more than promotions and raises.
So Yes, We Should Work... At Work Worth Doing
I don’t think people are lazy. I think most people are simply disenchanted with the idea that this de-personalized form of work is worth doing. There is little financial benefit and little personal fulfillment. On top of that, we sit with the constant reminder that someone above us is taking far more than their fair share of the value our productivity earns.
That’s why we need to restructure what we think of as “valuable work.” Because yes, I wholeheartedly believe that people should work hard. I just want to have a conversation about what work is worth prioritizing.
Maybe the work worth doing is writing that book you’ve always wanted to write. After all, your words might help someone else. Work worth doing could be volunteering for a cause you’re passionate about, or trying to fix problems you know exist, even if (and perhaps especially if) that work doesn’t make you rich. I think you are a productive person as long as you help the world.
You also deserve to be selfish at times. Take time off to figure yourself out, be happy, and experience the world given to you. Maybe try to experience the world while working and being productive. Your work deserves to be more rich. You deserve to experience more. You deserve more wholesome interactions, responsibilities, and purpose through your work.
We are constantly told that we are blessed to live in such a prosperous time, but we are also forbidden from expecting a lot from that prosperity in return. We should expect community and value in our work. It should make an impact – not by making us famous or wealthy, but by genuinely helping those around us.
That is what Otherwhere is. That is how we make the world a better place, and how we make ourselves better in the end.
