Work

County songs have a classic reputation given by the old question: what happens when you play country music backwards? You get your wife back, you get your kids back, you get your dog back, you get your job back, etc. I told that to a fellow worker and was informed, “leave my country music alone.”
A couple of those style songs express the idea of longing for the end of work. One I especially found disturbing was 5-o-clock somewhere. The time I listened to the lyrics, describes someone who has to be drunk at noon to finish the day.
How sad.
How about working for the weekend? Again, work is something required to be done and once that bitter pill is swallowed, the enjoyment of the weekend can be had.
What would it be like to go to work and actually enjoy the day? How would your outlook be if doing something all day that satisfied one’s desire to produce?
One concept from the “Underground History of American Education” was the need for corporations to produce laborers for their factories who could do meaningless labor all day. School was designed with that desire in mind, down to the requirement to change one’s focus whenever the bell rings.
The point of this effort was to remove dependence upon craftsmen and focus desire on mass production. This put more emphasis on the item produced, or later wanted, and reduced the desirability for individually produced products. For the corporation, this was the ultimate manufacture of a market, and for the craftsman, this was the deathnell of their trade.
The personal cost of this trade was noted in the Underground History and that is the loss of the person’s ability to spend their day producing something of real value.
I used to work in a car plant. On the assembly line, I placed certain parts on the car, and repeated that same procedure every minute all day. The work was so boring, I tried to come up with ways to mentally make it through the day. ex: figuring a way to raise the Titanic with compressed air. This required a series of compression stations at progressively lower depths until the pressure could be released into the hull and cause the ship to raise.
Practical? Not at all. But it was an exercise I remember doing to get through the day.
I made spouseinbox a foot box for Christmas. This involved obtaining the wood, cutting, sanding, using a Dremel to decorate, and then staining and varnishing the completed box. Comparing all my time on assembly to the box I would note that the pay on assembly was much greater, but the satisfaction of presenting the box was so much better because the work was personal, complete, and I had actually produced something entirely by myself. The box was useful, fairly good looking, and more importantly – I made it.
Back to the idea at the top, imagine being able to do that sort of labor through the day all week. For myself, I have stayed in my level of nursing precisely because the next step up on training gets a phenomenal amount of paperwork and less patient contact. Enjoyment of patient contact is why I do what I do. So I am a lucky individual to enjoy my work through the week and not have to look forward to the weekend except in the need for extra time to catch up on household items.
I can only wish similar for others.
For reference:
http://www.madehow.com/Volume-1/Automobile.html (background section)

 

I used to work in a psych facility for individuals unable to work in “normal” society. On my dorm, there were only about 6 individuals who did not have a seizure disorder. That said, part of my job was to evaluate the seizures and decide if they were “real”, or “behavior”, so the list from here brought back memories. Add to that description an individual who would be shaking the upper extremities, periodically peeking out either eye to see if someone was watching. Oh, and the facility staff timing the seizure had it at 17 minutes at that time.
I was called to another situation with an individual from a different dorm and had a staff motion and whisper “person likes to fake”. I tried not to chuckle. Yes, I do have a bit of practice telling the difference, thank you. It is part of my job.