Few of us are talented enough to make a living from the exercise of our passion. So, driven by economic necessity, we fall into “jobs”. Most of these jobs are superfluous and invented — I’m sure of it! — to keep the talentless population employed. “Little girls don’t grow up wanting to become a prostitute”, or so the trope goes. And that is probably true. But it is also probably true that little girls don’t grow up wanting to become “vice-president for real-time card payments”. Or “senior manager for content licensing”. Or anything with “talent development” or “HR” in the title. Don’t get me wrong, these jobs have their uses. If you are a good vice-president for real-time card payments, someone, somewhere will be paid in real time. And that is a cause for joy. But how many of us are stoical enough to be motivated by the vague image of a nameless, faceless customer we will never meet, and about whom, let’s be honest, we don’t really care, when we push open the door of our open-plan at nine in the morning and brace ourselves for ten hours of drudgery?
Elena Shalneva “Work — the Tragedy of Our Age”, Quillette, 2020-01-29.
