How Do You Do?

Can I tell you something?

I’m basically lazy and will go to great lengths to avoid work. I’m retired now so work avoidance is much easier of course – I do have a part-time job as a small business advisor which doesn’t feel like work – but back in the day I spent most of my waking hours trying to not work.

My father, as you may know by now, was maniacal about work and seemed to get pleasure out of doing it. He sure as shit didn’t get pleasure out of anything else. So it’s likely that having an upbringing with weekday evenings consumed by homework and weekend days with yard work shaped my worldview that work sucks.

In my defense, I’ve remained gainfully employed my entire adult life save for a few months in 1992 after I exited Hot Lips Pizza and collected unemployment. Even then there was money coming in, but since I was on the government dole and only had to look for work, not actually do it, that doesn’t count. Republican politicians back in the days when they were more or less principled conservatives would’ve demonized me as a ‘welfare queen’ for this period of indolence, but I’m not gay and my company paid a lot more money into the state unemployment system than I took out, and nowadays they’re too busy demonizing anyone who isn’t a native-born white Christian so they wouldn’t bother with lazy me.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you.

Many people point to the Protestant Work Ethic as the reason Americans are so absorbed by their work. The term was coined by pioneering sociologist Max Weber in his 1905 book The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism where he argues that the ethos of work created and enabled the rise and spread of Capitalism by facilitating the accumulation of – you guessed it – capital.

The book sparked controversy, however, because the Catholic Church claimed to have thought of it first. Surely they get credit for inventing guilt, but exactly who came up with the brilliant idea to make people feel guilty for not working remains an open question.

Also labelled the Calvinist or Puritan Work Ethic, this theological brainchild was born of the Protestant Reformation in the 16th Century and many think of John Calvin as the father. God only knows how or why, but he came up with the novel idea that only a limited number of souls are chosen for salvation and there is nothing anyone not holding a winning lottery ticket can do to avoid their fate of eternal damnation.

Maybe it’s just me, but if I was given official notice that I was eternally damned, well, I’ll be damned I’d spend my life toiling at some demanding and demeaning job. I’d revel, or gambol, or whatever they called partying in the 16th Century.

Calvin and other Protestant leaders were evidently effective public speakers because they were able to inculcate the hoi polloi and it soon became gospel that Protestants preferred work and a sober life, and embraced the values of diligence, discipline, frugality, punctuality, and deferment of gratitude. Those holy hucksters also somehow sold the idea that hard work is vindication of God in one’s life and a promise He will grant wealth and happiness in the next. Which, if you’ll recall, all the eternally damned souls weren’t going to get.

That gaping loophole in the work ethic aside, by attaching religious importance to toiling at one’s job, lowly laborers were somehow convinced they were fulfilling a noble duty working like a dog. And if anyone called Calvin on his bullshit, he could just raise his voice and thump the Bible, which commands that “Six days shall you labor, and do all your work.” Apparently this commandment is taken by employers to mean a 50-hour workweek, but the good book does throw us dogs a bone saying, “the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. Remember the Sabbath day for it is holy.” So, thank the Lord, we do get one day off to attend religious services, eat brunch, drink mimosas, watch football, and play golf.

Whether it was because of good preaching or uncritical thinking, or both, by the 18th Century, the Protestant Work Ethic had become prevalent in Western Europe and accepted by large swaths of the populations there as a way of life. Except England where they had their own religion – cleverly called the Church of England – and they thought the Protestants were nuts and should find another place to work.

So considering that most of the pilgrims packed on the Mayflower – was that the only ship or were there other less famous pilgrim ferries? – were Puritans, it comes as no surprise that America was founded on the principal of hard work. Although early on it probably had less to do with honoring God than not starving to death.

But that’s not what I wanted to tell you either.

On average, U.S. workers log 1,811 hours a year, with many hard-driving and striving young professionals working far more than that not to mention struggling parents who need two jobs to make ends meet. Millions of people in lots of dirt-poor countries work much longer hours than we do but that’s only because they earn the same wages as Americans but have to work a month, or a year, to get it.

As an aside, the federal minimum wage here is $7.25 an hour, which if you multiply by 1,811 equals $13,130 a year, which is below the official federal poverty level of $15,650. But that’s another story.

Of the so-called first-world nations we grind our noses more than all the others considering we are on the job three weeks more a year than the Italians, and a whopping seven more than the Brits, Swiss, or French. Swedes work eight weeks less than we do, and the Germans, those paragons of industriousness and efficiency, take ten more off a year to cool their heels.

What’s puzzling to me is that we don’t merely accept long hours as the price we pay to have the world’s most productive economy with a gross domestic product – this is different from what you find in the frozen food aisle – bigger than China, Japan, and Germany’s combined, but we actually seem to like it. In fact, it is for the most part how we define ourselves.

It’s not just in the business world, but in most social settings save for bedroom intimacy, that the opening question when we meet someone is not “who are you?” but “what do you do?” Actually, now that I think about it, that question does come up in certain bedrooms and is typically followed by “how much?”

Whatever the reasons, Americans live to work. This is in sharp cultural contrast to Europeans who, despite having been beaten with the same Protestant stick, work to live. To some this may seem like a fine line of distinction, but it’s really a social and emotional chasm. For them, self-actualization comes in the form of joie de vivre and through the quality of life, whereas we define it by the quantity of stuff we own and accolades we receive in our jobs, or just for having one. So much so that Americans worship those that are driven, ambitious, and successful, often blind to the fact they can be the most horrible people. There is one shining example I could cite but I think you know who I mean.

The great irony is that by working hard to be successful we become cogs in a machine of our own making, enslaved to a daily routine. The central tenet of the Protestant Work Ethic, that work is the thread which holds the fabric of our culture together and guarantees continual economic growth and opportunity for everyone, is so thoroughly ingrained that few dare question it.

Social conditioning aims at making people like their inescapable destiny, but the work ethic effectively keeps people from thinking too much, for which many Americans are actually grateful. ‘Life is hard and then you die’ is a laugh line but far too often the truth, and that’s no laughing matter. Sadly, as famed British economist John Maynard Keynes once observed, “We have been trained too long to strive and not to enjoy”.

I shouldn’t have to point this out, but we are not our jobs. We are not what we do for work, or where we do it.

It’s unfortunate it took a global pandemic to make millions of Americans question the orthodoxy of shuffling into an office, but now people are beginning to realize it’s possible to be gainfully employed and productive without sacrificing the quality of their lives to do so. Remote work – the farther away the better as far as I’m concerned – is now part of the lexicon and hurray for that. But until we retire, what we do for work is still a big part of how we define ourselves – spoiler alert: even after retirement, pickleball rankings define us – though at least where isn’t quite as important.

But what I really wanted to tell you is this.

I like squirrels. Stay with me. Sure, they’re just rats with bushy tails but they’re fun to watch and they provide a cautionary tale. Gathering and hiding nuts is their job, which they do with great relish – you have to admire their industry, but they do lack focus, don’t they? – and they spend so much time squirreling nuts away they rarely have time to eat them. Never mind that studies have shown they can’t remember where 70% of them are – never mind someone actually got a grant to do such a study – the point is they’re doing way too much striving and not enough enjoying.

To wrap this up, my feelings regarding the Protestant Work Ethic can best be expressed by the old proverb “all work and no play makes Jack a dull boy.” Not because it was the very recurring theme of Jack Torrence’s book in The Shining, but because it’s true. People like Jack who live to work tend to have arid intellects, and they are dull. Bottom line, if all you have to talk to me about is what you do, I don’t want to talk to you.

That said, all play and no work makes you dull too. I’ve tried it and consider myself a content expert on the subject. After some trial and error I eventually found a balance between work and play that works for me. I do enjoy my time at leisure, but I work as well, and when I do a job, I try to do the best I can. My indolent nature aside, I live by the credo of comedian and life coach Bill Murray, “Whatever you do, always give 100%. Unless you’re donating blood.”

Thanks for listening. Talk soon.