i'm 'More' than a Job

No reason whatsoever, but for the past couple of weeks, from time to time, I find myself wondering what happened to the young business acquaintance whom I met several times the year before.

 

A Millennial, he was highly enthusiastic, very passionate, very definite of what he was doing and very determined and dogged about the goals that had been set to him by his superiors.

 

I found that admirable.

 

Given that he started part time work at the youthful age of 14 and has held a couple of jobs and in all, he hasn't quite stopped working since.

 

Except that it got me a lil confused as to whether he was doing a job, or whether he was not doing a job.

 

He said he wasn't doing a job.

 

He said that he was doing more than a job. See, he showed me, he had all these contacts, he had all these important peeps on the platform that he was offering, he had all these goals, all these achievements to unlock, all this progression... and that he, together with his fellow team mates, were going to unlock the keys of the new economy, grab as many drifters and loners (that's us) and together, this entire thing- this whole business that he was going about- would change the world.

 

What he was doing, he maintained, was not just any normal role that his peers were doing. He was doing something very important. In his role of Business Development, he was every day waking up to plans, plans, more plans, meetings, meetings, more meetings. He was having conferences, he was catching up with people, he was having cafe-style meetings with his colleagues working out strategies that would change everything.

 

All fine and well, I thought, made sense too...

 

Except for one thing.

 

Who set those goals that he was passionately trying to meet? Who paid him out the commissions from those meetings that he successfully closed? Who set the system in place such that he could emulate, follow and adapt for his day-to-day tasks of which he was springing out of bed eagerly, or not even sleeping, for? Who created the material and the techniques and the guidance and mentorship and opportunities that he said would bring benefits to my course of work and ease up the hunt for opportunities?

 

Maybe I belong to the 'old-school' Marketing type where the business settings were mostly corporations and conglomerates.

 

But essentially, despite everything he said, despite all the fluff that emblazoned his purpose in living and filled him with positivity, what he said he was doing still felt like a job to me.

 

Which, and here is where the problem lies, it was a clear hint on his side that he was despising those who held jobs. They were 'just doing a job lor" and were simply following an executive career path with mundane responsibilities, dead-end corporate climbs, no significance, no progression, nothing, merely collecting a salary whilst following instructions from their superiors and thereby amounting to nothing in the present, and would amount to nothing in the future.

 

What he didn't realize was that, in fact, he was also holding one down like the rest of them, albeit with a slight tweak to his responsibilities.

 

we're all straws in a single cup

 

 

Or rather, his sense of ownership.

 

Because whilst he had all the figures and slides and platform and video channels and all that talk and advice going on, everything he was saying was basically a lead up to the formula and direction that his mentor/boss had set.

 

It wasn't something that he drew out on a piece of paper and set it out for himself. Neither was it something that he'd worked with a couple of people to get it pat down and then produced an end result from all that discussion. He had a variety of methods of which all led to the same purpose and the same goal.

 

What difference is that, I ask then, from sales? And if you're doing business development, then whose business is it that you're developing? Your own, or the platform that you work for? If it's the platform that you work for, then hey, that's a job. Don't s*** it because it's not corporatized. Whether or not it is, the fact lies is that there's a hierarchy and which you're part of it and which you have to follow, because you're just not good enough to strike out on your own and create something completely different off the beaten track.

 

Perhaps this might be off board for me, but honestly, after a couple of meetings, it set me wondering what the heck was so wrong with holding down (just) a job? Was holding down a job, and maybe seemingly going nowhere so big a sin that it deserved to be looked down upon? Was the choice to take a job instead of going the 'alternative' route so wrong? And did it make someone who'd decided otherwise superior because of his alternative career path?

I don't really have an answer.

Especially for someone who does what I do, but really, it is all about the choices one makes.

Some of us have had to hold down jobs because we have responsibilities we wish to fulfil and we don't wish to up and go do something bombastic just like that.

Some of us hold down jobs because that is what we trained to do and we're just wanting to max out our education by earning something back from it for our parents, our families, our loved ones.

Some of us start with the job, continue on with it and let it form beautiful memories for our lives, and should it leave us, we hunt around and create new opportunities and memories.

Some of us start with the job, grab as much fun as we can from it, look around, repeat.

What does it matter? 

Just as there is nothing wrong in wanting to make something out of your life, there is also nothing wrong in holding down a regular job in a regular office with a regular pay and regular colleagues and a regular boss and a regular life.

That's how it is. Let's not look down on others who have made their choices and believe that they're wasting their life. That's not fair. And if you ask me, it's not right either.

Because it is a very real irony that whilst the young man harped on and on about the fact that he was involved in something more critical than his peers, and which enabled him to grab life by its balls and live it to the max, whilst he was going on and on about the particular platform that he was hard-balling for whilst saying that those who didn't join him were, you know, just normal, he was using a laptop, he was wearing a shirt, he was presenting to me with a particular software, his platform was presented in an office space in a very exclusive building, made no less exclusive than the presence of the security team in the lobby downstairs. and who, pray tell, I wanted to ask, kept those things running like clockwork?

A single person trying to grab other people so as to change the world together?

Nope.

People holding boring, mundane, dead-end jobs in Microsoft, Acer, Samsung and that factory that made the very shirt you're wearing on your back.