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Define 'real job'

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Started 11 months ago by TomOver
Latest reply from JonMyers

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TomOver
herenowbeyond.org
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My guess is that the greatest source of pleasure in life is difficult, meaningful work.

But---less seriously---what makes a job real ? Is it the type of clothes you wear ? Is there a level of pay or benefits below which the job is unreal?

Some of the housekeeping staff, dishwashers, and other people who work long hours behind scenes of luxury and frivolity at our city's restaurants and hotels look pretty tired to be coming from and going to unreal jobs.

You get a title and your own office when you have a real job ?

Real jobs are the ones that stress you out ? Sometimes I catch myself or others showing off about being stressed out and 'crazy busy.' Makes me feel important.

Courting cardiac arrest by pedaling a full-load of human cargo up Vine Street, bystanders may in good fun ridicule me and my customers or they may cheer us on.

But if I'm perched atop my big tricycle and smiling too much and singing too loudly while blocking the flow of traffic, some advice may ring out from a car window : "get a real job."

But what's that mean ?

My mom was an accomplished cook who raised 4 nice human beings ( plus me), helped to raise several grand kids, and kept the house seemingly immaculate for more than 40 years. But she never got a paycheck for this work. Was is not a real job ?

As for me-- who my mom referred to as "my weirdo son" as dementia (or reality) set in--I'm working mostly without pay for WCRS, and with some farms and community gardens, when I'm not pedicabbing or waiting tables. Does that not count as real work because it usually doesn't bring in money ?

Posted 11 months ago #
Porky
C-Bus' East Side
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Another way to ask it is, what is the difference between work and a job?
I think what makes it real is when you are compensated for your time because what else is a job but trading your time for money?
Regarless of how signifigant the job is, if someone is willing to pay for that service then itÃ¢â‚¬â„¢s real. Take Ã¢â‚¬Å“mystery shoppersÃ¢â‚¬Â some people might not view that as a Ã¢â‚¬Å“realÃ¢â‚¬Â job but they are cashing real checks.

Posted 11 months ago #
Tenzo
Chicago Lakeshore
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It's a real job when I get paid for it.

Although I may hang drywall, run electrical and gas, it's not a job unless I get paid. It's work.

Posted 11 months ago #
TomOver
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Maybe 'real jobs' are ones from which I'd get fired for some of my CU posts :)

Posted 5 months ago #
TomOver
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It wouldn't exactly be a job, but maybe it's self-actualizing to think of enduring physical, emotional, and mental pain as a type of work.

This involves an old theme which humanity has grappled with via religion, philosophy, art, and other means : adopting an attitude toward suffering by which we enable ourselves to get as much joy as we can from our lives, ( and/or in the after world for the religiously focused folk).

Posted 5 months ago #
BuenaVista
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To me it is one that requires either an education or a trade.

Posted 5 months ago #
cheap
Westgate
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Tenzo said:
It's a real job when I get paid for it.

Although I may hang drywall, run electrical and gas, it's not a job unless I get paid. It's work.

i thought you were Dog the cell phone hunter.

Posted 5 months ago #
Walker
The KLD / Downtown
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BuenaVista said:
To me it is one that requires either an education or a trade.

I think I agree with you... but what would be an example of something passed off as a job that doesn't require an education or trade?

Reality Show Star? ;)

Posted 5 months ago #
JeepGirl

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Walker said:
I think I agree with you... but what would be an example of something passed off as a job that doesn't require an education or trade?

Reality Show Star? ;)

Factory assembly line production worker?

Posted 5 months ago #
BuenaVista
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Walker said:
I think I agree with you... but what would be an example of something passed off as a job that doesn't require an education or trade?

Reality Show Star? ;)

There are others but I really do not want to get into a pissing match with people over their life choices. I do however, rescind my first answer because I can think of entrepreneurs with no real education, or trade, but they have somehow been able to start or buy a business, and grow it. I would say those people most definitely have "real jobs".

Anyway, you can have a "Real job" I would rather be a bum soaking up a tan on South Beach. Just a few more years at this real job, then I can do it.

Posted 5 months ago #
catnfiddle
Giant Corncob District
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I don't think anyone would consider "reality show star" a real job. It should be, at the most, a lark that MIGHT lead to a real job. Anyone who tries to make a living within their personal documentary needs to have their world change the collective channel. Considering I used to write for a reality television web site (for free, not as a job), I can document how badly down the rabbit hole that genre has slipped.

Sorry, off the soap box.

Posted 5 months ago #
upstairs
Old Town East
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A "real" job is one where you look in the mirror and smile.

Our purpose in life is to create value, to participate and be fulfilled through gaining happiness, which is fulfillment, or success of the expectation.

To be cut off from the stream of growth and development, on average, produces dissatisfaction.

Our power process relies on input and again, participation. So, if you find yourself depressed or weak, rally forth and take the steps to participate, whatever it is, picking up trash in the streets to participating in government.

The point is to be part of this great process of putting meaning into the unknown.

Posted 5 months ago #
JonMyers
HCMC ✈
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"Get a real job" seems like something a 60s dad would say to his hippy kid.

The concept of most "jobs" and having a job is dying. I'm conviced if you want to survive and maintain your standard of living, you need to have a core set of evolving skills and the ability to adapt to work on a project by project basis. I guess that's a job?

Posted 5 months ago #
TomOver
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upstairs said:
A "real" job is one where you look in the mirror and smile.

Our purpose in life is to create value, to participate and be fulfilled through gaining happiness, which is fulfillment, or success of the expectation.

To be cut off from the stream of growth and development, on average, produces dissatisfaction.

Our power process relies on input and again, participation. So, if you find yourself depressed or weak, rally forth and take the steps to participate, whatever it is, picking up trash in the streets to participating in government.

The point is to be part of this great process of putting meaning into the unknown.

'Participation' is one of the words that jumps out. But could you elaborate on what seems even more intriguing : the "great process of putting meaning into the unknown"?

Posted 5 months ago #
TomOver
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JonMyers said:
"Get a real job" seems like something a 60s dad would say to his hippy kid.

The concept of most "jobs" and having a job is dying. I'm conviced if you want to survive and maintain your standard of living, you need to have a core set of evolving skills and the ability to adapt to work on a project by project basis. I guess that's a job?

An acronym comes to mind A.S.K.----attitude, knowledge, and skill. These apply to survival and quality of life. The latter involves the satisfaction from having a sense of purpose.

Working, as you say, on a project-by-project basis pertains to having social networks based on some type of reciprocity and/or some sort of pay-it-forward process.

I cringe at the thought of working at the same place for 40 years, doing the same tasks. But my perspective is shaped by the times in which there seems more of a focus on (and requirement for) being flexible within social and occupational networks.

Posted 5 months ago #
upstairs
Old Town East
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TomOver said:
'Participation' is one of the words that jumps out. But could you elaborate on what seems even more intriguing : the "great process of putting meaning into the unknown"?

Yes, one is either deriving meaning from the environment or putting meaning into the environment. Myths, stories, logic, philosophy and belief. Of course we are in a vast unknown, simply peer into the starry sky at night. So, humanity is stumbling along, taking courage through it's total experience to interface with the unknown. Imagine a large beehive with legs, stumbling along, marching over the next hill to peer out and discover further what our existence is about. Why do we exist, beyond being a mutated vestige of a balanced component within the eco sphere.

So, we are all stumbling along, with our temporal individual existences, looking for comfort from the howling winds and thunderous rain of the unknown and it's terror that cuts into our short temporal life.

So, the environment that I speak of, where meaning is applied and taken, is our civilization, societal construct. Humanity has infinite directions in which to go, we simply appear the way we do because of the blind direction that has already been taken. If man was lean, he could collectively run and jump, dance in any direction it felt, lean being under an efficient organized system of belief, a universal system of sorts.

Oh, so the point of that statement is that we are all participating in the direction that humanity is heading, so the greater the participation the more our power process is activated, rather than being a passenger , we become the driver. Though it's more a spectrum of gray rather than two opposing poles. outside of taking care of basic biological imperatives, we are given breathing room to scan the horizon and participate in the human directive.

Posted 5 months ago #
TomOver
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The question of what a 'real job' is may relate to the question of what knowledge, skills, and attitudes are valuable to us. The answer may depend on the situation.

I venture many people from rural Mexico, for example, who might not know much about Calculus or Regression Analysis, might be able to perform circles around many of us when it comes to planting, caring for, and harvesting crops.

This bias about what skills,knowledge, and attitudes matter not only exists across cultures but across generations as well. For example, you couldn't converse about Nietzsche or Marx with my paternal grandparents who were farmers from Italy, but they were accomplished wine makers, and grew much of their own food, sharing both with other people near Sharon, Pennsylvania.

This also applies to the usual disputes about welfare ( for the poor, though not about the issue welfare for corporations and the rich). It's more the case that some of us have a narrow view about what skills, knowledge, and attitudes matter than it is the case that certain segments of our society simply want something for nothing.

Given what I hear from city officials as well as some advocacy groups (ie Consider Biking) and reporters --including you Walker---it seems some of us overlook the fact that Columbus depends on many types of work that are not done by 'young urban professionals' or the so-called 'creative class.'

All due respect, but maybe we'd hear that kind of talk less if we took a more holistic view of what it takes to make our city function.

Posted 5 months ago #
TomOver
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upstairs said:
Yes, one is either deriving meaning from the environment or putting meaning into the environment. Myths, stories, logic, philosophy and belief. Of course we are in a vast unknown, simply peer into the starry sky at night. So, humanity is stumbling along, taking courage through it's total experience to interface with the unknown. Imagine a large beehive with legs, stumbling along, marching over the next hill to peer out and discover further what our existence is about. Why do we exist, beyond being a mutated vestige of a balanced component within the eco sphere.

So, we are all stumbling along, with our temporal individual existences, looking for comfort from the howling winds and thunderous rain of the unknown and it's terror that cuts into our short temporal life.

So, the environment that I speak of, where meaning is applied and taken, is our civilization, societal construct. Humanity has infinite directions in which to go, we simply appear the way we do because of the blind direction that has already been taken. If man was lean, he could collectively run and jump, dance in any direction it felt, lean being under an efficient organized system of belief, a universal system of sorts.

Oh, so the point of that statement is that we are all participating in the direction that humanity is heading, so the greater the participation the more our power process is activated, rather than being a passenger , we become the driver. Though it's more a spectrum of gray rather than two opposing poles. outside of taking care of basic biological imperatives, we are given breathing room to scan the horizon and participate in the human directive.

Please offer an example with which to express these concepts in less abstract terms.

Posted 5 months ago #
upstairs
Old Town East
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Stand outside of the human sphere and study it from a distance. Do not get distracted from the myriad of quibbles, conflicts, shimmery displays or even achievements. At a distance, you begin to see this great ball of energy, this orgy of activity.

So, in terms of "real job", the closer you are to power, the more realistic your life will be as you will be constructing content for humanity vs taking content to be absorbed. So a real job could be ruler of the world.

Though, and I wanted to be careful not to go off topic, I think the term "real job" applies to being able to cover the biological imperatives and even have room for offspring.

Posted 5 months ago #
JonMyers
HCMC ✈
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TomOver said:
An acronym comes to mind A.S.K.----attitude, knowledge, and skill. These apply to survival and quality of life. The latter involves the satisfaction from having a sense of purpose.

Working, as you say, on a project-by-project basis pertains to having social networks based on some type of reciprocity and/or some sort of pay-it-forward process.

I cringe at the thought of working at the same place for 40 years, doing the same tasks. But my perspective is shaped by the times in which there seems more of a focus on (and requirement for) being flexible within social and occupational networks.

A book I've been reading reminded me of you and this conversation. I'm reading That Used to Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back by Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum.

A lot of the book is examining work, the nature of work presently and how it will continue to be impacted and evolve due to globalization and the continued revolution of information technology.

I thought this was an interesting quote:

Forget blue-collar and white-collar. There are two types of workings in our economy: creators and servers. Creators are the ones driving productivity - writing code, designing chips, creating drugs and running search engines. Servers on the other hand, service these creators (and other servers) by building homes, providing food, offering legal advice and working at the department of motor vehicles. Many servers will be replaced by machines, by computers and by changes in how business operates.

This dichotomy between "creators" and "servers" focuses attention on the most important question every working will have to ask himself or herself: Am I adding value by doing something unique and irreplaceable?

While I don't necessarily see the world in those terms, I think the quote does lead to an important question, which might define what a real job is now and in the future.

Are you adding value in a unique and irreplaceable way?

Posted 5 months ago #