Keeping a New Job

The whole field of employment has a couple of universal myths that, like the advice to stroke a rabbit’s paw to get lucky, prevail, despite their nonsensicality, throughout the ages of industrial revolutions and changes of tide between capitalism and socialism. The most striking of these, and one most prone to cost you your job, should you fall for it too badly, is the illusion that the employer, the company, is the one giving you your pay, the one you are working for, that they are the capitalist in top hat who sits on wads of money that never run out and are always there, and it’s only up to their meanness how much money they release to their slaves (employees).

It may well be that the company is a mean one and despite earning loads, is scrimping on workers. In that case you’re probably not working for them anymore anyway, having found yourself a better position elsewhere where they are able to appreciate your value, or have taken other steps adequate to the situation. But generally speaking, in any company, it is you who are paying yourself.

The basic idea of a company is that one day somebody had an idea, started to work on it, it paid off, he began to add employees, subsidiaries, expanding etc. and voilá, IBM. But still the idea is that it has to pay off for the company to keep employing its people, and if most of these people don’t do their jobs in a way which brings the company much more money than their salary is worth, the end is quite predictable. So it is very important to keep in mind, in a job, that it is always a bonus when somebody has seven university diplomas, can do ikebana and is a really nice chap, but unless he’s using these things to bring the company money, in the long run his position is not very safe. Just coming to work and spending the desired amount of hours there, or staying overtime, even working like crazy and being always out of breath for the amount of work you do there, if it’s not the work that’s supposed to be the final valuable product of your job, you’re placing yourself at a risk.

So the final recommendation here is – find out what is truly expected of your position. It may be direct money if you’re a sales rep, it may be subproducts, such as handled and routed tasks and communications and followed-up projects if you’re an assistant, etc. And focus on these.

And keep playing with your job. If you don’t want to find yourself in a year’s time being bored to death because you’re basically on top of everything and inventing problems where there aren’t any just to relieve the tedium, try always looking for new ways and possibilities to improve your job and the work you do on it. Try looking for new ways to handle your routine tasks. And don’t limit yourself – if you have a good general idea, pass it up!

And if you haven’t been put off by this article so far, try reading this extraordinary essay by Elbert Hubbard called Message to Garcia which sums it all up pretty nicely: http://people.whitman.edu/~hashimiy/garcia.htm

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