Most Jobs Are Chores

When I was growing up my mother was notorious for bursting in my room on Saturday morning and giving me my marching orders on cleaning the house.  Sweep, mop, scrub, etc. I used to hate it but of course as an older man I understand the value of it.

What are some typical chores you do around the house?

• Wash Dishes
• Wash Clothes
• Scrub the Tub/Toilet

These along with many other things are activities we all do with some level of frequency in order to make our living spaces comfortable.   

Recently I’ve started to think about my job like I think about chores around the house.  I’m not a fan of doing chores and I am sure many people share that same sentiment.  However, I love the way my home feels when chores get done.  I work as a security guard.  It’s boring.  Currently, I’m learning software coding in my free time in hopes to transition careers in the next couple of years.  However, as I have contemplated the possibility of one day leaving the security world I have spent a lot of time thinking about what being a customer at various businesses would be like if there were no security present.  I worked security in a hospital once and I can only imagine the chaos that would have ensued if there were no security officers present.  I feel for them but there would have been homeless people everywhere and people would have been using drugs everywhere.  

Making money is a part of my list of chores for my life and providing security is a part of my set of chores for maintaining a civil society.  This is a thought process that I wish I were encouraged to think about more when I was in school.  Garbage Collection, Janitorial Services, Emergency Medical Services, Law Enforcement, Fire Department, Healthcare Services, Construction, Electricians, Plumbers, Carpenters, Lawn Care/Landscaping, Public School Employees, Public Transit Employees, Public Utility Employees, Grocery Store Employees, Restaurant Employees… and on and on.  There are so many people who have jobs that are absolutely critical to having the level of comfort we experience in American Society.  People who are doing the not so glamorous chores in our society.  Just like chores around the house, chores around society can be repetitive, monotonous, frustrating, and go underappreciated by the benefactors, but they’ve got to get done.

In my opinion most jobs in modern society seem to have this chore-like quality.  Aside from maybe being an Artist, Athlete, Actor or some other highly creative endeavor,  most jobs are probably going to largely involve doing things that make a larger system function properly.  Doing something innovative within a career space is probably extremely rare for most people.  Again, I don’t have hard facts to back this up, this is just my opinion.  Even in a highly tech driven world there’s probably someone who works at google whose job it is to make sure the theme of the Google logo changes daily on the search homepage.  How interesting can that be after the first three or four times?

In light of this understanding I think what should change about the way we describe the working world to each other has much to do with helping one another value and understand all the moving parts.  When I was young and in school everyday, I don’t think I ever looked at the janitorial workers or cafeteria workers with the same reverence as I looked at the teachers and administrators.  Much of that probably had to do with the role of authority the later played in my life.  But it’s not like anyone was encouraging me to be a janitor or cook in a highschool cafeteria (2 extremely critical roles to a public school).  We know why?  There’s not as much money or prestige in janitorial work but damn do you feel it when those individuals aren’t working.  We usually celebrated when a substitute teacher was taking the place of a normal teacher but nobody in the building would have celebrated being responsible for cleaning up after the kids because the janitorial staff wasn’t there.

This is not to knock anybody’s job.  I guess recent times has me thinking more about being content with life as it is and the contrast that is with the thoughts of making millions of dollars that dominated my youth.  There’s a lot in the media in the last few years about young men not going to college as much as young women and more young men being single than ever before.  There’s a belief that there’s not enough attention on this issue and for me I think there are many issues that don’t see enough light:

• As I’ve written, most jobs are chores and necessary for civil society… though not well paid or fully appreciated
• Two of the most promoted vehicles of wealth creation are college and home ownership. Both have become incredibly expensive and inaccessible without taking on huge debt burdens while basic K-12/college education still doesn’t require kids to understand budgeting and money management.
• Speaking of Housing… Many people in my generation (millennials) and younger, don’t have a clue when it comes to home repairs that involve electrical, plumbing, or carpentry work which means if we take on the debt burden to get the house we’ll probably have to take on more debt to maintain the house.  
• Speaking of housing again… In a world where we seem to be getting sicker and more obese faster than previous generations combined with the fact that physical education isn’t the regular requirement in school that it used to be when I was growing up… How are these sickly people who don’t workout going to meet the physical demands required to take care of crumbling houses whose costs are annihilating their incomes?

Maybe it’s good that these things aren’t talked about a lot in the news media because it seems very clear that we as human beings are drawn to sensational gloom and doom content.  These realities can certainly paint a bleak picture of the future if we can’t reimagine reality.

First off, when are we going to acknowledge that a lot of us have been conditioned to think that life is better with more stuff.  Nicer cars, houses, and clothes… Americans are generally materialistic.  Therefore, when you can’t afford the stuff you feel bad.  But what if you didn’t care about things beyond your basic needs?  There are lots of rich miserable people in the world so clearly more money isn’t a guarantee of happiness and fulfillment.  

What if you never buy a house to own?  Personally, I’ve never had friends or family who had a mortgage on their home or owned their home outright, whom I envied.  I like living in a house.  I currently rent a duplex with my wife.  Houses are cool but being responsible for the maintenance on them seems like a perpetual money and time suck.  Also, I have never been able to follow the logic or math that houses are these great and necessary financial investments.  There’s a lot of time and a lot of unexpected expenses that go into home ownership and it doesn’t stop because the mortgage is paid off.  Not saying that people shouldn’t own houses but people shouldn’t feel bad because they don’t own a house.  It’s a very individual dependent situation and choice.

What about more of us learning to be disciplined and responsible?  For example, let’s say you’re a 19 year old kid and you work at McDonalds making $13/hr.  You work 40 hr/week.  You work out for 30-45 minutes 5x/week.  You live at home, you stay out of debt, and you save 10% of your income in a Roth IRA.  You help your parents around the house and you’re using youtube to learn carpentry and web development for free.  In my humble opinion, SO WHAT YOU’RE NOT GOING TO COLLEGE!  If you are a young man, SO WHAT GIRLS DON’T WANT TO DATE YOU!  More time to figure out who you are and how you are going to impact the people you come into contact with everyday, in a positive way.  

Just for more perspective, at a take home pay of $884 every two weeks and assuming 11 months of pay (1 month off because stuff happens).  If that kid put 10% in a Roth IRA for 10 years at a conservative 5% return, they would have $24.5K in savings at age 29 assuming no pay raises.  If they didn’t make another contribution for 36 years (age 65) they’d have $140K in retirement savings.  Not bad for working fast food.  

I guess the point of all this is the fact that well run societies are clearly built on the efforts of people who do simple jobs everyday.  Just like a clean and comfortable home is kept that way by simple chores.  We need to celebrate self-discipline, patience, and the courage to not mindlessly go with the crowd.  We need to celebrate doing simple things well like avoiding debt and staying in good physical shape.  In many ways, the young person I’m describing is practicing a high level of innovation compared to many of their peers and I believe that we can think in this manner at any age.  We should spend more time communicating this to each other rather than obsessing over the fact that not everyone can or is willing to carry insane debt for college or a house.  Also, because most jobs aren’t that exciting, maybe it’s up to each one of us to find things outside of work that are fulfilling and maybe happiness is a skill that we have to choose to get better at regardless of our circumstances.