29 May 2018 - Graham
previously: unstructured guilt
Austin B. and Cara D. independently shared David Graeber’s analysis of bullshit jobs, which hits a really bothersome nail on the head. The article is worth reading in full:
Huge swathes of people, in Europe and North America in particular, spend their entire working lives performing tasks they secretly believe do not really need to be performed. The moral and spiritual damage that comes from this situation is profound. It is a scar across our collective soul.
Austin T., who pilots very large airplanes, has found a counter-intuitive way to enjoy unproductive time:
My best source of guilt free idleness over the years has been being on call. It’s most responsible to relax as thoroughly as possible because at any moment I may be assigned a lot of work.
As a barista, I concretely improved other people’s lives by making them delicious coffee. And I got to consume thrilling amounts of caffeine, which brightened my days considerably. I liked working for Compass Coffee in particular, even though it’s rapidly becoming a chain, because they have solid core values. Two of those values stand out:
Compass has many “Go-Tos,” or default options. For example, when a customer asks for “a coffee,” they get a medium sized medium roast in a to-go cup filled to the standard line. This saves everyone time and hassle. I really like these intentional defaults, and my favorite is “Our Go-To is Yes.” “Yes” as the default answer empowers baristas to make things right for customers. It means that the barista, rather than the customer, must navigate the internal processes needed to fix the problem. It demands trust in both baristas and customers, but it improves everyone’s experience.
For government, in contrast, the go-to is too often “No.” Outsiders are expected to navigate complicated internal rules, which makes necessary the highly-paid lobbyists with insider experience. So while I am deeply suspicious of most proposals to make government customer-focused (rather than citizen-driven), I believe we should enact a “Go-To is Yes” for the bureaucracy.
For more on the power of defaults, I really liked both Thinking Fast and Slow and Nudge. Though I am, like Elizabeth Kolbert, suspicious of the anti-democratic implications of Nudge.
I love this anti-hierarchy principle. And they live up to it. At Compass more responsibility often leads to more deep cleaning. Even the owners claim to clean, though really they just do some messy plumbing and they not-so-secretly love it.
I took the barista job in part because I love going to cafes, and I feel strongly that I shouldn’t ask other people to do a job for me if I’m not willing to do it myself. So now that I’m not a barista anymore, I think “Everyone Cleans” should include customers too.
My thinking on this is derivative of Michael Walzer:
[T]he question, in a society of equals, who will do the dirty work? has a special force. And the necessary answer is that, at least in some partial and symbolic sense, we will all have to do it. […] This is what Gandhi was getting at when he required his followers–himself, too–to clean the latrines of their ashram. Here was a symbolic way of purging Hindu society of untouchability, but it also made a practical point: people should clean up their own dirt. Otherwise, the men and women who do it not only for themselves but for everyone else, too, will never be equal members of the political community.
But taking a job seeking humility or out of a sense of civic duty is potentially condescending, and while this was a minor reason it did made me very sensitive to entitlement in customers.
I couldn’t help asking myself whether they thought they were better than me. I bet the lady in all gucci everything assumed that I would switch financial places with her. And the rudely hurrying, quarter-zip clad bros all but told me that they were more important. To be fair, most people were simply nice. But there was a significant subset of customers whose niceties were suspect. Did they genuinely care how my day was going or were they just fulfilling their noblesse oblige?
This oversensitivity gave me a glimpse of an alienated perspective - the perspective of viewing oneself as the object of another’s gaze (as opposed to being a subject who looks out). Simone De Beauvoir, riffing on Hegel, noticed how this alienation shapes the lives of women. Here’s Sarah Bakewell summarizing her:
[W]oman is indeed ‘other’ for man – but man is not exactly ‘other’ for woman, or not in the same way…. Women try constantly to picture themselves as they would look to a male gaze…. This, for Beauvoir, is why women spend so much time in front of mirrors. It is also why both men and women implicitly take women to be the more sensual, the more eroticised, the more sexual sex. In theory, for a heterosexual female, men should be the sexy ones, disporting themselves for the benefit of her gaze. Yet she sees herself as the object of attraction, and the man as the person in whose eyes she glows with desirability.
Mel C. noticed this duality in the preface to the poem she shared last week:
Some compliment me while behind the bar on my orange pants or my oversized- tied at the belly- button up- flower top or metallic lip color, while they are dressed in grey suits or nike “jock” outfits. initially i’m shocked, but their compliments don’t mean much to me […]
this grey city screams mute, basic, white.
when i am sitting outside of a coffee shop, many of these same people glance over at me, taking a peek at my aura but never smile, never acknowledge me, never give themselves to me. next, they pass someone that looks like them and the curved smile of their interaction reinforces that I am seen as Other. I find power in my Otherness.
Here’s some suggestions for your next coffee shop visit:
I discovered some great music while closing, which was they only time we were allowed to play what we actually wanted to hear. My favorite discovery was Big Fish Theory by Vince Staples (spotify), which is the peak of head-nodding hip-hop - clever, dark, & funny.
If you’re looking for something clever, dark and funny but more folksy, Eilish Z. recommends this particularly good npr tiny desk from Margaret Glaspy. I may favor tiny desks because I wish all concerts were 15 minutes long.
Email me with your thoughts and recommendations. Guest author a whole issue on the topic of your choosing. This is supposed to be collaborative and a way for us to stay in touch.
June 5: Joining the Mari Kondo cult
June 12: Book Review: How to Change Your Mind by Michael Pollan
next post: on tidying with mari kondo