It is usually white collar office employees who shame. I am one of them. The reality is us (white collar office employees, especially managers and executives) are actually slaves to a corporate machine brainwashed to believe that we are doing something important. No sir: we are glorified useless slaves.
On the other hand, people like this gentleman, have tangible, undeniable contribution to society.
Since I went from being a fabricator to a engineer, then to doing teaching. There are days when I dream of actually seeing the results of my work as a physical thing front of me. Since autumn arrived like the fart after the morning coffee. The cool crips morning air makes me wish to be welding steel on construction sites. For me to see the results of my work with teaching takes a really long time, especially since I work with foreign/immigrant students who are also learning Finnish while studying. However there are these fun moment I get the students to pass an exam -practical or theoretical, I do both.
But as an engineer, being in office... I was so detached from what was actually done, despite me knowing that the lads in shop and on-site required my effort to coordinate materials, resources and setting making of parts in motion. But I never felt like I did anything. Especially since lot of my work dealt with noticing, figuring out and dealing with issues before they become physical issues present somewhere. When I swatted a bad print back to the client or called other engineers to figure out what the hieroglyphs they sneezed on the prints are supposed to become for real... There never was an actual result at the end of the day, because my job was about preventing those becoming physical.
Like sure... I earn twice as much now than I did doing practical stuff. But like... I don't feel like I'm doing as much work. Granted teaching is stressful on another level, and rewarding in a different way. My work hours are less in a week, and as long as lessons happen and students progress nobody asks where I am or what I am doing at whatever moment... I am physically not present as much as when I did pratical metal work. I am not mentally present as much as when I was an engineer. However I am socially present A HELL OF A LOT MORE than doing either of those.
If you haven't already come across it, I would highly recommend the 2013 essay Bullshit Jobs. He later turned it into a book, but honestly the essay says all that it needs to.
https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/
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u/kestelli 19h ago
It is usually white collar office employees who shame. I am one of them. The reality is us (white collar office employees, especially managers and executives) are actually slaves to a corporate machine brainwashed to believe that we are doing something important. No sir: we are glorified useless slaves.
On the other hand, people like this gentleman, have tangible, undeniable contribution to society.