Loving Fridays, Hating Mondays
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“Happy
Friday,” of course.
Of
about 100 million Americans who have full-time jobs, according to Gallup’s latest
State of the Workplace study, only 30 percent are engaged and inspired at work.
About half of American workers are not engaged. They show up at work but are “not
inspired by their work managers,” the study says.
About
20 percent are “actively disengaged,” and “these employees, who have bosses
from hell that make them miserable, roam the halls spreading discontent.”
In
other words, millions of people hate their jobs or are bored out of their minds
at work. These are the people who dread, or even get depressed on, Sunday
nights and are ecstatic on Friday.
I was so lucky that for most of my working life I loved my job. As a newspaper reporter, I often thought I should be paying the newspaper instead of the newspaper paying me for the interesting – even fun – things I was doing: interviewing interesting people, learning new things, traveling to curious places and having my reports published for others to see.
Still, I had bad periods in my career, and had friends who hated their jobs, so I understand the problem. It doesn’t seem fair that we spend at least a third of our lives doing something we don’t enjoy, all for somebody else’s benefit. And in an age when human labor is considered a commodity, it’s even harder to be a “dedicated employee.”
“Am I wasting my time here just for a paycheck?” we may ask. “Could I be doing something else that’s more fulfilling? Why doesn’t my boss recognize my value? Why is my job so boring?”
Notice that none of these questions are about salary. That’s because study after study shows that the majority of employees are more concerned about job satisfaction than about salary – even though many feel stuck in their jobs because of financial or health-insurance considerations.
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Do we fail to see the value of our
work? Can we look upon our work as a vocation rather than just a job? In other
words, can we focus on the value of the service or the product we provide? It
may be hard to see that if, say, we’re doing administrative work in an
insurance office. But according to Christian tradition, all work has value,
partially because of the help it provides to others.
Then there’s the opportunity to
relate to, and help, other employees. The workplace is for many the prime arena
for testing our ability to “love our neighbor,” the most fundamental of
Christian values. People who irritate us, who talk incessantly about “nothing,”
who have annoying habits – those may be just the ones who need a smile or a
kind word.
(This may sound unrealistic, but
like other things, you often have to practice faith to acquire it. I
wrote in a previous blog about the need to “just do it.”)
Another Christian value applicable
in the workplace is the effort to make things better - for customers, employer
and employees. Many Christians who concentrate on the “hereafter” miss this
value, but I believe we have an obligation to collaborate with God in creating
a better world.
Some people wouldn’t be happy in
any job, of course. Like the hobo in the old song, Big Rock Candy Mountain,
they want to “hang the jerk that invented work.” No job or career interests
them. For them, it may have to be a question of “sucking it up” and getting over
it.
However, people who feel stuck in
their jobs, perhaps because of salary or benefits, need to find the courage to
look for something in which they could better use their talents and be happier.
Life’s too short to do otherwise, and from what we know about him/her, God
wants us to be happy.
With seven days in a week, it’s a
shame to hate all of them but one.
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