The Real Work
Look, I’m just a receptionist. (MWC Work)
“All I do is answer the phone,” I tell my partner of two years as I throw myself onto our little grey couch. Flurries of cat hair fall gently back onto the cushions. Lint rollers were no match for our tortie.
They give me the same sympathetic half-smile that says, “I want to help you. Tell me how I can help you,” and try to assure me that I’m indeed doing real work. Good, dutiful work. And the food bank looks great on a resume. It does fall along my career trajectory — sort of — but at least it’s close enough, and I should be grateful, right?
I pull a fluffy white blanket off the arm and raise the edge close to my chin, wishing I could blend seamlessly into the fibers. Unlike the blanket, I could not seem to weave my way into the fabric of adulthood. All I could do, it seemed, was answer the phone and attempt to replicate normal office chitchat. I found myself constantly tripping over words on the phone — occasionally even forgetting the same scripted greeting I use each time I pick up the phone. I learned not to say my name anymore. It lead to more confusion, or worse, the caller believing I am my much more helpful coworker who shares the same name.
Sure, I practice common courtesy over the phone and in the office. It’s part of the job. But, the work is so much more than that. I learned the basics pretty quickly, like not smiling at coworkers who have visited the bathroom more than twice in an hour — it might imply I have taken notice of their multiple bathroom breaks — so I try not to look at them after their 3rd trip to the loo alongside the importance of not reheating last night’s fish dinner in the microwave. Social complexities like this were common. Unspoken rules of behavior that could make or break someone in the workplace. “You have almost made it two years,” I think to myself. It does not feel like an accomplishment.
On the TV, Sunni Lee grips her gold medal in one hand, a modest bouquet, and a teddy bear in the other. An Olympian at 18. My nerves fray and I swear I can hear the trill of the T46S.
My stomach angrily growls. Lunch meant a whole whirlwind of mental gymnastics for me. The conference table where all my coworkers normally eat, to provide ample social distancing, was a volcano and I was a little chip of igneous rock clinging to its throat. I often scurried off to my car to enjoy a snack-sized bag of Boom Chicka Pop (sweet & salty kettle corn of course) and a coke that I’d grab from a local gas station. Occasionally I would read a chapter from a novel I had recently begun, but most of the time I mindlessly scroll through whatever social media feed suited my mood.
I became addicted to hustle porn when I was a hopeful college senior. Those, “I Freelance and I make $10,000 a Month!” type articles and videos where experts with perfectly polished smiles and well-organized pitches make it seem as though success was within my reach. My partner had grown quiet since they had left me to sulk on the couch. Probably diving into a new game, taking on fantasy worlds that left our planet looking dull.
I can no longer ignore the growing hunger pain radiating from beneath my rib cage. I throw the blanket to the floor and lazily drag myself to our nearly empty fridge. A snack baggy of baby carrots will have to do.
“You do work, you know.” My partner places their comically large headset on their desk. “Even if you don’t feel like you’re doing real work, it’s still work.”
I tear open the plastic baggy and a bruised carrot falls to the floor, a victim of my hunger. Knowing it’s already been seasoned with cat hair, I toss it into the bin. Real work. That’s what I want. During my freshman orientation, I distinctly remember the school conducting talks, seminars, and activities for all prospective college freshman and their parents. I sat beside my sister in the front row as professors detailed the importance of career counseling. A man, presumably the father of the young man he was sitting beside, gruffly raised his hand during the Q&A. Light gleamed off his shaven skull, “Are you gonna teach these kids to get real jobs since none of them has had one before?”
My sister and I shared the same expression as the room shifted uncomfortably. A wave of nausea washes over me. What did that mean? What constituted a real job? Was the cashier position at the grocery store, not a real job? I wasn’t paid in monopoly money so I assume it was real after all.
Baby carrots in hand, I force my feet to move back to the safety of the couch. I reach for the blanket again. Real job. Real work. That’s what I wanted.
And then my phone rings.
It’s not the persistent ding-e-ding-e-ding of the landline, but a bastardized version of “Hotel California” that only plays the same three verses. “I don’t want to work anymore, Mom.” She sighs on the other end of the line. “All I do is answer the phone.”
“A lot of people would love to just answer the phone,” she says. My lip can’t help but twist into a frown. I was thankful she couldn’t see my expressions through the receiver. I knew I was lucky. I had never been ungrateful for the position. It was a solid, full-time job with grown-up benefits and grown-up expectations, and, most important of all, it wasn’t scooping food goo from the drain like my last job.
“I know.”
The call ends with our typical, “love you mostest, bye!” outro as we try and beat on another to hang up the line first. Our cat begins tapping her claws against the window. It was another familiar sound as she had successfully trapped a victim — an insect — of some sort. I could hear tiny wings rapping furiously against the glass as she closed her tiny paw around the even tinier prisoner. I turn to my partner who is sitting mere feet from the fight. Their eyes darting back and forth, engrossed in another world. I groan, trying to get my partner’s attention, to no avail. I throw the empty baggy on our cluttered coffee table. The bug frees itself.
As I get closer, I recognize the tangerine shell with its familiar black polka dots. The ladybug scrambles to reach the window sill. Just as it plants its itty bitty feet on the ground and begins to beat its wings, our cat slaps another paw on top of it. It flips over on it’s back, legs kicking in all directions, attempting to scoot away from the persistent feline taking pleasure in the torture.
I pick up the treat bag sitting on a shelf nearby and give it a quick shake. Much more satisfied with ground turkey, the cat forgets the ladybug fighting for its life on the window sill.
With the cat preoccupied, I examine the bug. It’s legs sit still. The antennae relay no signs of life. I gently prod it with my finger. Once more it roars to life, energized and ready to fend off hungry predators. I carefully scoop it into my cupped hands. It buzzes a little before becoming quiet once more.
“Did you catch something?” my partner reentered our universe.
“A ladybug.”
“See, you do good work all the time.”
“It’s not…,” I pause. The ladybug had certainly secreted some sort of defensive liquid into my hand. Time to let it go. I muscle the door open with my elbow and toss the bug lightly into the breeze. Before it hits the ground, the ladybug’s wings flutter and it disappears into the tree line. I shut the door quickly before another tangerine intruder could be victimized by our cat.
Was saving this lady bug real work? It did make me smile, knowing it could live at least a little longer in our world. But, it didn’t feel like work at all.
According to The Harvard Business Review:
The dictionary provides a number of alternate definitions and meanings for the word. Here are some of them:
work [wurk]
1. exertion or effort directed to produce or accomplish something; labor; toil
2. something on which exertion or labor is expended; a task or undertaking
3. productive or operative activity
4. employment, as in some form of industry, especially as a means of earning one’s livelihood
5. one’s place of employment
For so long, I had come to believe that work was something that was quantified. Hours on the time clock translated to money in my pocket. Work meant completing assigned tasks and sticking to a plan. Real work was predictable and regular, exhausting and mandatory. Real work was daunting, scary even.
But what if work didn’t have to be any of that at all?
I so badly wanted to say, “It’s not real work” and dismiss the idea of work being anything but a grind, something to hate and complain about with other members of the workforce. Hustle porn lead me to believe that work was constant networking, multiple side hustles, push push pushing oneself through the gauntlet of the contemporary jobscape.
Answering a phone wasn’t real work. Saving insects from house cats wasn’t real work. Eating baby carrots wasn’t real work.
I paced around the apartment for a moment.
“Work never ends, Em. Just because you don’t get paid for it, doesn’t mean it isn’t work. I think, maybe…just being a nice human is work. Like, real work. Caring and being nice to things as small as a ladybug is real work. Work for the soul not the wallet.”
Real work is work for the soul. It doesn’t have to be hard or scary. It can be as simple as being kind to other living things and taking care of oneself. It’s work without a label, and it’s endless.
It began the journey of rethinking work. Work can be be so much more than answering a phone. It can be kind, generous, and thoughtful; a nonlinear, ever-changing part of oneself. I still just ‘answer the phone,’ but I’ve learned to see the real work I do every day — even in the briefest moments. And I still have a lot of learning to do.
