I just started working at a fast food restaurant and am really just blown away by how much rewarding it is that my last job working at a social welfare agency “helping people.” There is almost ALWAYS something to do AND my work can be objectively measured, two things untrue of my last job.
I’m trying to figure out what I want out of life, and work, and career, and I think this is really important to me: I actually need to be DOING something, something that I have direct control over, and something that I don’t NEED to say, “Look what a good job I did” because it is transparent.
Part of the reason I think this is important to me is if these requirements are NOT met, then the job is essentially convincing OTHERS that you are good at your job and/or that they like you. If what you do is opaque, unclear, or hard to measure, you have to constantly be policing the social narrative around yourself and your work–two things I have absolutely no interest (or ability?) in doing.
What’s been your experience?
I’m having the exact same experience right now. I had to quit my last job in consulting due to severe health issues due to untreated narcolepsy. I’m now working part time at a coffee shop and it’s amazing how rewarding work can be when 1. You actually get training because a consistent quality product is important when you’re literally feeding people and 2. As you said the work is easily quantifiable and rewarded so the whole job isn’t BSing your bosses and clients into giving you more money, which I’ve always struggled with… like morally. I don’t know about you, but for me, the perfect job would be part time entry level unskilled job and part time career job (or self employment). I think that would be most fulfilling.
I think the ideal situation for me would be a part-time unskilled job that somehow paid the rent… then I could do whatever I wanted in my free time.
Yeah, my last job I was literally only there so the boss could claim he could have another person working for him. My job was to somehow pretend the whole place wasn’t an ethical blackhole, which is kinda why I can´t get a job as a therapist or a social worker–because, like Eomer son of Eomund, I see too much.