Fairytale ~ A fabricated story especially one intended to deceive (Oxford Language)
Any job, product, service, company starts with a dream. Henry Ford had a dream. His dream was to make cars. To achieve his dream he needed equipment and a team of people who knew (or he could train) how to build these cars and then sell them. He couldn’t achieve this dream on his own. Now, before it blew up, and before they hired people, he probably had already been in the swing of working throughout the day trying to make it a success, dreaming for the future of this business he wanted to create. So, now he starts recruiting and without knowing he radiates this energy of excitement to get people to work at the company, they offer dream of being part of something big and create this feeling of importance and independence in the person they’re hiring and they get caught up in the dream (that was never theirs to begin with) and work really hard to get their role or company be where it needs to be. They put pressure on themselves and rightfully so, they’ve just received this freedom and independence and were influenced by the “dream” that was sold to them so now they’ve started caring about it almost as much as the people who started the company. So what do they do? They go above and beyond, take the time to teach others, don't mind taking on tasks and extra responsibility. They want to make sure the job gets done at the end of the day, so that they can go home feeling accomplished, they can go home knowing and feeling like they’ve contributed to the overall success and/or dream the company has. Now, when you look at it, even if John described above did not once work overtime because he values his time right and he knows he is not the owner and/or CEO of this company, if you start at the beginning of his journey, he is STILL just as invested in this company as Jane who basically sleeps at the office, but what they have in common isn’t something you can exactly touch or see. It's entirely in their brains and how, they have convinced themselves that this job this company aligns with their values and their dreams, like it is their dream to work at a company that will eventually become one of the biggest and most successful companies - all that because Henry had a dream he wanted to achieve.
Today if you go to a company that recently let go of a few people and ask around about the people they cut, I’m sure most of them were fairly good at what they did, most of them spent more hours on the job than they should and most of them at one point or another, did something that they were not paid to do. Now, I don’t want to sound like a crazy conspiracy theorist but hear me out. We were trained to feel and act that way about these jobs by a lot of external factors and people. Now Henry Ford pioneered the 5 day work week and he was praised because at the time, people were working 80 hour work weeks 6 days a week, the Monday to Friday work week thank to him is why we don’t work on weekends today. He solved a problem that led to loyal workers and increased productivity (in the long run). People were happy to get the time off and get paid more than working less hours so naturally people would want to work harder because they were so happy and appreciative of this change and to be working for a company that prioritized rest for its workers. Today, Social media influences a lot, and HARD. LinkedIn is all about setting goals and accomplishing them, getting promotions, how to ask for a pay raise, when to quit your job and start looking, how to climb the ladder etc. Then on Tik Tok, you have one side “romanticizing” their job, they love waking up and working the full day at their jobs, they love the feeling of accomplishment they get when they do a job well done, they love the process and commute to and from work. And then on the other side of Tik Tok, it's the “quiet quitting” it's the , “quit your job and move to an island somewhere to be a waitress just so you can enjoy the city and/or your life. All of these views, these ideas are massive influences on human beings today. But, damn I keep missing my point from where I start, perhaps I have ADHD? But that is also something everyone seems to just be diagnosing themselves with today because of social media.
Right back to my point.
Now, to take it a step back - think about why companies have values and mission statements. Think about why you are always forced to sit in through those group sessions at the office where they try to come up with something fun in order for you to align and understand the values of the company. Those very values that the “COMPANY” has, is not the companies, it's the group of people who started the business, and why and who decided that it was needed in every company, who knows (I’m sure the internet has this answer). Now, while you may be sitting and thinking so fucking what, I never pay attention to those anyway it doesn’t mean anything to me, what you don’t notice is the influence it has on how you work at a company, your corporate personality if you will. It all happens sub-consciencely because whether we like or not, the fact that we are consumed and spend 8 hours a day within the company doing what we need to do, you become part of it mentally. You are what you consume, you are who your friends are blah blah blah, because all of us and who we are today are the product of our environments, as much as we don't want to be as and much as we fight it.
But the reality is, you working for any company in any position might be same level of transaction you make when you go to the grocery shop and buy bread. When you go into the shop, you go for a reason, to get food and you leave with food. You are not concerned about the music playing their, the cashier processing your product and you are not concerned with the decor in the place, (even if you do get distracted by all of that) you came there for business. You do not care if the shop is working on a goal to become the number 1 top grocery shop in South Africa, that value or dream does not influence whether or not you are buying something from there. Chances are you probably don’t even know what your grocery shop’s values and mission statements are. It's transactional, its business.
Why is your 8-5 job not the same thing? Think about it, when you log on, you walking into the shop, when you are checking the status of the project a team is working on or working on a training document, you are in the bakery section of Checkers looking for the bread you came to buy, and when you are paying for your bread at the cashier station, you are getting paid. And then you walk out of the shop with your bread so you can eat. You are not going to hang around the shop because you heard that if they want to be the number 1 brand, because you don't care about their goals, you quite literally only went in there to go get something to eat. So, why, after we have logged off, do we take so long mentally, to forget about work and everything that needs to still be done, all the work we couldn’t finish or get to, why are we dreaming for the role and how to get the company to where they want to be? You worked your 8 hours, made your transaction and left, why are we inclined to care about the values of this company when there was a contractual agreement made for your time and skills. It quite literally is just business, when they hire you or when they fire you, it's literally just business. The same way fairytales make you believe in something else, its the same way companies make you believe its your dream and your purpose - and we allow it.
We are all more than our work, more than our output and more than the values the companies give us, we should allow ourselves to be more and feel more, and the only way in my opinion to get there is to start treating our jobs as a transaction. So we can be more present in our own lives and enjoy our limited time on earth a little more, make our own version of a fairytale - that is also defined as something magical, idealized or extremely happy.
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