Once upon a time, work was about making things or doing things with others. You made loo rolls, cars, pens, clothes and stilettos. Or you did something to someone: you took their money and saved it in your bank, you gave it back to them when they wanted it. You examined them and gave them medicine or a bandage. And so on in a number of other occupations…
Now doing useful things like this has become tangential. Those who make things are now based in the faraway abroad, like India and China. True, we still do things to others, like treat their halitosis and take money from them (though not give it them, as the card now does that). We also do a lot things of questionable value to others, like give them nail jobs and enhance their body parts.
But the main way in which work has changed is that a lot it is done for it’s own sake, with no obvious end in sight, even a superfluous one like a nail job. How many people now spend their whole working day gawping at a PC screen, writing memos, sharing email funnies and having endless cups of coffee. Even if they are conscientious workers and forgo the coffees and personal emails and web surfing, the substance of what they do serves no clear purpose.
Not surprisingly, jobs of this sort are not very secure. Whereas manufacturing jobs are being shifted overseas, the vulnerability of the non-jobs I am talking about is to constant change and restructuring. For the workers, the survival strategy is to be adaptable and take on a new opportunity arising from the restructure or to move out, often to another non-job. Those who become wedded, for too long, to particular ways of doing things do not last long. To succeed, you must be able to condemn your past and jump onto the latest fad.
