Yesterday, as you knew, LouRoo doubled in two!
It's great having another person in the office. She's no Stephen Baxter-Crawford, but she'll do.
I talked her through what I do, the clients I write and get ideas and blog for. And I asked her to write a blog about 'What is work?' and she said 'But I have no interest in that" and I said but this is work experience and gave her a deadline and we wrestled (I'm sure there are laws against that in the work place?? Can she sue me?) and she wrote this.
Work: Why Does It Matter?
Nothing in the world is free.
That’s a saying that everyone hears through the course of their lives – and as a
kid, I didn’t believe it to be so. What about those free samples you get at the
shop? What about the water out of the tap? I soon came to realise that while
there might not be a visible price tag on something, it doesn’t mean it didn’t
come at a cost.
Free samples of food or a product still had to be made, by a
chef or a factory line worker, and those people still had to be paid and those
materials still had to be bought; money was still involved. And water – someone
had to install the pipes, and someone has to pay the water bill. Everything
comes at a cost, and so we need money.
The best way to get money is obviously to
work. Everyone should have to work, and everyone should make the right amount of
money accordance to how much work they do – of course, life never follows the
rules of what is right.
For example, take a single mother
working two or three jobs to support her family; she is most likely getting the
minimum wage for all, and will probably be involved in manual labour. In cases
like this, she will be making just enough to cover all her costs, and will not
have enough money for luxury, such as days out, DVDs or books.
Let’s compare
this hardworking mother working hard and making just enough to pay her bills, to
people such as the Kardashian sisters or Paris Hilton. These are women who are
basically paid to exist – socialite heiresses to large sums of money, leeching
off their parent’s financial success, making even more money from TV shows that
document their ridiculously lavish lives, and then even more money by marrying
into other wealthy families or to musicians worth millions.
If I were to look at
just these two types of women, who could very well live within a thirty-mile
radius of each other, I could say that work doesn’t matter at all.
The woman
working her ass off makes less than the woman who spends her time partying her
ass off.
So, why then, is work important? I
suppose it depends on what you mean by work. The aforementioned manual labour is
considered work, and yet it doesn’t make that much. Many people being paid the
minimum wage are doing repetitive, manual jobs such as cleaning, cooking, and
babysitting and then have to deal with the disrespect of their employers and
service users.
Well, for those of us not lucky enough to be the product of the
union of two stupidly rich people, it’s really the only way to make money.
Everything is work if it makes you money. However, not everything feels like
work if you do something you enjoy, such as writing or painting or singing.
If
you’re exceptionally good or just happen to be lucky, you could make thousands
doing anything. Money makes the world go round and so therefore does hardworking
individuals; or maybe not-so-hardworking.
Isn't her spelling good????
I think that's a good place to start in a world where we still have trouble with the concept of work and what we get out of it, whether you're just looking for a wage or a real sense of fulfillment. Do you live to work or work to live? Do you love what you do or just get through? Is it even up to you? Or are the jobs just not out there?
What is work? is a really big question.
