The Work we do - the Peter O'Connor column

The work we do ...

Or, the work we do not do, but should be doing!

Some years ago, when many of our footballers were playing the game professionally in England and Scotland, one of them said, in response to a reporter’s question about his current form: “The coach does not really like me, and I am looking for a transfer.” Implicit in his comment was that if he moved to a club where the coach might like him, he would do better.

When I met him, on his return home for national duty, we discussed that comment, and I told him the following story: I was watching Tottenham Hotspur on TV a few years earlier. The commentator spoke about Steve Archibald following his scoring yet another goal. “Archibald is still not on speaking terms with Tottenham Manager Keith Birkenshaw, but yet he is leading the league in goals scored”.

Does this comparison tell us anything about ourselves? Indeed, is there a comparison in these two paragraphs?

For the record, our player got his transfer: he moved to a club in a lower division, and finished his professional career there. Steve Archibald also moved on: he went to Barcelona!

If you sulk on your job, no matter how “justified” you feel you are in that sulking, you will never move up in your career. If you perform in an outstanding manner, in spite of the fact that you are not happy in your job, or with your boss you will move on and upwards. 

If I was hiring, I would have disregarded “our” player, because I would believe that he would sulk for me too if we disagreed. But everyone would have taken Archibald, because we all want that sort of commitment, that ability to excel in spite of adversity, on our team.

And “our team” is not just on a sports field. It is everywhere people work together, from just two of you, up to dozens. 

Wherever you are working, it is the talented and effective (and pleasant!) workers who will get promoted or seduced away to work for others. 

I have “stolen” good people from their employers, sometimes indirectly by recommending to friends or colleagues that they should hire a good, effective, and pleasant person away from where they were working. And it is going on around you all the time. Business owners and managers are always on the lookout for effective working staff.

I think that we can all accept that we have a pathetic attitude to work in our country. And this is especially applicable to salaried persons, because the self-employed generally work hard and effectively. 

There is something rooted in our psyche which cloaks us in a sense of victimhood as soon as we get a job anywhere. We see ourselves as being there to “enrich” the boss or the owner of the business, even if we are working for government or some corporation so huge that there is no “boss” known to us. 

And you know, for the sake of this discussion, I am going to acknowledge that this may sometimes be true. You may be working for some advantageous, unappreciative bastard. But most of us are out there, selling our skill, our strength or our ideas to people who own businesses and pull all of their staff’s skills, strengths and ideas together to provide some product that we all need.

And therefore you are part of a team on your job, and you will be there about eight hours a day five days a week. Can you give, to your job a full, effective, and reasonably cheerful day’s work tomorrow? And if not, why not? You would do it if you were working for yourself, right? So why not consider that you are working for yourself, and the owner pays you, if not what you consider your worth, but generally the “going rate” for what others like you are selling - a skill, an ability or whatever. 

Sulking on the job, even for all the reasons we have invented, is not going to improve our skills, earn us more money, or secure our future. The truth is that people who sulk on the job leave work unhappy, and take their anger home. People who achieve or exceed their deadlines or quotas leave work satisfied, even if the boss has not yet noticed.

So, here is my challenge to you, if you can accept it: Take pride in your work, whatever it is. That is the only way to work better, and to move up the ladder to better and more fulfilling work.

And that is just one way each of us can truly contribute to the urgent task of saving our country from our politicians and ourselves. So, help to save our country!