Just nerding out over here
So I was reading this article over at Cracked, and it mentioned the three things you need to actually enjoy your job, regarding why video games fulfill so many people's escapist tendencies (by providing the three things so very, very many people don't have in their jobs):
-Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);
-Complexity (so it's not mind-numbing repetition);
-Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).
What really excited me and made me happy is that these are the very reasons I love cleaning, and it felt great to hear someone else, even an internet comedy writer, confirm how important these things are.
Lemme break it down for ya:
-Autonomy. Got that. I clean when I want; if I'm feeling sick or over-stressed or something, I can usually reschedule. Nobody's going to have a life-altering crisis if I clean for them on Friday instead of Thursday (and if they do, I don't clean for them...more autonomy!). I clean when my clients are at work for the most part, so I pick what products to use and what order to clean in, and I can wear what I want and sing loudly and off-key to my iPod if I want, and just generally chill while doing something that I consider fun and interesting.
Yeah, my clients give me feedback, especially at the beginning of our business relationship, and I take that feedback into consideration when I decide how I'm going to go about my work, and there are times when I have to work around their schedules or their habits or their preferences...but seriously, all that pales in comparison to saying, "Oh yeah, it's noon, I should head over and get that house out of the way, huh." And that's MY JOB. How many people can say that about their jobs? Not many.
-Complexity. Oh yeah. You've read my horror stories; every house I go into, even if I've cleaned it a hundred times before, is a new experience with the potential for a new challenge or a change in the status quo. Client got that back-room remodel finished? Hey, a new room to clean, and it needs extra work to get rid of the construction dust! Client had a party the day before? Time to pick up party detritus! Oh, what will I find amongst the debris? I'll admit, cleaning does feed my natural people-watching habit - I'm nosy, if you want to call it that, because I love learning about people and why they do things. You can learn so, so much about a person from cleaning their house. And it's not like I use that information to take advantage of them or anything, it's just fascinating to me, seeing how someone else lives their lives, wondering why they put these things here, why this one picture is so important, what type of personality lets a bathroom get like that before calling someone. So I don't mean 'learning about people' like getting their credit card info or something horrible like that. I mean looking at how they live and seeing what's set out where people can see it and what they deem valuable and how their house feels when I walk into it. Every house has a personality, and it reflects that of its inhabitants. I love being in my clients' houses, because right now I've got four regular clients, and they're all people I'd call close friends. Having the good taste in friends with which Nature blessed me (yeah, I'm talking about you guys), their houses are comfortable, cosy, lived-in, interesting, warm, and inviting. Just like my friends are. But they all have unique traits that remind me of my friends, and cleaning for them is a unique experience every time.
-Effort vs. Reward. Hells yeah! There is nothing more satisfying, more happy-making, to me than standing at the front door of a house I just cleaned, check in hand, and looking at the freshly-vacuumed floor and the smooth countertops and the not-dusty mantle that I made happen. I can immediately see the results of the work I did. That soap scum ring is gone because I cleaned it. Those coffee stains are no longer on the kitchen counter, because I wiped them off. I usually leave my client's house and swing directly by an ATM to deposit my check. I work, my account balance goes up. I don't have to wait two weeks, it's there, a tangible reward that's proportionate to the work I did. I charge according to how much effort I'll need to put into a house, at the most basic level, so that when I look at the work I did and at the money in my hand, I feel like they match.
That's where job satisfaction happens, where the effort meets the reward and you don't feel like there's a discrepancy. I don't get all three of those things all the time from The Bucks; I certainly didn't get them at my previous job after a time, but I do get it from cleaning, which is why I resent it so very heartily when people say things like, "So when are you gonna get a grown-up job and quit slinging coffee?" or "You deserve so much better than that; it's so unfortunate that you have to clean houses to get by."
Umm, whut? I had a corporate job, in an office, with a regular schedule and a big paycheck and a matching load of stress and depression. If that's your definition of a 'grown-up job,' then yeah, I did that for a year and a half. And every time I clean a house and take home a check, I think about how much better I feel after this workday than I EVER did at that other workday. I sling coffee so that I can clean. I need benefits, I need more money than I currently pull in from cleaning, so I have a second job. That's fine, because A) I enjoy working that job too, although less than I do cleaning, and B) That job lets me do what I really want to do, the thing that really makes me feel good at the end of the day - make people's houses pretty, and make people happy to come home after a long and stressful day of having that 'grown-up job.'
I do see myself as the antithesis of the 'grown-up job,' the cure, or at least a treatment option, for those laboring under the delusion that the job that makes them ill is the one they 'should' be doing, or those laboring under the necessities of life that we all have, but can't all afford without that cubicle and those spreadsheets. I'm the savior of the harried soccer mom who feels like a failure as a woman because some asshat told her that she 'should' be able to handle three kids, a full-time job, and a husband, and also keep her house company-ready at all times. I'm the relief worker for the families that put in overtime during the week so they can afford to spend all weekend at Faire workshops, doing what they love. I'm the pinch-hitter for the woman who has such bad asthma that cleaning a bathroom will send her to the hospital. If you think my job is somehow 'less than grownup' or 'flighty,' then perhaps you're just jealous.
Yeah, you heard me. Maybe you sit in a cube and make spreadsheets, and hate every minute of it, longing for the minute you can leave and go home to your WoW raid so that you can find some satisfaction in your day, so that when I show up, all poor and happy, toting my mop and bucket and thinking that what I do is important, you just can't handle it. How dare I do something so...easy? Something so seemingly unimportant? My spreadsheets are necessary to the running of a company, and all you do is scrub things! You sleep late, and do your job barefoot half the time! You just take your own sweet time doing things however you want, whenever you want, while I'm giving myself a coronary trying to find the missing decimal point in this code so my manager doesn't fire me like he's been trying to do for months! Whereas with your job...what kind of a job is that???
A good one.
Obviously, I'm not talking about the people who support what I do, financially or emotionally. I'm not talking about you guys, my friends who think what I do is kinda cool, or are at least glad I'm making myself happy. No, I'm talking about the people who don't know me and/or don't appreciate what I do, so they make thinly-veiled criticisms about my job and about me and how I need to 'grow up' and get a 'real job.'
My response to those people is as follows: I do have a real job. And it rules so much more than yours ever will, because I have Job Satisfaction, bitches. And then I'd probably stick my thumbs in my ears, wiggle my fingers at them, and blow them a big, wet raspberry. Because if a 'grown-up job' makes you old and grumpy, then I obviously don't have one, nor do I want one.
-Autonomy (that is, you have some say in what you do day to day);
-Complexity (so it's not mind-numbing repetition);
-Connection Between Effort and Reward (i.e. you actually see the awesome results of your hard work).
What really excited me and made me happy is that these are the very reasons I love cleaning, and it felt great to hear someone else, even an internet comedy writer, confirm how important these things are.
Lemme break it down for ya:
-Autonomy. Got that. I clean when I want; if I'm feeling sick or over-stressed or something, I can usually reschedule. Nobody's going to have a life-altering crisis if I clean for them on Friday instead of Thursday (and if they do, I don't clean for them...more autonomy!). I clean when my clients are at work for the most part, so I pick what products to use and what order to clean in, and I can wear what I want and sing loudly and off-key to my iPod if I want, and just generally chill while doing something that I consider fun and interesting.
Yeah, my clients give me feedback, especially at the beginning of our business relationship, and I take that feedback into consideration when I decide how I'm going to go about my work, and there are times when I have to work around their schedules or their habits or their preferences...but seriously, all that pales in comparison to saying, "Oh yeah, it's noon, I should head over and get that house out of the way, huh." And that's MY JOB. How many people can say that about their jobs? Not many.
-Complexity. Oh yeah. You've read my horror stories; every house I go into, even if I've cleaned it a hundred times before, is a new experience with the potential for a new challenge or a change in the status quo. Client got that back-room remodel finished? Hey, a new room to clean, and it needs extra work to get rid of the construction dust! Client had a party the day before? Time to pick up party detritus! Oh, what will I find amongst the debris? I'll admit, cleaning does feed my natural people-watching habit - I'm nosy, if you want to call it that, because I love learning about people and why they do things. You can learn so, so much about a person from cleaning their house. And it's not like I use that information to take advantage of them or anything, it's just fascinating to me, seeing how someone else lives their lives, wondering why they put these things here, why this one picture is so important, what type of personality lets a bathroom get like that before calling someone. So I don't mean 'learning about people' like getting their credit card info or something horrible like that. I mean looking at how they live and seeing what's set out where people can see it and what they deem valuable and how their house feels when I walk into it. Every house has a personality, and it reflects that of its inhabitants. I love being in my clients' houses, because right now I've got four regular clients, and they're all people I'd call close friends. Having the good taste in friends with which Nature blessed me (yeah, I'm talking about you guys), their houses are comfortable, cosy, lived-in, interesting, warm, and inviting. Just like my friends are. But they all have unique traits that remind me of my friends, and cleaning for them is a unique experience every time.
-Effort vs. Reward. Hells yeah! There is nothing more satisfying, more happy-making, to me than standing at the front door of a house I just cleaned, check in hand, and looking at the freshly-vacuumed floor and the smooth countertops and the not-dusty mantle that I made happen. I can immediately see the results of the work I did. That soap scum ring is gone because I cleaned it. Those coffee stains are no longer on the kitchen counter, because I wiped them off. I usually leave my client's house and swing directly by an ATM to deposit my check. I work, my account balance goes up. I don't have to wait two weeks, it's there, a tangible reward that's proportionate to the work I did. I charge according to how much effort I'll need to put into a house, at the most basic level, so that when I look at the work I did and at the money in my hand, I feel like they match.
That's where job satisfaction happens, where the effort meets the reward and you don't feel like there's a discrepancy. I don't get all three of those things all the time from The Bucks; I certainly didn't get them at my previous job after a time, but I do get it from cleaning, which is why I resent it so very heartily when people say things like, "So when are you gonna get a grown-up job and quit slinging coffee?" or "You deserve so much better than that; it's so unfortunate that you have to clean houses to get by."
Umm, whut? I had a corporate job, in an office, with a regular schedule and a big paycheck and a matching load of stress and depression. If that's your definition of a 'grown-up job,' then yeah, I did that for a year and a half. And every time I clean a house and take home a check, I think about how much better I feel after this workday than I EVER did at that other workday. I sling coffee so that I can clean. I need benefits, I need more money than I currently pull in from cleaning, so I have a second job. That's fine, because A) I enjoy working that job too, although less than I do cleaning, and B) That job lets me do what I really want to do, the thing that really makes me feel good at the end of the day - make people's houses pretty, and make people happy to come home after a long and stressful day of having that 'grown-up job.'
I do see myself as the antithesis of the 'grown-up job,' the cure, or at least a treatment option, for those laboring under the delusion that the job that makes them ill is the one they 'should' be doing, or those laboring under the necessities of life that we all have, but can't all afford without that cubicle and those spreadsheets. I'm the savior of the harried soccer mom who feels like a failure as a woman because some asshat told her that she 'should' be able to handle three kids, a full-time job, and a husband, and also keep her house company-ready at all times. I'm the relief worker for the families that put in overtime during the week so they can afford to spend all weekend at Faire workshops, doing what they love. I'm the pinch-hitter for the woman who has such bad asthma that cleaning a bathroom will send her to the hospital. If you think my job is somehow 'less than grownup' or 'flighty,' then perhaps you're just jealous.
Yeah, you heard me. Maybe you sit in a cube and make spreadsheets, and hate every minute of it, longing for the minute you can leave and go home to your WoW raid so that you can find some satisfaction in your day, so that when I show up, all poor and happy, toting my mop and bucket and thinking that what I do is important, you just can't handle it. How dare I do something so...easy? Something so seemingly unimportant? My spreadsheets are necessary to the running of a company, and all you do is scrub things! You sleep late, and do your job barefoot half the time! You just take your own sweet time doing things however you want, whenever you want, while I'm giving myself a coronary trying to find the missing decimal point in this code so my manager doesn't fire me like he's been trying to do for months! Whereas with your job...what kind of a job is that???
A good one.
Obviously, I'm not talking about the people who support what I do, financially or emotionally. I'm not talking about you guys, my friends who think what I do is kinda cool, or are at least glad I'm making myself happy. No, I'm talking about the people who don't know me and/or don't appreciate what I do, so they make thinly-veiled criticisms about my job and about me and how I need to 'grow up' and get a 'real job.'
My response to those people is as follows: I do have a real job. And it rules so much more than yours ever will, because I have Job Satisfaction, bitches. And then I'd probably stick my thumbs in my ears, wiggle my fingers at them, and blow them a big, wet raspberry. Because if a 'grown-up job' makes you old and grumpy, then I obviously don't have one, nor do I want one.