OFFICE WORK AND FAMILY LIFE: STRIKING A BALANCE

OFFICE WORK AND FAMILY LIFE: STRIKING A BALANCE

C (2018)                    CHIBU NDUBUISI                14/05/2018        WEEK 20

“Markets was made to serve humans beings, human beings were not made to serve the

market” Jonathan Sacks

“If we succumb to the illusion and the comfort of a pay check, we then neglect to build up self-reliant skills, we merely postpone the day of reckoning when we are faced to fend for ourselves. Robert Greene

 

Peace be with you.

An office colleague brought my attention to the piece of writing above by A P J Abdul Kalam titled “Always Leave Office On Time”. After reading the work, I decided to make it the basis of this week’s post. The copy I had, started on the premise that; “love your job but don’t love your company because you may not know when your company stops loving you”. 

Have you ever been ordered to take an action that is wrong and you have no option but to obey the last order? “Authority is not concerned with you doing what is right, it is concerned with obedience”.

This is what your office work may have done to you without you realizing or taking note. They have taken control of how you think by telling you what to think, when to think and whom or object to think about. It is no longer about the nature of your work but about how you have been nurtured by the work for ill. They make you develop very hypocritical behavioral traits; we call “eye service” in Nigeria. It is not about why you do the job but about the wile the job has played on you to keep you from creating your own circumstance. It is evil. 

In the book “The End of All Evil”, they quipped that “evil challenges the value of people by denying them the opportunity to make their own choices; by denying them the chance to grow strong in learning and understanding”—“destroying your identity to gain power over you is the modus operandi of evil”. Have you been rendered powerless by the work you do? Rethink your strategy.

After reading through A P J Abdul Kalam titled “Always Leave Office On Time”., I remembered the concept of “Alienation” as espoused by Karl Marx that capitalist production creates alienation in four main areas:

1. Workers are alienated from their own labour power – they have to work as and when required and to perform the tasks set by their employers.
2. They are alienated from the products of their labour – which are successfully claimed by capitalists to be sold as products on the marketplace for profit, while workers only receive a fraction of this profit as wages
3. Workers are alienated from each other – they are encouraged to compete with each other for jobs.
4. They are alienated from their own species being – according to Marx, satisfying work is an essential part of being human, and capitalism makes work a misery, so work under capitalism thus alienates man from himself. It is no longer a joy, it is simply a means to earn wages to survive. (https://revisesociology.com/2017/08/24/what-is-alienation/)

Are these concepts still relevant today or are they just theories meant to stimulate intellectual debate? Are you working late in the office which is causing great strain in your family? Are you alienated from your family, friends and community by the nature of the work you do? Watch out! You are been nurtured to disaster.

The advice by Robert Greene is timely that “A Low paying position that offers more room to make decision and carve out little empires is infinitely preferable to something that pays well but controls your movements-”.

Peace be with you.