Terkel 07
In Terkel’s work he argues that that our concept of a “work ethic” needs to be wrested from its more banal invocation as the effort putting into making a buck. I believe he is trying to show the relationship between people and work. He gives different examples of professions and peoples reaction to what they do. He goes on interviews asking people about their job. I think he is showing a different idea of a calling people who love what they do and aren’t just there for the money but work because they truly love what they do. For example, the musician he spoke to who told the story of juggling a lot of different jobs and how he can go from a show where he’s the center of attention to not being seen. He also said that he even played at a funeral and one would look at it as if his job is tiresome and something we would not do but he enjoyed what he did.
Terkel’s interviews show that no matter who you are of what kind of job hey had every one had a different meaning of what makes work meaningful to them. When he interviews Mike he found out all the struggles that mike go through just to get his son to go to college and how he stops at the bar before going home because he have to de stress before he goes home because he cant take out his stress on his family.
Almost 50% of us hate our jobs but because of circumstances we are in the job we are we have no way out because of life but we must find meaning in what we do. It might not be what we want our long-term goal but it’s what we do to live and provide for our family so with that title we have to look for meaning and find a way to continue doing that job over and over again each day. Im sure if we take a survey now or interview my classmates we would not get 100% of students who find joy and take great pride in what they do. Maybe the few that are teachers who love molding and preparing children love what they do. He also mention people who were looked down upon because of their job title so they change the name to make it look better when they were with other people who had better job titles.
