Essay: Thinking About Work
I recently spent an entire Saturday on my feet, volunteering at a holiday event at a non-profit in San Jose. Throughout a rainy, winter morning, I directed traffic and unloaded 150 frozen turkeys. In the afternoon, sheltered by an awning, a group of us packaged thousands of dinner rolls for Thanksgiving meal boxes.
That day wiped me out, and then I thought, “this is what most people do every day for their entire lives.” And they do it outdoors during the winter in the rain and cold, and indoors in the summer months with no open windows or air conditioning.
Thinking about work is a kind of work, a preoccupation of mine, an avocation.
In my early days as a writer, I was intrigued and inspired by John Updike’s short stories “Lifeguard” and “A&P,” first-person, fictional accounts of occupational hazards.
The late poet Philip Levine tackled the subject of blue-collar work in his superb 1992 collection What Work Is.
I knew it was time to revisit Occupational Hazards, my thematic collection of 20 poems about work composed in 2018, and add an equal number of work-themed poems that have been written in subsequent collections.
Your first work begins with your hands, with the household chores of youth, taking out the garbage, unloading the dishwasher, cleaning bathrooms, followed by yard work and tool wielding (hoe, rake, shovel, hedge clippers, gas lawnmower, weed trimmer, and ultimately, a chainsaw).
A restaurant replicates the kitchen environment, so it’s logical that many of our first paying jobs are in domestic food service roles: vegetable chopper, short order cook, hostess, server, bus boy and dishwasher. One out of every three adults have worked at some point in a restaurant, and one out of every eight of us worked at a McDonald’s.
Work, at its core, is physical and kinesthetic, with a high reliance and value placed on motor skills and physical coordination, something that ditch diggers, fire fighters, football place kickers, anesthesiologists and orthopedic surgeons have in common (I had both hips replaced this year, and I still don’t know exactly how he did it.)
Even in the sedentary, cerebral, white-collar work of the modern era, there’s still a physicality to it: writing and responding to emails, writing reports, designing web forms, manipulating spreadsheets, preparing Power Point presentations.
The proverbial weekly staff meeting we endure is boring and mind-numbing precisely because no physical work or brain power is involved; it’s not only passive in nature, it’s redundant regarding new information.
The word “occupation” derives from the Latin ocupare “to take into possession,” from the proto-language meaning to seize or grasp.
You occupy your occupation, and in many instances, your occupation occupies you.
Work is your identity and will not let you go.
Jon Obermeyer has held many jobs in his lifetime, including early roles as an auction runner, seafood warehouse assistant and camp maintenance worker (floor buffing, window washing, brush clearing, trash removal).
He began his career in San Francisco as a bank teller and customer service representative, working his way up to commercial lender, retail branch manager and training manager for a regional bank.
Following a brief stint as an economic developer specializing in high-growth start-ups, he became co-owner and general manager of a regional trade show convention services company, producing 180 events annually.
Following the events of 9/11, Jon transitioned to commercial freelance writer and marketing consultant. Another detour led to his becoming a non-profit CEO in the field of economic and technology development and later, heading up national outreach for the Wake Forest University Medical School’s Institute of Regenerative Medicine.
He completed his career in the Bay Area as marketing director for a global technology consulting firm, digital media project director, co-founder and content strategist at a technology marketing agency, and finally, a grant writer in the social services and anti-poverty field.
