{"id":1292,"date":"2018-11-06T07:30:52","date_gmt":"2018-11-06T15:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/moneyboss.com\/?p=1292"},"modified":"2023-12-05T14:20:34","modified_gmt":"2023-12-05T21:20:34","slug":"what-do-people-do-all-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.getrichslowly.org\/what-do-people-do-all-day\/","title":{"rendered":"Inside jobs: What do people do all day?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, I found myself revisiting the fantastic Inside Jobs<\/a> project from The Atlantic<\/em>. Atlantic<\/em> staffers interviewed 103 American workers from all walks of life. The magazine then collected those interviews into a single, unified website.<\/p>\n

Here’s how one of the project’s leaders describes her aims<\/a>:<\/p>\n

So much of my aspiration for this project was to hear from people affected by the realities that business writers so often cover: what it’s like to be a minority in a workplace, or the challenges of working parenthood, or the struggle to remain relevant as an industry changes. And we succeeded in finding those types of stories \u2014 for example, the three female lawyers<\/a> who started their own firm, or the coal miner<\/a> who is adapting to the focus on clean energy.<\/p>\n

The ones that most stuck with me most were the people in the jobs many consider mundane<\/strong>, such as the janitor<\/a> who so acutely equated people’s respect for his job with their ability to throw away their own trash, or workers outside of the traditional economy, such as the stay-at-home mother<\/a> who struggled to find her place in a feminist movement that emphasizes women\u2019s professional achievements.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Inside Jobs<\/a> website has a fun layout. Each interview has its own page. From the main index, you can filter stories by subject, or filter workers by industry, age, or other demographic factors. Or, if you’re like me, you can simply scroll down and click on any of the 103 worker portraits to read a random interview.<\/p>\n

\"Inside<\/a><\/p>\n

<\/span>What Do People Do All Day?<\/span><\/h2>\n

The Inside Jobs project reminds me of one of my favorite books from childhood, Richard Scarry’s classic What Do People Do All Day?<\/em><\/a> I’ve always been fascinated by the vast variety of work available to people, and how different each job is from every other job.<\/strong> Sure, there’s a degree of sameness, but there are tons of differences.<\/p>\n