{"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 <\/a><\/p>\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 It’s just like Richard Scarry taught me when I was a pre-schooler: Everyone is a worker.<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n And it’s just like Brenda Ueland taught me (in a book about writing<\/a>, of all places): Everyone is talented, original, and has something important to say.<\/strong> It\u2019s the personal histories that make up history (by which I mean the grand tapestry of world events). Without your story \u2014 and mine \u2014 the larger story doesn\u2019t exist. The mass movements of kingdoms and cultures are built on our backs.<\/p>\n Maybe that’s why I like oral histories so much.<\/p>\n Speaking of which, the Inside Jobs project naturally reminds me (and many others) of the work of journalist Studs Terkel. <\/p>\n In the early 1970s, Studs Terkel spent three years traveling across the United States to interview people about their jobs. “How would you describe your work?” he asked his subjects, men and women from all walks of life. And they told him. Terkel’s 1974 book Working: People Talk About What They Do All Day and How They Feel About What They Do<\/em><\/a> collected 128 of these conversations.<\/p>\n Terkel interviewed nobodies and celebrities. He talked to housewives and farm workers and actors and stock brokers and prostitutes. Terkel even interviewed New Yorker<\/em> film critic Pauline Kael<\/a>. “I really enjoy what I do,” she said. “I love my occupation.” This attitude is the exception, not the rule.<\/p>\n “I was constantly astonished by the extraordinary dreams of ordinary people,” Terkel wrote in the introduction to Working<\/em>. “No matter how bewildering the times, no matter how dissembling the official language, those we call ordinary are aware of a sense of personal worth — or more often a lack of it — in the work they do.”<\/p>\n<\/span>What Do People Do All Day?<\/span><\/h2>\n
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<\/span>Studs Terkel’s Working<\/span><\/h2>\n