Is it better to do something you love, or learn to love whatever job you do? Trick question! It doesn’t even matter: More and more employers want you to exhibit glowing passion for your position, regardless of how you really feel.
It’s not hard to understand why there’s a premium on positive energy. Enthusiasm is infectious, and a passionate worker is presumed to be a more productive one. This may be true in some cases, and love of the game may be necessary for certain positions—but we also all probably know from experience that you can get many a job done without caring in the slightest about the company you’re doing it for, or even the job itself. Self-motivation used to be the bare necessity to live, eat and survive; now you’ve got to really love your job, 37 pieces of flair and all.
Paul Jaskunas, a humanities professor at the Maryland Institute College of Art, wrote an op-ed this week at the New York Times called “The Tyranny of the Forced Smile,” and it’s a relatable lament about the disturbing trend that everyone demonstrate high enthusiasm at all times for their work. Jaskunas writes:
At work, an ambivalent disposition can be an obstacle. Employers want to see passion. If you don’t love your job, you’re expected to act as if you do, and every so often, in performance reviews and presentations, you are called upon to articulate unalloyed enthusiasm.
Ah yes, unalloyed enthusiasm. This is that thing where aspiring Starbucks workers must “demonstrate a genuine love of coffee” to get a job there, instead of, say, a genuine love of working for a living wage with benefits. (How does one demonstrate a genuine love of coffee, anyway? By mainlining it?) Enthusiasm is great if you’ve got it, but who’s to say that loving what’s in your cup is so deeply related to the efficiency with which you serve it? And people have been going to work for thousands of years motivated by something far more important than love, which is survival. It’s strange, and almost shameful, to think that we’ve reached a point where we have to pretend that is no longer what employment is about.
But back to Jaskunas, who was passed over for a teaching job because he wasn’t able to demonstrate his passion quickly or thoroughly enough. Later, he found a job he really enjoys, part of which requires him to interview applicants for a professor position. He writes:
Wary of lawsuits, the school has seen fit to train me and my colleagues on what the law permits us to ask applicants. All questions, H.R. has advised, should relate to three core concerns: Can the applicant do the work? Will the applicant fit in? Will the applicant love the job?
I was surprised to learn that love is now considered essential to the employment relationship. Some of us are lucky enough to have lovable jobs, but this strikes me as an extreme standard to apply with respect to most positions.
It’s hard to know how an applicant might know he or she will love the job without ever having done that job, and of course, most jobs are absolutely not even lovable in the first place. Which isn’t to say that any one person can’t find something to love or at least tolerate in even the most mundane position, but to say that plenty of jobs deserve no affection—and any they get is something magical emanating from within the person by no act of the company.
I love what I do now, but it took a series of less than stellar employment to get here. I worked at a video store in college that sold mostly porn. I legitimately enjoyed the small satisfaction of laminating membership cards night after night for new customers, but passion? Eh. And yet, the employers asked us again and again to think of the business as our own. Yes, if this were my business, I would totally pay myself $4.25 an hour with no raises, only 30-minute breaks, and no holidays off. Sure thing.
In another job, I edited financial press releases at the staggering rate of 15 minutes a page, another job that came with with only 30-minute breaks. Things got so stressful and inhospitable at times that many of my twenty-something colleagues experienced the medical problems of senior citizens due to the stress and constant sitting. I was able to get into some kind of poetic copy editing zone, and I was actually great at the job. But I hated it. At review time, I was told to be “more bubbly.”
None of the pressures applied to me were anywhere near as bad as the manic levels of enthusiasm required by, say, Disney World, whose cast members Jaskunas cites as a good example of extreme enthusiasm on the job gone overboard. On a recent visit, he watched one woman whose entire job it was to tell visitors over and over and over again that the restroom was to the left, with a huge grin that magically never abated.
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