The myth of the lazy worker

The author in 2016 excitedly preparing to journey off as a "boss babe". Little did she know how much the world, and job market, would change in the next 10 years.

“Why are you short staffed?” I asked. 

He responded so quickly the words practically exploded out of his mouth. “Because people are lazy and don’t want to work!” 

I tilted my head, a bit surprised by his outburst. He laughed self deprecatingly. “Well you know, haha, I mean it’s just hard to find people willing to take a job…” he trailed off.

I was sitting across the desk from a man who claimed he was interviewing EVERY person who had applied for the job which we were discussing. 

Yet although I had officially applied on the appropriate website for this position, I hadn’t received a call from him for this interview. He only scheduled it when someone on his staff informally introduced us and mentioned that I had applied.  Then that same staff person strongly suggested he meet with me.

Twenty four hours later, I found myself sitting across from him. 

And the interview had been going well. It was in a field I am extremely familiar with, and for a position I knew I was highly qualified to do successfully. Our discussions had been very positive and interesting, a true back and forth dialogue among professionals.

At least it was until he mentioned about the business being short staffed overall in multiple departments. And thus this awkward moment in which his true feelings about the working population literally popped out of his mouth.

His statement, unfortunately, is one I’ve heard over and over AND OVER, again. Similar sentiments, being expressed by people in many industries, and always in positions of authority. 

But I wonder at the accuracy of their assertion that “people just don’t want to work”. For one thing, as a potentially employable human, I find that the job market now makes it nearly impossible to get decent paying work.

Your dream job is just a click away…

​We live in a somewhat magical time when it comes to obtaining information. The internet has brought data to our fingertips at an instants notice. Which can make the job search much easier than years ago, and also much more impossible. 

Because if I can type in a few key words and find dozens of jobs in my local area matching that description, a thousand other people can too. And often have alerts set up to let them know the moment when something relevant to their search, is listed.

Which means that potential employers can be INUNDATED with hundreds and sometimes thousands of applicants, depending on the position. So much so, that many have turned to algorithms and AI to weed through resumes and cover letters. 

As a result, applying for jobs has become a key word competition in which applicants are having to constantly re-tailor their resumes to match language that may not adequately describe past experiences, in the hopes that they make it to a real live human.

Every application system is also completely different to navigate. Most expect an uploaded resume and cover letter. Yet they still require you to fill out an online application as well. Often prepared inaccurately from your resume, if pre-filled at all. 

I’ve given up on bothering with that portion after three different potential employers mentioned they NEVER. EVEN. LOOK. at it. They find the way it is presented to them cumbersome, and often just scan your resume instead. IF, the system even forwards you to them.

And heaven help you if you’ve been self employed as I have been for the better part of a decade. The application program doesn’t know what to do with you when you say you’ve been your own boss. It still wants you to put in the name of a supervisor to contact. And some, when you put in your own name, will not let you continue until you make up a new one to populate the field. 

Even worse, if you do make it to a real human seeing your submission, you have LESS THAN A MINUTE to get their attention. 

You read that correctly. 

The average applicant’s resume is reviewed in less than 60 seconds. Most people cannot read a full page, process it, and make a connection between the applicant and the job in that time. Let alone figure out if someone is a good fit.

But the guy behind the desk in front of me wasn’t just referring to people applying. He was referring to retention of people as well.

Turnover is not just a pastry anymore

​Corporations have expounded the “lazy worker” philosophy for YEARS as though people just don’t want to work. Which is hardly the case. Because no one wakes up and thinks “I’d like to have no money coming in so I can struggle and stress about rent, food, and living necessities.”

However, it IS true that workers are no longer feeling the “good old corporate” loyalty to their jobs. Why should they? 

When many jobs pay barely more than minimum wage, have little to no benefits, and often exploit their employees by trying to combine more than one position into a single job description, workers simply don’t feel any need to stay when a better opportunity comes along.

I get it on a visceral level. It’s disheartening to feel like you’re being taken advantage of by your employer. 

Years ago I worked for a law firm where I genuinely liked my coworkers. I knew that my work, taking on additional drafting responsibilities as well as parts of the client meetings, had been key in the growth of the firm. My extended position allowed the lead attorney to have more time to meet with new clients and secure new revenue. 

I was privy to all the earnings that year, and had a good sense of the expenses due to other office duties I was in charge of. I was frequently commended for my work, and told how valuable and instrumental I had been in the growth of the office. So when the end of the year bonuses came around, I was certain from all the hints I had been given, that I would receive a sizable one.

Instead, I was sat down, looked straight in the face, and earnestly told it had been a “tight year” for the firm. 

I was caught off guard. I knew we had tripled our business, and lowered our expenses considerably.

The attorney, not catching my confused look continued. He stated that because I was "such a team player”, they wanted me to still get a bonus. With a very patronizing expression, he slowly passed an envelope across the table and waited for me to open it. 

Inside was a $100 dollar gift card to a department store I never shopped at because it had cheap poorly made clothing. The lawyer smiled, patted my hand, and said I should get something pretty because I deserved it for my hard work.

I felt sick. Stunned really. I don’t have a poker face, and my expression must have given away the consternation I was feeling. I took a moment to try and compose myself and opened my mouth to speak. However before I could say a word, the attorney quickly muttered something about a meeting (he didn’t have anything on the schedule - I kept his calendar as well) and left the room. 

I would love to tell you this was an isolated incident. 

But this type of mentality played out in multiple corporations, and organizations, I worked for over the years. Which is why I had no hesitation in 2016 of setting out on another journey across the world as my own boss. Not only did adventures await, but I didn’t desire having another employer pat me on the head, tell me how wonderful I was, and then screw me over monetarily.

And despite the challenges of being my own boss, I truly enjoyed it. But the world has changed.

Since I came back to the States, we’ve had a pandemic, a difficult economy, and now an Oompah Loompa in office (again)  who is decimating equality, destroying just practices in the workplace, and dismantling safety policies which protected women and minorities from discrimination and harassment. In short, he is ruining the world (with the explicit and complicit help of his constituents, associates, followers, and party members). 

Sadly for me, the work I usually do in recent years, and love doing, now feels unsafe as patrons seem to think they can get away with bad behavior. Plus being in a luxury industry, while in a downturn economy, is precarious to say the least.

So I find myself craving some kind of stability, the kind that I figured would come with a steady paycheck. Hence here I am interviewing for positions that I know I am highly qualified for. 

Yet despite the huge responsibilities of the role, such positions would still be underpaying the person who they would hire. A fact which the manager across the table interviewing me, doesn’t seem to understand. So he complains that no one wants to work.

But I, and most people I know, DO want to work. Sure we would all love for a windfall to drop in our laps and allow us to spend all our time pursuing our passions. But barring the occasional miracle, for most of us, we are pretty content with having to work as a tradeoff for the fun we have in our free time. 

Which brings me back to my current predicament. 

Do they even want us to work?

​In the past month, I’ve applied for over a hundred jobs. All of which I am either highly qualified for, or overqualified for. I’ve applied to retail, corporations, non-profits, public organizations, educational institutions, libraries, and more. 

Lower paying jobs (ie retail) insist that they can schedule you any time they want. However such jobs mean that I would need TWO jobs to make ends meet. An impossibility to organize, if one job refuses to give me a set schedule, thus allowing me to work the second job.

Higher paying jobs are tricky. Half the ones I have applied to, I have later found out didn’t actually exist. They were either still posted and never taken down, or not really open to the public. Instead they promote from within, but due to some arbitrary organizational HR regulation, have to post to ensure some kind of fairness rule. 

I’ve had interviewers set up calls and then ghost me by never calling. When I call to follow up, they don’t respond. I’ve had “unofficial” feedback that my nontraditional background (being an adult entertainer - a legal profession I never felt necessary to hide) made me “undesirable” so they looked at more traditional, but less qualified, candidates. 

(“Such a shame,’ one person lamented, ‘because you also have so much experience and a Master’s Degree.” I cringe when I think of all the things I could have said in response. But I stayed silent, because there really isn’t anything I could do at that point. Yes it is illegal to discriminate against me for doing legal work. Doesn’t change the fact that it happens.)

And then of course there are the many jobs where your application and resume go off into cyberspace and you never know if anyone ever saw it. Or if the extremely faulty algorithm gods disqualified you from the next phase due to a glitch in the system.

It’s also interesting to me, a person who has often worked more than 80 hours in a week at various times in my life, how people are quick to act as though the “lazy worker” stereotype is true. 

Since I’ve become public about reentering the more traditional job force, I’ve had dozens of messages insisting that I must not be “trying hard enough”. Or asking why I don’t just take the minimum wage jobs and keep searching while working. As though I’m turning down minimum wage jobs left and right.

But I’ve also had dozens of other messages from friends and followers, quietly informing me of their own job struggles. 

How they were laid off from long time jobs, months ago, and haven’t found anything to replace the one they lost. Or that they still have their jobs, but lost critical benefits due to cutbacks. Or got a new job, started it and were praised for their work, only to be told a few weeks later that they were being let go. With no explanation. And definitely no severance.

Furthermore, almost everyone I know is underpaid. A “living wage” seems to be a myth.

Ain’t no one living off the living wage

​Personally, my largest expense is my rent (and yes I am trying to find a way to reduce it and still stay in the town I love). Other than my utilities and cell phone, I maintain a $30/month gym membership. Mainly because where I live makes it difficult to be outside in the winter. And I use the equipment 4-5 days a week to stay fit. My clothes are thrifted, as is my furniture (or gifted from things my wonderful friends no longer are using). 

The bulk of my luxury “shopping” comes at a $0 cost - my local library is my source for books, magazines, movies, tv shows, and museum passes. I cook most of my meals at home (when I choose to eat as my anorexic tendencies flair up when stressed). And I don’t indulge in many luxuries. Hell I don’t indulge in the luxury of health insurance. That bill got too expensive to maintain. 

So it is really discouraging when I also get messages suggesting I “cut my expenses” for my “luxurious” lifestyle. You know, the one I am not living. I couldn’t figure out where this idea came from as my friends often joke about the simplicity of my life. But I realized that social media, and people’s assumptions, led to other’s creating a narrative about my life, that simply doesn’t exist.

Yes, I literally was traveling every month for work across country. But it was for WORK, not pleasure. And aside from my travel days, and a built in rest day, I worked double shifts while on these trips. So no, I wasn’t traveling and living out a spa resort life. I traveled for work and worked long hard hours which didn’t end once I was home. Each of those trips, required a lot of planning, marketing, and physical preparation for the long hours. 

All of this to say, that I live a pretty comfortable but minimalist existence. Which I love. But that also means there isn’t much more I can cut out. I don’t have subscriptions to cancel. I don’t have health insurance. My car is paid off. (And I can’t get rid of it because the public transportation in this area sucks.) So what next? Groceries? 

It’s funny. As I read over what I’ve written here, I wonder if employers actually realize their complicity in the creation of the “lazy worker” myth. 

The truth is, internally, I wanted to scream or cry before going on the interviews. They feel demeaning somehow. 

I have no desire to work for people who pay a wage for full time that doesn’t even allow me to meet my basic needs. 

I have no incentive to work for people who are so focused on the bottom line, that they harm the people who enable them to have profits, by cutting their benefits. 

And I certainly have no ambition to work with someone who is already of the attitude that “no one wants to work” anymore. Yet he couldn’t understand how hiring someone at a wage that doesn’t afford them the gas they need to get to the job, in addition to paying basic bills, is detrimental to the employee.

Helpful? Hints…

​As I edit this piece, I also think of all the well-intentioned tips people have sent. I’m told to start my own business as though we are characters in Field of Dreams, and if I build it, clients will come. 

But I did have a successful thriving business. It took a ton of work to build, and ended thanks to the pandemic shutting the world down.

Or I’m told it’s “no shame to have to move back home for a bit”. But some of us don’t have a home to move back to. And the assumption that family can take on the extra burden of another person living with them is also presumptuous at best. 

Probably the funniest piece of advice I was given was to “just be positive “and a job will “fall into my lap”. I’ve been given this one SEVERAL times, and with extreme fervor and enthusiasm. By people who actually DON’T work because their partners’ support them. Ah the irony. 

And the way it is explained to me by these positivity zealots is that the difficult job market is a punishment directly to me when the gods and goddesses on high looked down at the world and proclaimed, “That Tink girl has been a bit off her positivity game lately. Let’s punish her and make it ultra challenging for her to get a job to teach her a lesson on faith.” 

(As I say repeatedly, life is so much stranger than fiction. And if we want to find characters beyond the imagination, we just have to allow the world to speak.)

Not so final thoughts

​My lease is up in March. I have big decisions to make as to whether I can continue to make this area my home, or whether I move on to greener pastures. But with the state of the world today, I’m not sure what those would be. Things are pretty barren on all sides of the fence.

A friend of mine told me once that I always end my blogs with a bit of a twist, a high note to balance out any of the realities I don’t mince words on. Tonight though, I have nothing to add to the job conundrum. 

Because until the professional world views their workers as part of a community, instead of as disposable machines, they will continue to make their myth of the “lazy worker” a self-actualizing prophecy. 

And until we workers find a way to make the companies realize that they benefit from treating their employees with respect and paying them what they are worth, they will chew us up and spit us out without any remorse.

A part of me wonders why I am torturing myself by trying to re-enter the traditional work force. However I also recognize that, at least right now for a variety of reasons, I am not entirely comfortable with staying in the adult entertainment industry as a performer. Which does make me sad, because I truly have loved being one.

Yet I can’t help but wish as I go on these interviews that the company would view me as something other than a resource to exploit for the bottom line, and definitely not as a living machine they can drain to get their dollars worth of product from. 

It would be gratifying to be seen as a true colleague, a partner creating something wonderful, which we could all be proud of, and look forward to waking and going to during the work week.

After all, it’s no fun sitting across a table interviewing for a position, by someone who has already made up their mind, that no one wants to work. And for a company who pays so little as to make this a self filling prophecy for the organization. 

But believe it or not, I still have hope. I’ve applied to more jobs. I’m openly vocal to everyone I know about my skills, and the fact that I am looking for work. And I have confidence in my abilities to survive and ultimately thrive. 

And if all else fails, I’ll take all the talents I have at my disposable and create something new to make money at. Something I can be proud of. I just don’t know what that might look like yet. I’m too exhausted from this process to figure it out at the moment.

To all those on the hunt for a job as well…Good luck out there, friends. I’m rooting for you too.

Xoxo,
Tink

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