Work Ethic

This one might be a bit of a long one since I'm going to philosophize some. Tonight on the way back from getting some Baskin Robbins Adam, Coppelia and I had a conversation that was very controversial amongst ourselves. It started with me harping on about how I delight in being given sign duty when setting up for Origin. You see, sign duty includes putting up the signs on both sides of the street right next to the church, obviously pointing to the coffee shop (where Origin takes place). Now, when most other people do sign duty, they put the first one on the closer side of the street and then jay-walk to the other side. My method includes putting the sign on the closer side of the street and then going all the way around through the traffic lights like a good pedestrian. I could excuse myself saying the reason I do this is to follow the law and to not get hit by a car, if at all possible. However, I practically boast when I say that the real reason I go around is so that I take longer doing the task, which pulls me away from doing other tasks during set-up. I refuse to do work begrudgingly so instead I find sneaky ways such as this one to, in a sense, minimize my work. In most areas of my work ethic, as I am partially of phlegmatic temperament, I tend to seek appearing busy with menial or unnecessary tasks (or just standing around) until being given an actual task; usually this task is given me by somebody with a choleric temperament.

What's this I speak of temperaments? I'll digress here for the sake of fleshing this out and I believe it'll help the point. According to (correct me if I'm wrong) the classic greek scholars, there are four temperaments: choleric, phlegmatic, sanguine and melancholic. In a short, catchy nutshell, the four temperaments follow these stereotypes:
choleric: if you wanna do it right you've gotta do it yourself
phlegmatic: I'll just wait here till somebody tells me what to do
sanguine: classic type a personality (talkative, social people)
melancholic: classic type b personality (introverted geniuses)
As I mentioned earlier, I tend to let the phlegmatic side of me control my work ethic. So I generally don't take initiative on things waiting for the choleric people to give me tasks and instructions because, frankly, I am certain that upon taking initiative to do a task, the choleric would scold me for doing it a way different from how they would've done it, despite it having been done correctly.

The reason I'm even blogging about this is because it makes me feel guilty to look at things this way. Going into a full-time job soon, I definitely want to do my best, excel and be a good employer. Now, my personal experience has been that, in spite of my general attitude towards things, when it comes down to it, I focus and get things done as quickly as I can and to the best of my abilities. In retrospect, it feels like even though I say all these things about being a lazy bum and having no initiative, I'm a good employee who is really good at following directions and generally getting things done. Of course, there are certain aspects of my work habits that I've worked on, such as making more calls on my own when I'm not sure how to do something, rather than just ask a superior at every step of the way. Perhaps this is because I have spent more than a year working at Sherwin (can hardly believe it's been that much already). Maybe it's something I've been able to improve in general.

Another thing that bothers me is when people tell you 'oh, you have to give 110%'. Other than the fact that that's impossible because 100% is the same as all you have and you certainly can't give what you don't have, it bothers me that in this capitalist world where you build empires with your own two hands, every employer expects you to give 110%, 100% of the time. This is asking you to give more than you have and thus more than you can give - at all times. If this is not the ultimate recipe for burnout, I don't know what is. I even question the notion of giving all you have at all times. Prioritizing is key in the work world. Even on a race, isn't pacing yourself one of the most important things? Why should it be different in your work life? You run harder and faster in the moments when you know you have to. You push yourself up to 100% when you need to. However, why shouldn't you pace yourself when doing tasks at lower priority? Don't get me wrong here though, I'm not saying half-a** it! I think mediocrity is unacceptable if have the ability to perform.

Going back to the deal with the Origin sign, sure, I could very cautiously jay-walk to save time with the second sign so I can sooner get back to helping, thus increasing my effectivity. However, on any given night, Origin set-up doesn't lack enough hands that we fall back on schedule far enough to merit cutting those minutes out of 'my' helpful activity. To illustrate the point from the last paragraph in this example, if jay-walking to get the signs up as fast as possible is giving 100% and walking around to get them up is 70%, while the case for giving 100% exists (desperately needing the time I would save), the merit for breaking the jay-walking law is rarely in effect.

Ultimately, this is my inspected method of thought and task handling and, to be sure, it is not some new work psychology and is not how all work should be observed. [Is this a disclaimer? haha] Making efforts to answer my own question, that of whether I am wrong in thinking this way and that regardless of how my personality is I should strive whole-heartedly to burn myself out by attempting to give more than I can for everything (skewed point of view), I lean towards saying that if it's not broken, I shouldn't try to fix it. Of course, this does not mean I will not attempt to be excellent in my work or that I will refuse constructive criticism and that I'll purposefully sabotage my motivation to improve. I strongly believe this can all be achieved within the boundaries of my method. For example, there have been many times where I am given busy work at Sherwin. Normally, my approach towards it is to assess several aspects of the task, such as difficulty and time required for completion, and, according to my other priorities, tune my effort to complete the task in a timely, effective manner. So on a particularly slow day where I expect no other work, I would take all the time necessary to do the task in a calm, effective manner (go around the street through the traffic lights). If something unexpected happened such as getting an important or urgent task all of a sudden, again depending on the priorities, I would drop the current task and work on the pressing one or work harder to complete the current one in a timelier manner to get started on the new one. This would then be akin to us being short-handed at Origin and needing me to get back quickly from setting up the signs. Perhaps these situations wouldn't turn out or work exactly this same way in real cases but I do believe my method has some merit.

If you will, it would be good to know what you have to say. It would be fun to start a conversation in the comments. I absolutely do not expect everybody to agree with me and I fully expect people to find loopholes, incongruences and the like in my method and question me to no end, but, like I said, this is how I currently see my work ethic. This new job is sure to stretch me and I'm looking forward to seeing how it will prepare me for the work I will do in Japan when the time comes.