Irony Becomes Her

The Toiling Point

In "A Cog in the Bureaucracy" (July 11), I discussed how difficult it is to be trapped between an inefficient system and a specific task or client. Coming back exhausted from my first class yesterday, I realized that in Western culture such constriction is the very definition of work.

Everyone who has a job must negotiate between the demands of superiors and constituents. Even CEOs of large companies are expected to provide lots of money for stockholders and lots of goods and services for clients, these two expectations being logically at odds with one another. Making both happy is the mythical goal.

In my case, I am expected to present information to students in a manner that makes it possible for them to produce acceptable work, while maintaining for the department a standard of achievement for students certified by passing grades. (The department, then, has a responsibility to the central administration to meet other demands, including athletic, financial, and public image considerations.) Teachers who can be liked or even respected by both sides have my deep respect and awe, for they do, to my personal knowledge, exist.

I will be very surprised if I ever become one of them.

But it would be difficult to find a job without the stress of these conflicting expectations. This epiphany serves to remind me (oh, relief!) that my job will never be my primary joy.

And who knows whether he will be a wise man or a fool? Yet he will have control over all the work into which I have poured my effort and skill under the sun. A man can do nothing better than to eat and drink and find satisfaction in his work. This too, I see, is from the hand of God, for without him, who can eat or find enjoyment?

posted by Lynn @ 2:40 PM