It’s just a job!... Wait, is it?
I’ve been managing teams for almost seven years now, and looking back, I can say that change has been a fundamental part of every role I’ve had.
Navigating the impact of jobs on people and people on jobs is no walk in the park
Changes in management, aggressive shifts of strategies due to economic changes, founders who step down to pursue other opportunities or early retirement, parental leaves, marriages, divorces, kids going to school for the first time, countries opening, countries closing, sicknesses, people leaving, people joining, lay-offs. I could keep going: change has been a constant, and I’ve come to the realization that somehow I am still not used to some of them. Naively, I am still looking for stability and another constant that does not constantly disrupt the routines and processes I am trying to build, not only for me, but also for the people I, sometimes, feel some degree of responsibility for.
One of the narratives a lot of people have repeatedly said to me –and that I myself started to repeat to myself– is: this is just a job. It always makes me think of nurses, doctors, or first responders, do they also think that way? Do they also see it as “just a job”? I’ve had to go through surgery more times than I’d like to, and I always trusted every single person in the operation room (and you’d be surprised, there are usually a lot of people in there at once!), I truly have hoped they didn’t see me as “just another job”. A captain flying a plane 3000 km across the Atlantic with 200 people onboard? I also hope they don’t see it as just a job. A governor approving long-yearly taxation, prosecution or immigration laws that could affect millions of people? Well… let’s better not.
I used to work as an Au-Pair where the kids were not just a job; I bonded with the families I lived with. I also worked at a restaurant cooking and serving food on some days, and preparing delicious margaritas and serving beers on other days. It was a job, but at the same time, it gave me some of my best friends to this day and tons of fun memories I still cherish to this day. Looking back, they were ‘just jobs’, but at the same time, they weren’t.
Fast forward to today, I work in online marketing. I’ve always done so since I finished university, and, honestly, this is the one where it has felt easier to say: it's just a job. But is it? Yes, in terms of the transactional side of things, I am paid to contribute and add value to a business with my skills, but looking at all of my online marketing jobs, I also have to acknowledge that the fact that I’ve contributed to those businesses and been paid in returned has allowed me to build a comfortable and VERY privileged life in Germany, something I could have never imagined before. Yet, change and the lack of control on those changes has made me detach myself emotionally from the actual work and has led me to focus on the people, which is ultimately what makes a job, not just a job - both on the positive and the negative side of things.
A fast-moving and dynamic profession
Content Marketing is SO 👏 MUCH 👏 FUN. I truly enjoy creating and orchestrating content for the digital world; it is still fascinating to me. But the fact that I don't control anything beyond that always leads me to say to myself: it's just a job.
Lately, I realized I want to believe it's just a job because I don't want to be disappointed yet again by what “just a job” can do to people's lives. I don't want to give other people the power to affect my well-being and the sense of stability I believe I have created for myself. I've managed to do that pretty well so far, and knock on wood, I hope I continue to do so - but with the hand-on-fire basketball effect, I'll never really know.
I am writing this because as much as I wanted to always focus on the transactional aspect of my employment situations, it has always affected me in similar ways that situations in my personal life have. A tone-deaf colleague's comment, passive-aggressive text messages from X person, a sassy email to my superiors, the loss of trust in something I really wanted to believe in, someone who doesn't like you and you struggle to let it go, an ex-colleague telling me I am delusional for idealizing the workplace and thinking leaders are able to put people first instead of the business, seeing the profit your work achieved by working your ass off only to keep hearing: it's not enough.
It is frustrating, and it's taking up more of my brain space than I want it to. This isn't a scientific article like the ones I used to write in university, nor is it another tips and tricks post bragging about what I can teach you from my X years of experience in X industry. This is just an open letter to other leaders, to other employees, to myself. To remember that it's okay to let change at work, or in life in general, affect you, and that it's also more than okay to be open about it. That you shouldn't let your job title define your worth and that jobs usually bring with them more than a paycheck; they are stressful, they are not always rewarding, they are exhausting, they are hard to compare because no one experiences their job the same way, they are disappointing, but they can also be fun, they can be a medium to support things you want to achieve in your personal life, they can lead to great friendships, and especially memories. Because they are mostly about people, and sometimes numbers, but it's really just about people.
Regardless of whether you think that a job is not just a job or if indeed it is, for me, I want it to be an occupation that involves people and logically triggers and makes me feel emotions, and even if they might not always be positive. I want it to be the groundwork for other things in my life that are important, and I want it to be the testing ground for change and acceptance. Acceptance of what I can't control and need to let go, but also for what I can thrive at and see direct results from.
May reading this be a part, or not, of just your job.
