The Cheery News About Work... Err...?!?

The reputation of work has taken quite a battering in recent years, and especially since the Covid Pandemic. Those periods of lockdown have gone down as a time when workers en masse reassessed their working lives and collectively realised that there was a lot more to life, than, well work.

And since then we've had an expanding narrative online about bullshit jobs, the joys of 'lazy girl' jobs, the Great Resignation, quiet quitting and Quit-tok.

The dominant narrative is that work is a bit crap and that we should do as little of it as possible, and when we do it, don't give our lives to it!

But there's a perception gap!
But the often unstated truth is that most of us find work pretty satisfying, most of the time!

Some recent research by Canadian sociologist Scott Scheiman of Canadian and US workers found that 79% of workers surveyed felt somewhat or very satisfied with their own job. HOWEVER, only 49% of workers felt that others feel the same way.

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That's a stonking 30% perception glitch!

Similarly, 32% of workers found their job stressful often or always, but 69% felt that others would feel this way!

This phenomenon has been uncovered before: that of social pessimism but individual optimism... we basically tend to think we are OK but most other people are struggling and society is a bit crap!

Consequences of this perception glitch!
Social pessimism does have an affect: when people think that other workers are dissatisfied, they tend to feel less committed themselves.

In other words we tend to let ourselves get dragged slightly down towards what we perceive to be everyone else's level.

Despite this 'perception gap' the cheering truth is that you and your colleagues are probably doing work that makes you all reasonably satisfied.

I'm not sure if that is cause for optimism...?!?

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