The Work/Love Dynamic

The other day, as I walked onto a plane, a beautiful woman was standing just inside the door. I will call her Arleta. I assumed that one of Arleta’s roles based on standing in that spot was to greet the passengers as they boarded the plane. As I approached, her lack of eye contact suggested I assumed wrongly. I decided to take it upon myself to initiate the greeting process with a “Hello, how are you?” Without raising either corner of her mouth and barely lifting her eyes to meet mine she responded, “I’m here.” The tone and look with which she responded definitely made me wonder if I was glad that I was here.

Certainly, hers was not a response of a person who loved her work. Though, in fairness, maybe there was something weighing heavily on her. But as I came in contact with the other flight attendants, I realized they all wore a similar the scowl. Maybe the same heavy burden Arleta bore was carried by the whole crew of flight attendants on United flight 172 or maybe they were all just tolerating their job.

Later that evening as I drove my rental car from the Logan Airport to Boston, I passed through a toll booth. The man attending the booth, who I will call Aramis, greeted me with an unbelievably warm smile. He said in an upbeat tone, “Don’t you just love summer?” which struck me as it was drizzling rain and a bit chilly for a July 6th evening. I agreed but asked if the rain was a bother. He said, “No, we’ll have plenty of hot weather in the months ahead. I love the long days and cool weather. The smell of the rain is cleansing.” He cheerfully took my money, gave me my change and sent me off with a very cheerful, “Have a fantastic night!”

In the matter of a few hours I came in contact with two different people from two different walks of life who both had jobs that required heavy customer interaction. The juxtaposition of attitudes was so dramatic that I couldn’t NOT notice. The attitudes they carried to their respective jobs could not have been more opposite. The passion in one case and lack thereof in the other, could not have been more apparent.

Later that evening as I sat in my hotel room, I considered my own job and my own attitude towards it. I realized in my contemplation that there are two critical factors in the work/love dynamic. The first factor is the amount of love you get from your work and the second is the amount of love you bring to your work. Both are critical in determining the level of job satisfaction both day to day and over your career .

It seems that many people fall into a certain type of work and if they don’t enjoy it, the prospect of changing scares them more than the prospect of staying in a dead end situation. If they do change, they tend to change to a similar line of work as they only feel qualified to apply for something similar. This leads to one dead end after another and though the change may initially offer a new lease on work life, the old feeling of dread will not be far off.

It seems in traveling and interacting with a lot of different people in a lot of different roles that very few people are in their dream job or career. I know this, oh too well, because I trudged through the first four years of my work life on the veritable treadmill of dissatisfaction. As I look back to my early years of work after college, I went from one dead end job to another. In fact, I had 6 different jobs in the 4 years after graduating college.

Unfortunately, I had not spent enough time thinking about the type of career that would bring me fulfillment. I knew I wanted to make a lot of money but I didn’t really focus on career choices. While in college, I thought about being a teaching professional in golf and a basketball coach but the money just didn’t seem to be there. I signed up and went through interviews on the University of Illinois campus but felt like I was wearing my dad’s suit and really didn’t feel passionate about anything I interviewed for from Procter & Gamble to Macy’s; from IBM to Xerox. Though I had enjoyed working in a retail clothing store through college, I did not think of retail as a possible career. I was miserable in each role as I went from selling business phone systems and paper products back to retail sales and management. I felt underemployed and could not wait to get through the work day. Each was just a job and did not feel like a part of a career path at all.

I made several changes to escape the sinking feeling of heading down a dead end road. None of the jobs was bad but I did not feel good about myself in them. I made change after change. They were all changes for the sake of change and each new job seemed like a fresh start but was soon worse than the last. On top of the lack of satisfaction, I was making little money which just seemed to compound my dissatisfaction.

Finally, at the age of 27 after meeting and marrying my wife, I moved in a new direction. My wife was so insightful and believed that everyone should follow their heart. She told me that life was too short to do something you don’t enjoy. She believed and ultimately helped me believe that it was my choice and I had to act on it. She encouraged me to take inventory of what I liked and what I was good at in order to choose a career that would offer satisfaction. The other realization that my wife helped me reach was that if I loved what I did, I would excel and if I excelled I would be paid well. This was important as I needed to support the family we hoped to start in the next few years as we did not want to have a two working parent family. Looking back the concepts that I learned from my wife seemed so obvious but without her belief and urging, I may still be underemployed and passionless in my work.

The toughest part of the process was being honest enough with myself about what I liked. I had spent too much of my life trying to please others that I was not really in tune with what made me feel good or what I was really good at for that matter. I had to write down the things that had given me satisfaction from childhood to the age of 27. As I made my list it became very clear that I had a passion for sports and the apparel/footwear business. The trick would now be finding a way to bring them together. Maybe it was fate or maybe it was the fact that I now had direction, but within a month of my epiphany I heard an ad on the radio for a Sports Career Seminar. It was relatively inexpensive and it was just a few hours drive from Southern California to Phoenix to attend.

After listening to representatives from Nike, Reebok and Converse, I knew that my goal was a career in athletic footwear. The decision was easy but getting a start was not. I was able to get interviews from networking but I was told that without experience in sales of athletic footwear, it would be very tough to enter this field. After a lot of dead end interviews, one manager suggested I get some experience working with athletic footwear at retail. So at the age of 27, married and with a college degree from a Big Ten University, I went to work on the sales floor at a Footlocker and not as a manager or even assistant manager but as a salesman.

Had I not been so dead set on this new career path, it would be hard to fathom this decision. Six days a week I would don the Footlocker uniform, which was a polyester referee’s outfit. Not only was I highly flammable but the uniform didn’t breathe at all. I would sweat through the day and the rubbing of the polyester on my skin would leave me with a rash on my legs and scabs on my nipples. Add to this a bruising of my ego as the other sales people were high school grads who were out to show up the college guy.

For 5 months I busted my butt to sell more than anyone else and help with any extra work that needed to be done in the back room after hours. The hard work paid off and I was promoted to assistant manager. I worked hard and at lunch and early in the morning I continued pursuing the contacts I had made with the athletic footwear companies. I knew what I wanted and was willing to sacrifice to get there. It was a struggle at times and created tension with my wife due to my bruised ego and inability to provide a strong enough financial base to move into our own place. We were living with my wife’s grandmother in a suburb east of Los Angeles. This helped me afford pursuing my dream but had its own share of challenges.

Finally after 9 months, I got a break. Converse was starting a tech rep program. I accepted the position which entailed going out and supporting sales reps by displaying the Converse shoes in retail stores and discussing the features and benefits of the product with floor sales people at stores like Footlocker. It was an entry level position and I was by far the oldest of the eight new hires but it got me into an athletic footwear company and out of the retail ranks.

My passion for this career was intense and it showed in my work and performance. I was promoted from tech rep to sales rep in only 3 months. In my first full year as a sales rep I made a six figure income. In my 15 years in the footwear industry, though there have been ups and downs, I have risen to the level of sales director and vice president of sales and marketing. The passion for my chosen field has translated into strong performance and promotion in each company where I worked. I have not had a day of dread in my work since entering this career.

No matter what your age or family situation, you have choices. If you hate your job you have two choices. You can either change your job or change your attitude. Many people feel stuck. There are more excuses than there are careers. I’m too old. I’m too young. I’m not educated enough. I’m overqualified. I don’t have the time to go back to school. I can’t afford to step back to start over in a new career and on and on and on. The reality is that the longer you wait to pursue your dream, the more difficult it becomes. But even knowing this, do not ever let go of your dream. Find a way to make it happen. No matter how long it takes or how you get there, keep the dream alive.

God gave us the gifts and the desire in our heart to fulfill a specific purpose in our life and in our work. If you don’t listen to God, you may never know. If you don’t take an inventory of your passions and strengths, you may never know. If you simply stay in your current job because you feel you can’t make a change due to finances, geography, skill level, etc, you may never know. You can use your God given gifts to determine and pursue the career of your dreams. In fact, you will not find true and lasting job satisfaction until you do.

The second part of the work/love dynamic is how much love you bring to your job. This one is a simple choice. What attitude will I bring to work today? How much love are you bringing to your job? You may not be able to make a job change given the current economic environment but you always have the ability to change your attitude. Try bringing a little love to work today in the form of a smile. Thank God that you have a job when the unemployment rate is 10%. Treat your co-workers with the love and respect they deserve as human beings. Your attitude may not change your situation but it will certainly change your day.

The bible tells us to work as though we were working for God. Are you giving your work all you can give? By performing your daily tasks with the highest level of energy and attention to detail, as well as, with the best attitude you can muster, you will feel a level of satisfaction you have never felt before. We want to blame our job or our boss or a negative customer for our lack of enthusiasm at work, but we have a choice in how we think and act. Make a choice to pack love in your briefcase today. Take it to work and share it. Odds are you will make the day more enjoyable for someone else, but if not, at least you will make it more enjoyable for you!