People at Work

Many years ago when I was teenager in Cape Town, South Africa, I was asked to hand out flyers for a car wash at a mall. It wasn’t just me. I was with a group of friends around my age and some of them felt quite embarrassed at being there, and made it known through their complaints, body language, and attempts to hide their faces when passing out the flyers. Then one of them spoke and said, “to work is noble”. His mom told him that.

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For the longest time, I thought it just meant that working is good, it’s the right thing to do and of course it is.

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However, as time went on, I came to understand that it referred to an honest day’s work, regardless of position or stature, experience or qualifications. More than that, it meant that you were contributing one way or another to something bigger - no job too grand, no job insignificant. 

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When hitting the shutter, some of these people are zoned in to the tasks on hand, while others take a beat before moving on. Then there are those taking a few moments to put work aside and others who go off to have a smoke or a drink in an alley.

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At the end of the day when they clocked out, they were a vital cog in production, service, innovation and entertainment. Every cog on the gear-wheel moves its counterpart on the next wheel and thereby pushes along its effects throughout this great societal machine that keeps us all fed, safe and gets us home at the end of our shifts.

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Put your mind to it and one can connect the dots from the guy who collects shopping carts in the supermarket parking lot to a business man that imports oranges from the Southern Cape where on a vineyard, the same farmer produces grapes for wines that are shipped to a city, where it is poured into a glass at a Michelin Star Restaurant for a politician who will the next morning report to a presidential office in the capital of a far away land.

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To Work is Noble.