Recently, one of my LinkedIn connections complained about her writing job at a small newspaper.
She quit the newspaper when a supervisor asked her to write positive articles about some of the businesses that advertised. Then, she asked her LinkedIn connections if any of us had quit jobs due to similar indignities.
My first reaction was to respond with a short and derisive comment but instead, I went a little further,
To Wit...
Dear Miss Priss,
I detected a sense of entitlement in your question which is something I see too often in the younger generation. To me, quitting a writing job because it’s beneath your journalistic standards is a bridge too nowhere. There is nothing wrong with promoting the businesses that indirectly pay your salary if you add a simple disclaimer.
I've never thought of any job in the context of "liking it" and there was never a job I was too "good" to do or try to master.
Since I grew up on a share crop farm and never attended a four year college, my employment standards are somewhat different than yours. I’ve always viewed work as a privilege. I felt honored to be chosen by an employer to perform a specific task and I never considered any job to be unworthy of me because it was painfully obvious that I was unworthy of many, many jobs.
With that background, let me review some jobs I've proudly done in the past and note that I never felt too self-important for any of them. These jobs include, chopping weeds out of crops, driving long haul trucks with no air conditioner and sleeping in them at night, driving a bulldozer and “Trashmaster” at a county dump, working at a cabinet shop, working at a cotton gin and working in the oil fields. Those are just some examples from a much longer list.
Due to my lack of higher education, I worked many years to develop my writing skills but I never gave up. Can you imagine how thrilled I was in 2012, when I was accepted as a Huffington Post blogger? So obviously, it follows that I can’t imagine walking away from a paid writing job.
So, Miss Priss, the short answer to your question is NO, I‘ve never walked away from any job because I thought it was beneath me. I’ve always found a way to earn a living without getting on the government dole, which would have been my only alternative at many times in my early life if I had behaved as though I was too “good” for the only jobs I could find.
In a demand driven economy, any financial success we enjoy requires a dependable support system that should be strengthened by each of us as we climb the ladder of success. In response, our work ethic should never allow us to "look down our nose" at any honorable jobs because there is always someone who wants to come to America and take the job and make the most of it.
Today, my wife and I live in a modest home with a paid off mortgage. I am the CEO of KCAA Radio which I co-founded in 1997. Obviously, I continue to blog at the Huffington Post and occasionally, I write for several trade publications.
I didn’t get here by turning my nose up at work.
