Have you ever had someone ask you "What do you do?" Hailing from California it always struck me as a rather odd east coast phenomena. When I lived in New York, invariably it was the second question you were asked at cocktails, dinner parties, bars, clubs, first dates, conferences, in a taxi cab...you pretty much name the scene, and the conversation went a little something like this:
"Hi."
"Hello."
"What's your name?"
[1.5 second pause]
Oh, so what do you do?
For those of you who don't understand the question - let me translate, they mean to ask "What's your job...where do you work?" The examiner wants to rank you against everyone else in their fancy Rolodex. Right answer? You passed, congratulations, you get the privilege of a continued conversation, they may even ask you for your business card...perhaps you even qualified for the bonus round game of "Do-you-know-who-I-know". Wrong answer, failure. You get an "Oh, nice" or my ever-favorite "That's interesting" (when they really think its anything but)...both effective conversation killers and then you move on never really knowing or caring to get to know who that person is.
As an aside, out here on the West Coast (aka the best coast), where we are all supermodels, movie stars, surfers, and yoga instructors, we, of course, only care about looks not books. So the conversation "what do you do?" tends to imply something rather different:
LA...What do you do [facial lift, boob job, tanning salon]?
Northern California...What do you do [your favorite hike, what race are you training for]?
Central Valley...where I'm from, they'd be asking quite literally if there is anything of any interest at all to do there besides cow tipping and fruit picking.
But having recently been fired, I've had some new thoughts on jobs. Incidentally, just the concept of getting fired is mildly funny. Its kinda like a death. Everyone tries to find nice ways to say it, but at the end of the day, it is what it is. Yup, my @ss got fired. And yet, everyone uses terms like 'laid off', 'in between jobs', 'downsized'. For all of you out there who have involuntarily joined me in being 'impacted by this economic downturn' and are studying for your GREs or GMAT, as a freebee, Kaplan would likely call this a euphemism.
But back to the topic du jour. The fact of the matter is that people care about they do. They want to like their job. They talk about it, stress about it, want other people to be impressed by it. They even write books about it. In fact, I just finished a book given to me titled, What Should I Do With My Life? Subtitled The True Story of People Who Answered the Ultimate Question. Apparently, The Number One New York Times Best Seller.
Newsflash. Book finished and still trying to figure that out. When I was a kid, and those smart adults who had it all together used to ask me "what do you want to be when you grow up?" I used to avoid the question by singing the jingle "I don't want to grow up, I'm a toys r us kid..." Now, I find myself going back to being that kid. That kid who just wants to enjoy the day. The kid who loves people for who they are, not for what they can do for you. The kid who asks herself what she loves. The kid who can dream about the endless sea of opportunities, but can set sail another day. The kid who isn't so concerned about doing that she stops being.
