Apathy

I contemplated recently whether an employee should take the full blame for a lack of motivation at work or if the employer has some responsibility to motivate staff beyond a pay packet. I pretty much made up my mind that as long as the employer is paying on time and treating staff fairly, it is down to the employee to get the job done without moaning about a lack of motivation or inspiration from the top.

The problem with this is that after some time in a desperately dull and repetitive job it becomes practically impossible to stay motivated and keep productivity at a maximum. So is it the employer's obligation to accept this and adapt to it? I think so. It is not 'laziness' - that word is often used lazily in itself. It is instead a natural occurrence that if you despise a job so much, every atom in your body will tell you not to even turn up, never mind be productive.

If I feel like this as a spoilt, privileged westerner, I can't imagine what sweatshop workers must feel like when they wake up in the morning. Of course, not everyone can have a job they enjoy and that inspires them, otherwise nothing would get done and society would collapse. However there is a massive demand for the jobs that people don't even want, so we have to pretend we are 'excited' and 'motivated' by tedious jobs in order to keep bosses happy and stay in employment.

Surely it would be better if we could all admit our apathy towards a potential job in interviews and instead be hired for standing out purely by way of superior skill and suitability for the job. The problem with this is that there are so many candidates who are impossible to differentiate in terms of their educational and vocational experience on paper.

I believe there is a subtle difference between apathy and laziness that can be easily mistaken. If someone appears to be lazy but is still getting the work done to an acceptable standard, they probably just hate their job. If someone appears to be lazy and is not getting the job done, they are lazy. If someone appears to be hard-working and enthusiastic but is not getting the job done, they are incompetent, but they've no doubt got a lot of people fooled.