How To Respond To The Question, "So, What Do You Do?"
The Problem with Using Jobs as a Measure of Worth.
Photo by Jenean Newcomb on Unsplash
"What do you do?" is a friendly phrase that serves as a surface level icebreaker in social conversations. While this question may seem to be straightforward, it has deep implications that trouble me to no end. It is one of the pillars of social stratification that people can put a price on someone's life based on their work and income. Yet in a culture where these factors play an oversized role in our understanding of others, raising this question inevitably leads to misinterpretations and unforeseen consequences.
When someone asks you about your job, it's not just small talk. They often try to figure out where you stand on the Job Prestige Ladder. For example, if you say you're a musician, they might assume you're a free spirit who struggles financially. However, if you say you're a music teacher, you might suddenly be viewed as more respectable. It's almost like you've cracked a secret code.
The question "So, what's your real job?" has been around for ages. It's a question often posed to professional musicians who play the piano, guitar, or drums as if music is just a hobby. It's similar to asking little kids, "What do you want to be when you grow up?" While it's true that many people play instruments for fun, music is their livelihood for those who make music for TV commercials, video games, movie soundtracks, radio, and musical theater.
As for me, when I get hit with the "What do you do?" interrogation, I love throwing curveballs. I usually respond with, "You know those folks in Times Square dressed as superheroes and Disney characters? Yeah, I'm the guy in the Elmo suit breakdancing on a slab of cardboard. I go by 'The Breakdancing Elmo.'" The reactions are priceless. Some are genuinely intrigued, and others give me that skeptical squint, as if I've just said I'm the long-lost black member of ABBA. The best part? Most people abandon their belief in my Elmo alter ego within 45 seconds, leaving me chuckling at their befuddled expressions.
Attitudes toward this question vary widely. In some cultures, like France, asking about someone's job immediately is considered nosy. The French philosophy aligns more with the idea of working to live rather than living to work, emphasizing the need for a healthy work-life balance. The American or British cultures, however, often place work at the center of one's identity, making the question more acceptable but no less intrusive.
The question can be particularly sensitive for those who are disabled or unemployed, putting them in a spot where they may feel compelled to disclose personal information. On the flip side, there are instances where the question can be considered fair game, such as dating or forming close friendships. The intent behind the question, in these scenarios, is to build a deeper understanding rather than a superficial judgment.
For folks who are between gigs or who can't work because of health reasons, this question can be tricky. Just like a musician might be dealing with a dry spell between gigs or maybe some vocal strain that keeps them from performing, not everyone fits neatly into a job title. The narrow focus on jobs when assessing someone's value overlooks the multifaceted lives that we lead. The ‘what do you do’ question sifts people into categories of 'worthy' or 'unworthy'. The premise appears to be that our jobs determine whether we are deserving of respect.
Our society needs to make progress in separating personal worth from employment and income. There are many people who lead fulfilling lives in roles that society may not consider prestigious, such as homemakers dedicated to family welfare or volunteers contributing to their communities. It's time to stop categorizing people based on their jobs. In fact, many of us engage in multiple jobs to make ends meet, especially in the music industry.
Maybe it's time to ditch the standard, 'What do you do?' and opt for questions that delve deeper into someone's personality and passions. Instead of subtly judging people based on their job title, why not ask, 'What are you most passionate about?' or 'What do you do for fun?' You'll receive a more genuine response and make a real connection. Questions such as 'What's the best thing that happened to you today?' or 'What are you most excited about right now?' can provide insights into someone's current joys or aspirations.
If you want to learn more about someone's life goals or aspirations, try asking more meaningful questions such as "What are you working on?" or "What are you looking forward to?". You could even ask a more imaginative question like "If money were no object, what would you do with your life?". By asking such questions, you demonstrate that you value the person for who they are and not just for their societal label. Also, your conversations will be much more engaging, and you'll be a much more fascinating person to talk to at social events.
So, the next time you're tempted to ask someone, "What do you do?" maybe hold off and let the conversation flow naturally. You'll probably learn more about them, like what they're passionate about. After all, no one likes to be reduced to just their day job—or their latest gig.
This was originally published on Broadway Drumming 101.
Clayton Craddock is a devoted father of two, an accomplished musician, and a thought-provoker dedicated to Socratic questioning, challenging the status quo, and encouraging a deeper contemplation on a range of issues. Subscribe to Think Things Through HERE, and for inquiries and to connect, email him here: Clayton@claytoncraddock.com
Curiously, I can't recall ever being asked this very often. Perhaps this has been, because by the look of me, the answer to the real question, at least in a potential dating context, would obviously be, 'I don't make a whole lot of money but this isn't what matters to me.'
On the other hand, we swim in different waters, you and I. When this sort of inquiry had ever been posed to me by someone of the opposite sex in social settings, during those rare times when I was actually both single and might regard myself as 'available', what I think I'm hearing is 'so, what would you be worth to my lifestyle preferences if we became lovers?'
Or perhaps more cynically, 'do you really think you can afford me?'
I can agree, if I take your meaning, that the question can often be both an inauthentic expression of feigned interest in one's actual work life, as well as a veiled opening to an intrusive financial interrogation. Maybe even in purely non-sexual contexts the question is still an assessment of whether or not one is eligible to meet the terms of a given clique, which I rarely have been in my own life.
In clique-eligibility terms, at one point I knew quite a number of people one routinely described as 'friends' (during that era when a TV sitcom by that name depicting no such thing was all the rage), and the question of current occupation was a moot one because most of the group all worked for the same upscale grocery store, the very prototype of today's Whole Foods shopping experience. The rules of that circle were that everyone who worked on the floor was one caste, everyone in the offices (who nearly outnumbered those doing the actual work for some weird prestige-related reason) made up an entirely different, higher, caste, and the two were all but mutually exclusive in social terms.
One time during a shift one of my coworkers asked me what I did for fun. This was the more crucial distinguishing feature of a person within that caste, as we all knew that we did all the work while the bosses took home all the money, so what was left for any of us to take an interest in each other was that all-important trait among any college-town proletariat, of how much fun anyone had and how they went about having it. (Rock-climbing, for instance, was an admirably correct response. Have you ever overheard a more boring or viciously competitive conversation, than among rock-climbers?)
My answer was something to the effect that I do love to curl up with a good book of an evening.
Now, I would have thought, naively, that in a setting where everyone had a major and was committed to achieving a degree in their interest-area of choice, that the conversation would then proceed affably into the arena of what makes a book interesting and why, which books we might be able to recommend to each other and why, etc.
Instead I got a rather sarcastic, 'wow, I wanna party with you Ron!', whereupon my interlocutor began to avoid further exchanges with me during subsequent shifts together. I did find out he was a film-studies major (there was a lot of that going around) and that nothing seemed to stimulate his interest more than to talk about microbrew, college ball or as-yet-unsampled pussy. I gathered that to discuss Dostoevsky with him instead might have fallen flat, like your average twelve-dollar glass of appallingly bitter fermented hops tends to do after five minutes.
If someone were to ask me what I do and I answered them during my working career, "I build houses', I knew I could take it as a given that there is nothing at all interesting about building houses, except to other men who also build houses, who tend not to prefer talking shop after hours. Personally, I found this work fascinating, challenging, more technically intricate than is popularly believed, directly vital to the human condition, and cruelly under-rated as a contribution to it.
'Oh so you work construction then.'
Whatever that means. Can we talk about good books instead?