Jonathan Dodd‘s latest column. Guest opinion articles do not necessarily reflect the views of the publication. Ed
People always tend to give kids the most menial jobs, like wiping up the dishes, or sweeping floors, or moving piles of bricks. But has anyone noticed that these are precisely the kind of jobs that are most unsuited for the young? It’s not that they’re incapable of working at dull and repetitive tasks, they’re simply not wired in the right way.
It would make far more sense for older and wiser people to remember that they are wiser, and pick up the tea towel or the broom or the tough gloves and get on with these jobs themselves.
We’re going to have to do it anyway, either because the job gets abandoned in the middle or is done so badly that it has to be done all over again.
Not being critical of young people
I’m not being critical of young people here. They don’t yet understand and appreciate the joy and pleasure that can be gained by volunteering for such tasks.
To start with, people are grateful, and you can bask in their gratitude. Secondly, there is pleasure in doing something that has to be done properly and efficiently first time.
Thirdly, nobody asks to do anything else when you’re getting on with it. Fourthly, and best, your mind is free to roam while your body gets on with the rhythmic activity.
I’m a great believer in the freely-roaming mind.
Magically conjuring up mp3 downloads
Young people are much too direct to detect these subtleties. I failed to teach my son to ride his bike properly because I was so keen and jolly that he became fearful. So I gave up and went inside, promising him £5 when he could ride the whole length of the garden, and half an hour later he had done it. I suspect the price has gone up long since.
If you could magically conjure up mp3 downloads in the air after washing up, they would do it happily every day. They need something straightforward as a reward. The idea that a kitchen is ‘nicer’ when it’s clean and tidy is completely foreign to their natures, because they need to get back to that game that’s on pause so they can commit more Armageddon.
Enjoying it isn’t necessary
One of the key indicators of that elusive thing called ‘growing up’ is the idea of indirect reward. For instance, the idea that work is something you volunteer for because in exchange people give you money to get a place of your own and lead the life you want when you’re not at work. It’s a deal you need to make, because that’s the way things are set up. Enjoying it isn’t necessary. Young people take a lot of time to understand this.
As we get older we begin to understand that the rewards we get are not necessarily those we think we’re in for when we start down a particular road. Lots of us have children.
Nearly all of us realise quite early that this involves huge amounts of boring and repetitive work and expense for no discernible reward. We understand after a bit of struggle that we do it for love and have no right to expect anything in return, and then we realise that this love experience is worth every pound spent and drop of sweat and sleepless night.
I simultaneously hated it and had a great time
I once had a friend who became an ex-friend rather quickly. We had gone to stay with him and his wife back in the days when people did that sort of thing, before we all had children. He took me to one side and explained gleefully that he never had to wash up or dry dishes, because he volunteered once and managed to break so many things that his wife never asked him again. Needless to say, the relationship didn’t last.
Come to think of it, you can sin in the opposite way. I knew someone else who used to say on occasion to friends – “My wife and I have a deal. When she cooks, I wash up. When I cook, I wash up.” That was also a first marriage. Personally I heartily recommend dishwashers.
I was thinking about this because I volunteered for a job in the office. It wasn’t quite like that time when about 3,000 addresses were entered into a database without spaces, and someone needed to go in to each one and add the relevant spaces, but it was like that. I simultaneously hated it and had a great time. I’ve just finished, And I’ve gained a warm glow and enough ideas for a blog.
If you have been, thank you for reading this.
