Respecting your work is respecting everyone else’s work
There are two types of work: the one you do for pleasure and the one you do to survive. If you think you love your job, but the possibility of losing it puts your well-being and peace of mind at risk, then maybe—just maybe—you’re a little biased about how much you actually enjoy it. Sometimes, we humans do this weird thing in our heads where we justify things we don’t really like that much just because, one way or another, we need them.
The work you do for pleasure is the work you do before or after the work you do to survive. That’s where our true passions lie, the things that drive us so much that we push through exhaustion just to do them. Passion work is the kind that eats into your free time, that threatens some aspect of your personal life—your health, friendships, or relationship. This work is so important to you that you sacrifice a lot just to make it happen.
If you don’t feel a relentless hunger to do passion work after finishing the work you do to survive, then I believe you. You love your job, and you really are living the dream of doing what you love for a living.
This not-so-short introduction was inspired by a coworker I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. Someone who puts in an insane amount of effort and has the same job title as me. We’re both copywriters, but this person also does community management. In this agency, we work under a freelance model—we get paid per piece or service we deliver each month. Because of this, I do my best with every submission to avoid doing extra work for free on revisions. This is survival work for me. Being a copywriter isn’t my dream job, but it’s not something I mind doing either. Every month, I do my part, make sure everything is in order, and get paid. But this person? He go above and beyond, even designing posts and editing videos—things that are absolutely not part of our job.
More than judging him for it, I started thinking about why this bothers me so much on an emotional level, and the answer is simple: when someone does extra work for free, they put everyone else’s job at risk. Those videos? A video editor could have been paid for them. Those designs? A designer should have been hired. Undercutting other people’s work like this makes things worse for everyone—except for this person and the agency owner. It’s disrespectful. It only benefits him personally and makes him look good to the boss. It pisses me off because, let’s be real, they’re a bootlicker.
And the obvious solution? Do what he do. Put more effort into my work, do extra tasks for the sake of my accounts, even if I won’t get paid more for the extra effort. But, of course, I’m not going to do that. Because giving away my work for free would be unfair and a complete lack of respect for myself. Plus, I’ll just become yet another menace for everyone else’s jobs.
So why does this person find it so easy? Where does that drive to give it all come from? Is this their passion work, or is it survival work? There’s always someone like this in every workplace, but in a full-time job, their impact wouldn’t bother me as much. Here, though? At any moment, they could start giving me fewer assignments, and my income would drop. Do they not realize this, or are they fully aware and trying to take work away from others?
Becoming cynical and refusing to overwork myself for a survival job is something I learned the hard way. When the pandemic started, I was let go from an agency where I had just started working. I had left a stable job for that opportunity—one where I was already valued and had great coworkers. No one gave a fuck about that sacrifice. The moment the agency faced trouble, they didn’t hesitate for a second to fire the new guy. And they did it right when I needed that job the most.
That experience ruined my life. It forced me to leave the city I was living in. I was unemployed for nine months. It left me broke. I became heavily depressed. If it hadn’t been for my family, I would have literally ended up on the streets. What seemed like a promising career move turned out to be a place where I was treated like trash, where no one cared about what would happen to me without a steady income—during a historical event.
Years later, what I feel about that experience is gratitude (and some hatred maybe haha, can you blame me?). Because it taught me to value my work, to never overextend myself for a job, and to appreciate good workplaces. It made me cynical, cold, and 100% professional. And that’s a good thing. That’s exactly how everyone should approach survival work. Because that shit is never worth it.
Your extra effort will never be truly valued. No matter how good the work environment is, there will always be a reason to let you go. No one will warn you. No one will be compassionate. That’s just how the game works. And I choose to play it at my own risk.
The game is rigged, and that’s why we cannot afford to be naïve.
I’ve come to the conclusion that my coworker needs to go through something similar to understand what a huge mistake it is to work for free.
We need to charge for what’s in the contract. And so, we should only do what’s in the contract. That’s the agreement. That’s fair. If you feel like working extra for free, remember that work is not the most important thing in life. There are dozens, maybe hundreds, of things that deserve your time way more than doing unpaid labor.
Sorry if you’re excited about work or just starting your career, but this—while just my personal experience—is the truth. Maybe you’ll never go through a negative work experience, and I truly hope you don’t. But this reality exists.
I know this post might come off as a very negative take on work and “working life”, but believe it or not, having this mindset and accepting what work really is (and what it isn’t), and what it means has had an incredibly positive impact on my life and mental health. Why? Because I no longer have unrealistic expectations about work. I don’t believe everything they say, I know the perfect job doesn’t exist, I know that if I get laid off, I can get another job, and everything is going to be fine in the end. I don’t ask for much—just what’s fair—and I do my part. That makes me both happy and productive, which benefits not just me but also my boss.
So I highly recommend shifting your perspective: work is just a tool to help you make time and get the resources you need to pursue the things that really makes you feel passionate about life, those things that actually feeds your soul.
Respecting your own work is respecting everyone else’s work. Don’t be a dick.
Thanks for reading.