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This Everything2 writeup explains way better than I can what's wrong with passionately loving your job: http://everything2.com/title/F%25C3%25BCr+sechs+Groschen

This Everything2 writeup explains way better than I can what's wrong with passionately loving your job: http://everything2.com/title/F%25C3%25BCr+sechs+Groschen%252C+Fritz%252C+ist%2527s+heute+genug http://everything2.com/title/F%25C3%25BCr+sechs+Groschen%252... There are limits to duty, but there are no limits to passion, that's why your employer wants you to be passionate about him. Especially in startuplandia. Hint, grasshopper, he is not passionate about you, he views you as a resource to be strip-mined. The personnel department is appropiately called "Human Resources" these days. It's just this - why do employees internalize the "passion meme" without any trace of cynicism, and why do customers condone the state of affairs?

pimlottc 12y ago
The restaurant business, particular back-of-house, is particular bad in this respect. Working conditions in most kitchens are horrible - long hours, uncomfortable environments, physical demanding, often dangerous and horribly underpaid with few benefits. But yet, people do it. They know they are getting screwed over, they know they are often destroying their bodies, but they keep on doing it. Because people who want to cook are truly passionate about it. Cooking for someone is an incredible intimate and loving act; one that no amount of corporatism or job function abstraction can dispel. It is an act in which the symbolism and the functionalism are inseparable. When you are serving food, you are literally nourishing people. You are literally providing the substance they need to survive. You are literally crafting, with your own hands, the matter that will become a literal part of another human being. Such a primal act naturally stirs a lot of passion, but likewise, as you say, great opportunities for abuse. Most kitchen employees don't make terribly much more than minimum wage. In expensive cities like San Francisco or New York, it's almost impossible to make a living wage. Even in high-end restaurants.
- taivare 12y ago
  Most of the back-of-house employees in restaurant sector have dependency issues, booze and drugs and management is always aware of it. Go in the back lot where they park and you will special plates on more then one car, in my state the plates are all yellow. If the restaurant industry ever drug tested like the drug store chains do they would easily lose sixty-percent of back of the house staff.
swayvil 12y ago
The cynicism is utter, grasshopper. It's simply that everybody lies constantly. And when everybody is lying constantly, habitually, the consensus reality becomes seriously donked. Many of us start questioning our sanity.
skore 12y ago
> "Für sechs Groschen, Fritz, ist's heute genug" I'm puzzled over the statement that this is supposedly hard to translate. Both translations offered miss the important distinction of tying the soldiers pay to their willingness to go above and beyond. Let me make an attempt: > "That's quite enough for six dimes, today, Fritz." That being said: I'm not sure it's smart to insist on binding your passion only to the money you make from its product. For things like being a soldier, that may be more true than other professions, but there are very few challenges that can only ever be compensated monetarily. I know it's a common exploitation trope to tell people to not think about the money too much and instead appreciate the experience. However, a lot of people are so focused on never being even slightly exploited in that way that they do miss out on all the potential experiences - sometimes precisely the kind of experiences that would put them in a position where they could be on the better end of that equation.

pimlottc 12y ago

The restaurant business, particular back-of-house, is particular bad in this respect. Working conditions in most kitchens are horrible - long hours, uncomfortable environments, physical demanding, often dangerous and horribly underpaid with few benefits. But yet, people do it. They know they are getting screwed over, they know they are often destroying their bodies, but they keep on doing it. Because people who want to cook are truly passionate about it. Cooking for someone is an incredible intimate and loving act; one that no amount of corporatism or job function abstraction can dispel. It is an act in which the symbolism and the functionalism are inseparable. When you are serving food, you are literally nourishing people. You are literally providing the substance they need to survive. You are literally crafting, with your own hands, the matter that will become a literal part of another human being. Such a primal act naturally stirs a lot of passion, but likewise, as you say, great opportunities for abuse. Most kitchen employees don't make terribly much more than minimum wage. In expensive cities like San Francisco or New York, it's almost impossible to make a living wage. Even in high-end restaurants.

taivare 12y ago
Most of the back-of-house employees in restaurant sector have dependency issues, booze and drugs and management is always aware of it. Go in the back lot where they park and you will special plates on more then one car, in my state the plates are all yellow. If the restaurant industry ever drug tested like the drug store chains do they would easily lose sixty-percent of back of the house staff.

swayvil 12y ago

The cynicism is utter, grasshopper. It's simply that everybody lies constantly. And when everybody is lying constantly, habitually, the consensus reality becomes seriously donked. Many of us start questioning our sanity.

skore 12y ago

> "Für sechs Groschen, Fritz, ist's heute genug" I'm puzzled over the statement that this is supposedly hard to translate. Both translations offered miss the important distinction of tying the soldiers pay to their willingness to go above and beyond. Let me make an attempt: > "That's quite enough for six dimes, today, Fritz." That being said: I'm not sure it's smart to insist on binding your passion only to the money you make from its product. For things like being a soldier, that may be more true than other professions, but there are very few challenges that can only ever be compensated monetarily. I know it's a common exploitation trope to tell people to not think about the money too much and instead appreciate the experience. However, a lot of people are so focused on never being even slightly exploited in that way that they do miss out on all the potential experiences - sometimes precisely the kind of experiences that would put them in a position where they could be on the better end of that equation.