The Pandemic Has Exposed the Fallacy of the “Ideal Worker”

For decades, wo rk has been --- and continues to be --- a major aspect of the American identity. "Most people identify themselves as workers," said Damaske. "It's an identity that adults willingly take on."  The pandemic changed that for everyone, not just the youngest workers. In addition to reassessing their relationship to work, people are ... See more

So the ideal worker norm — this is a term coined by Joan Acker. The ideal worker norm is the idea that adults today should be fully committed and entirely devoted to their jobs and their employers — available at a moment’s notice, unencumbered by external responsibilities that might diminish from their ability to perform their jobs well.

And competi... See more

There’s a genuine reorientation in the nation’s labor philosophy, and it seems to grow more fervent with each passing day. “As a result of the pandemic, most people realized that a seemingly safe job or industry can change overnight, and we really can’t predict those circumstances,” says Dorie Clark, a professor at Duke’s Fuqua School of Business a... See more

Indeed, most of Corporate America punished the women and men who opted to work from home, believing a dated lie that one can’t be as productive or an effective member of a team without sharing the physical world with others. To make the sale, you had to break bread with the customer. To hire the employee, you had to go out for drinks. Yet, in a dig... See more

Meanwhile, as if to compensate for an increasingly precarious economy, our fantasies about work have grown, if anything, more intense. Hard work is likely the most universally cherished American value. One recent Pew survey found that 80 percent of Americans describe themselves as “hardworking”—outstripping all other traits. Work has gotten worse, ... See more

Since the 1970s, productivity has grown at 3.5 times the rate of pay for American workers. Precarious employment has risen by 9 per cent since the late 1980s, and we have seen extraordinarily high levels of burnout in the workforce. In short, we are underpaid, insecure, and burned out. And yet the achievement society – with its injunction to be mor

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