LinkedIndifferent
There's no such thing as the One Good Worker.
I reactivated my LinkedIn account several months ago when I began looking for a new job. It’s not that I really needed or even wanted a LinkedIn presence. Rather, I felt like my potential employers would want me to be searchable, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic where virtual interviews became the norm. See if I was a real person, if I could be a “young professional”, if I was connected to the right people. It’s the presentation of the 21st century worker that seems to matter more than what you could actually bring to the table.
The remolding and remodeling of myself in each interview, trying to fill every polygonal hole in their organization. I sent a LinkedIn request to the CEO of a fundraising startup I interviewed for, but he never responded to my message. I chase ghosts until I get a cold paragraph in my inbox stating “we chose another candidate”. Most of the time, I never heard back from organizations that were active on social media, claiming to be better about the hiring process.
In the end, I guess having a LinkedIn worked in my favor. I got the job I currently have now. I received a surge of connection requests from my coworkers, former colleagues, local people with similar job titles. It’s all about where you work or who you know. Networking, that dreadful word.
My LinkedIn profile is pretty basic. I have a bio, my recent employment history, along with volunteer work and endorsed skills. You can even add your pronouns. It’s encouraged on LinkedIn to connect with people you don’t know, people who may be three degrees of separation from you and your colleagues, but I hesitate adding strangers. I especially do not trust the connection requests from older white men in their 50s or 60s who aren’t even in the same career field or state as me. As a woman online, I learned long ago that pervs and creeps exist on every social media platform, no matter how professional it claims to be.
I try to share articles I find to actually be interesting reads, share progressive topics such as inclusivity and race in the workplace, and occasionally repost articles about student loan debt. But I have no desire to brand myself as some Millennial in the workforce. I just do what I can and move on.
Established in 2003 as an alternative to job listing websites and recruiting websites, LinkedIn has remained the water cooler-in-the-corner place of social media, not garnering infamy or widespread change in the communications world. LinkedIn is slow to adapt new features, much like the job listings of yore. After Microsoft purchased the site in 2016, LinkedIn pivoted to include Facebook-like comments and reactions to articles and posts. In 2019, reactions like support, celebrate, love, insightful, and curious were added. No “dislike” or “disagree”. No inherently negative reactions. I find the additional reactions are redundant; if you support the topic or headline, you probably like it to some extent. However, the likes and comments aren’t what bother me.
In my months of using the website, I’ve identified a common type of post shared on LinkedIn. I call it the “One Good Worker” post.
Here’s an example from one I saw today while scrolling my feed.
The One Good Worker is any person of any gender or age who embodies selfless sacrifice for their job (often a low paying customer service job, but not always). The One Good Worker is noticed by or talked about in a social media post by the original poster. There’s a heartful exchange, and the original poster recognizes their problems aren’t as bad as the One Good Worker’s, who dutifully provides satisfactory customer service without complaint or excuse. Hashtag, hashtag, like, engagement, comments.
You can find the One Good Worker in the local news too, as a small blurb among the bigger headlines. A young girl with leukemia raises 20,000 dollars for treatment through her lemonade stand. A man who walked 10 miles to work and back every day for 20 years is gifted a brand new car by his coworkers. A waitress gets a thousand-dollar tip from some guy who just stopped in for a bite to eat. This is inspiring, right?
Not really. The old man, for the sake of believing the original poster’s story, had skin cancer and is working a delivery job. This old man shouldn’t be praised for providing customer service. This old man should be recuperating at home from skin cancer. This old man, in a better world, would not feel pressured to work despite being partially disabled.
Though I hesitate in 100% believing this situation happened, the attitude is pervasive enough. Similar stories like this that are reposted, tweaked, and shared on LinkedIn among other leadership professionals to make themselves feel better and to display some level of wokeness or relatability. There’s the “I hired a homeless man and now he’s a CEO and gives back to the community” post. A more feminist-leaning post could be “I allowed a new mother to breastfeed her infant during our Zoom interview”. It’s endless and almost hilarious. Almost.
American work ethic is predicated on the perceived suffering and bootstrap-ism by those who already had the resources to jumpstart their careers in the first place, whether by nepotism, having the funds to complete an expensive internship, and so on. This warped belief thrives on the imaginary One Good Worker among the very-real workers underpinning the lifestyles many of us take for granted.
A single mother dies in her car between working three jobs. College students graduate into yet another “once in a lifetime” recession with five to six figures of student loan debt. Inherited wealth dries up with every new generation born; any liquefiable assets remaining in the family pay for increased costs of elderly care, childcare, college. Who knew trickle-down economics was a crock of shit? Thanks, Reagan.
People are living longer and not retiring, choosing to work until their 60s and 70s either by choice or circumstance. Some remain VPs and CEOs despite a rapidly changing workplace. Employees in middle positions are then stuck in their roles, unable to move up and therefore blocking the incoming generational wave of new workers. So job hopping happens. Younger employees bounce after 2, 3 years when it becomes evident that their heads hit the organization’s pay ceiling. Wages stagnate. Cost of living goes up. Other duties as assigned creep into the job. Stress. Burnout. There’s no point in staying loyal to a company when at-will employment exists in virtually every level of the job industry.
So we keep moving on. And moving on. And moving on.
I’m not an economist or a journalist or a sociologist, but I am a person with a job. I do what I can to pay my bills, keep a roof over my head, and maybe spend a few bucks on things that make my life worth living. I’m in debt and my credit score keeps slipping because of said debts. I’ll never pay off my student loans. I don’t have much of a savings account. At almost 30 years old, I have my first salaried job after years of earning hourly wages. I live in an apartment complex that has increased its rent for the third year in a row.
In 1991, my parents had a starter house, decent paying jobs, and a kid (me) at the age of 30. Granted, the Great Recession f*cked them over, but at least they had a chance. A head start, if you will.
The repeating message I (and many other Millennials) heard growing up in the 1990s and pre-Great Recession years was Go To College. If you don’t go to college, you’ll *pearls a-clutching* end up in food service. Go to college. Get a degree. Get a job. Start from the bottom and work your way up. Make money. Have a life. Buy a house. Get married. Have children. Raise the family. Two weeks’ vacation. Retire. Rediscover passions. Die.
But the ladder is broken. A bachelor’s degree isn’t enough anymore. Go to grad school. Bad mistake. Now you earn 11/hour. Get a side gig. Get a better job than flipping burgers. Hustle and grind. Isn’t that why you went to school? Just work harder. It’s your fault you didn’t get a better job. Start your own business. Be your own boss. Work harder. Don’t rely on handouts. Get a PhD. F*ck, the job market is awful. Find a job you love and you’ll never work a day in your life. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps. Not wearing any boots? Too damn bad. You didn’t work hard enough.
I started this piece to make fun of LinkedIn’s obliviously privileged atmosphere, maybe poke at a bad poem authored by a self-proclaimed tech guru, but I’m the one pushing the boulder uphill, a misstep away from backsliding into the pit.
I want to be enough for the jobs I have and will have in the future. To afford a semblance of the life I and so many others were promised.
I do not want to be the One Good Worker. I just want to be me.