Work Flows to the One Who Wants It

Work flows to the one who wants it.

This statement mystifies my boss. Being a freethinker like myself, he probably thinks it is my rephrasing of the Law of Attraction. But I don't believe in that horseshit. What I do believe is that this statement is elementary common sense.

People hate to work. I don't hate working. I actually like it. Consequently, I find a lot of work to do. This is because people want to give me work. Now, I don't work for free. Work without profit is like sex without orgasm. But I enjoy the sex act as much as the orgasm. With work, people enjoy only the paycheck and not the work. I find this akin to masturbation--orgasm without sex. You can see that the proper analogy explains how someone can love work.

Now, you are a boss. You have Worker A who hates working and shirks it whenever possible. Then, you have Worker B who loves working and does as much as he possibly can. Who would you give the work to? You would have to be an idiot to not say Worker B. Worker A is just an irritant to be tolerated as little as possible.

People pick up on these psychological cues. Would you hire a plumber that hated getting wet? Would you hire a nanny that hated kids? Would you take your car to a mechanic who hated getting his hands dirty? I didn't think so.

The same logic that applies on an individual basis also applies to companies. Imagine this scenario. You own a taxi company that owns Fords and Chevys. You need an auto shop to do maintenance on your vehicle. They inform you they only do work on Fords and not Chevys. Chevys suck. Now, you aren't going to sell your Chevys to appease this auto shop. So, you need an auto shop that likes Chevys. Coincidentally, they have no problem servicing Fords. They don't cherry pick. They do it all. So, the Chevy hating auto shop loses your business, and the auto shop owners are mystified as to why they are going out of business.

The story of Walmart and K-mart highlights this. When K-mart got started, they only put stores in populated metropolitan areas. When I was a kid, the highlight every two weeks was going with mom and dad all the way to Columbia to go to K-mart. We didn't have a K-mart in Camden. Now, there was this guy named Sam Walton who didn't have qualms about putting stores in less populated areas. He wanted the business K-mart didn't want. So, he built those stores all over the country. Camden got a Walmart, and my folks never went to K-mart ever again. The result is now business history. Business flows to the one who wants it. (BTW, Camden has had a K-mart for a few years now, but nobody shops there.)

My brother who is a successful structural engineer knows this lesson. He built his business on the work that larger firms didn't want. The result is that he turns out a lot of work and makes a lot of money doing it. The downside is that he can't find anyone to work for him because they are all lazy as fuck. They all want big dollars to do little work for big firms. The result is that they are unemployed.

The world abounds with work. Work is limitless. Even with double digit unemployment rates, I still see HELP WANTED signs. Of course, these are all for jobs people don't want. But the jobs are there. People just don't want to work. The work is either dirty or degrading or demanding.

If work flows to the one who wants it, the converse is also true. Work flows away from the one who doesn't want it. Everyone has their limit. I won't sell financial products or do gay porn. But I am willing to do a lot of other things and actually enjoy them. My only real trepidation is the fear of failure. I hate to promise what I can't deliver on. This is why I don't pad my resume or oversell myself or brag. I prefer for people to be pleasantly surprised instead of bitterly disappointed.

There is one thing I know about myself. I have not fully indulged my love for work. I want to. I want to binge out on the work thing. I have been held back by whoever I have been dating at the time, but that is no longer an issue for me now. There is no one to nag me or cry or pout. I want all the work I can take, and I have no idea exactly what that limit is. I am going to find out. I want to see just how much work will flow to me.

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