Mundane jobs, Important Realities

We live in a world of ruthless marketing. In all spheres of life attention is grabbed by those who project themselves irrespective of the quality of the work they do. Those who work behind the scenes , sweat their lives out may hardly get noticed for all their efforts. In the case of movies – Satyajit Ray once told the most important person in the film making process is the editor , he can ruin a wonderfully shot movie or make a decent movie out of a badly conceived one. But how many of us remember the names of the editors. How many of us know the sound engineers who perfect the sounds of the heros and heroines we see in the silver screen ?

It is true that all cannot do jobs which hog the limelight. Some may do brilliant jobs for which they may never get noticed. Some have to do routine, mundane jobs which are never going to get recognized and may be even taken for granted – like the person who cleans the streets, removes the blocks in the sewers, your barber, the construction worker, the list is endless. These jobs are important for the society to exist, but they may never seem to be attractive like a work of art or technological product. After all if everybody insists that they will do only highly creative and hi tech jobs, there can only be chaos and heaps of garbage around.

What drives people who do good jobs and never get noticed ? For some, it could be the inner satisfaction that one derives from doing a good job and the passion or love for it. For some , it could be the money that one gets paid at the end of the day for doing the job. Or it could be a combination of both. If you are one of those who do a good job and never get noticed, there are two paths to follow.

One path which is followed by a majority – you can lament to others that how good a job you are doing and nobody is recognizing you, wail in self pity , criticize the system and end up getting frustrated. The second path is you can tell yourself “Look, everybody in this world cannot get a job which gets accolades, some have to do routine jobs which may not get the limelight but certainly, they are going to make a difference to this world . There have been many geniuses who did much fantastic jobs, spent their entire lives in pursuit of excellence and never have got noticed. It is all part of existence”. You can accept the reality and be at peace with yourself. When presented with an opportunity, you can tell about the work you do and the efforts you have put , to your boss or an influential friend who may do the needful to recognize your work. Marketing yourself is an intricate act, it should not be excessive so that it becomes as repulsive as exhibitionism. It should be done with care, moderate levels and at right times and right places. The right tools should be used. If you are very good at communicating you can use conferences, meetings and one to one discussions. If you are a silent type, not confident about your verbal skills, use e-mails or make good power point slides and send it to the right persons. You can even hire the services of somebody who is good at such kind of things.
The bottom line is accept the limitations of the nature of the job you do and be at peace with it. Try to make the best within the limitations rather than lament about it. Next time when you happen to see somebody doing a mundane job done in a good manner, have one or two nice words for him. After all you don’t lose anything , what he gets is a happy and joyful frame of mind and the understanding that he too is “getting noticed”, the most important thing we all want in life, which motivates everybody to work hard.