During a conversation with my manager this morning, she mentioned that her manager– the district manager– had told her that “We want people who are passionate about our products. We don’t want people working here if they’re doing it for the money.”
To which the manager (internally, because she doesn’t want to be fired), went “you’ve got to be fucking shitting me.”
Here’s the thing: it is totally possible to do a job for the passion and not be obsessively thinking about the money every minute of every day. In fact, there have been economic studies regarding that very thing.
You know when it starts?
When the employee in question is making $50-75k per year.*
That’s the starting point of financial security. That’s the point when you’re fairly secure that you’re going to have rent, food, and basic living expenses covered.
I’ve worked a lot of jobs over the years. A lot.
I saw the same working as a freelancer– when I charged lower rates, my clients treated me like shit and acted like they were doing me a favor; when I charged more, they respected me as a professional. A newspaper that started out paying me above market wage also treated me very kindly, because they started with the assumption that I was a human being who needs to eat.
In my experience, the employers that insist that your job be your “passion” are also the ones that pay you nothing and treat you like garbage. It’s exactly like abusive people, who tell you that you would put up with their abuse if you “loved them enough”. It’s a way of convincing the victim that they’re responsible for their own mistreatment, which is absolutely fucked up.
Here’s my advice to you:
It is absolutely okay to take a job that doesn’t pay you what you deserve– you’ve got to eat, after all. But don’t think for a second that you have a responsibility to that job. If you see something available that pays better and treats you better, take it and don’t look back. Don’t waste an ounce of sympathy for employers who try to convince you that passion is an acceptable substitute for survival.
If they want you to be passionate about your work with them, they should be treating you wtih the respect they give to people who ARE passionate about their products.
Also: your employer doesn’t own your soul, and can’t ask for it.
what they want, whether they know it or not, is people who can convincingly lie about being passionate.
Right now you can go and take our followup, the Fansplaining Definitions Survey! We’re trying to come to a collective definition of “fanfiction” as a word (among other things.
Go take the survey now! Then, spread it to as many people as you can. Last time we got over 7,000 respondents—let’s see if we can top it!
Guyyyyyys. We’re SO excited about this survey but we can’t do it without you sharing it—not just with your fanfic friends, but with everybody you know. Help a fangirl out?
Take this survey, guys – this is fascinating!
Yes it is! Among other questions on how to define fanfic, there’s a section on ‘does this (published? i’m not sure about all of them) work count as fanfic’ and I was surprised at how few I had heard of, and even the ones I’d heard of I didn’t know enough to give an opinion
Anyone who can, please take this survey! Agreed on “never heard of this” for many of the examples of fanfiction, which goes to show that there are lots of little niches for everyone everywhere and knowing all about our own corner of Fandom certainly doesn’t exhaust the possibilities.
I googled for the published texts I didn’t recognize (most I found I understood at least as a type after reading their Goodreads page, etc) and then tried fitting them into my written definition of fanfic on the previous page of the survey…it was tough, but super enlightening.
beginning the process of going through over 300 pages of likes and adding them to the queue. this won’t take place all at once (only 300 things can fit in the queue and i’m gonna want to reblog more than not even one thing per page) so…prepare yourselves for me actually reblogging
