my post-modern summer job

“Just drive around and look busy,” were the instructions our crew would receive most mornings.

We worked for the local school district’s facilities and maintenance department as temporary summer employees; assigned to assist in those extra projects that could only be completed in the months when the schools were empty.  Re-waxing floors, cleanings desks and furniture, painting or repainting buildings and classrooms, emptying out gutters…general up-keep.  That summer I was assigned to the moving crew: furnishing new schools, refurnishing old schools, delivering new materials and removing old ones, moving teachers around, ect.

It was a job with work that ebbed and flowed.  Some weeks work orders were bountiful, other weeks we were lucky to get a single one.  It was during those dry spells that one put into practice the art of “looking busy.”  We would get into our moving vans and drive around aimlessly, burning through the district supplied gas.  

The three golden rules of “looking busy” were: don’t let anyone know that you aren’t busy; don’t hang around one spot for too long; and never ever leave the school district zone.

There were several approaches to this art.  The younger and less experienced practitioners opted for the “risky approach.”  The endless driving through the relatively small designated area quickly become boring to them.  They would push the limits.  Seeking out hiding places where they could sleep in their vans; visiting their houses to play video games and watch television; and exploring places outside of the designated zone.  The second approach, “the mid-risk approach” involved staying within the confines of the district, but doing as little driving as possible by visiting co-worker friends in other work crews, hanging out with custodians, and making as many pit stops as possible.

The final approach, whose sole practitioner was our moving crew boss, an 11-year full-time district employee, was the “safe approach.”  He had found the longest possible route around the designated district lines, and spent eight straight hours every single day doing laps around it.  The route passed by most of the schools in the district, so there was always a plausible claim that he was on his way to one school or another.

To some, the idea of not having any work and just having to “look busy” sounded like a dream, compared to actually working.  But the reality was that looking busy was much harder than being busy.  Looking busy always entailed some level of risk and paranoia.  Even if one subscribed to the “safe approach,” there was always the possibility that someone high up on the district ladder could call your bluff, and you would be reprimanded or fired.  This reality took its psychological toll.  

So, too, did the general state of standing idle.  When a person is busy, there is a certain primordial satisfaction at getting something done, regardless of the work.  Working will tend to make a person feel useful, and it helps to keep your mind occupied.  Looking busy was excruciatingly boring, and empty of any meaning.  At the end of the “work” day you felt guilty and useless.

Looking busy wasn’t for everyone.  A co-worker friend, a workaholic farm boy, could not accept the idea that someone could ask you to simply pretend to work without actually accomplishing anything.  He would burn through work orders and then demand more, and when he didn’t get any he would go out looking to help other crews.  He quickly got on the nerves of our bosses.  “He works too hard,” our boss would grumble.  It didn’t take long for them to let him go.

Work and the appearance of work had become inextricably intertwined.  It wasn’t only the production that the bosses upstairs cared about, but also (and more importantly) the appearance of production.  If everyone could simply do a good enough job pretending to work, then that would be proof enough to our bosses that work was being done.

Sometimes, when I was on one of those endless drives, I would imagine that all the workers I saw--the roadside construction workers, the delivery vehicle drivers, the police officers, the convenience store managers--weren’t really working, but just doing a really good job pretending to work.  I would suddenly get the urge to roll down my window and yell at them, “This is not work!”