Every day, in every community there are people who dedicate some of their time and skill to perform tasks for no monetary reward at all. I’m not talking about the drug dealer in street corners offering unsuspecting youngsters their first hit for free. I’m talking about people who are genuinely working for free.
Often, they don’t really make a big deal of it and will only really let you know about it if you ask. Or if it comes up in conversation. Their tasks vary in terms of every conceivable task you can imagine. From sweeping, to cleaning, to admin tasks, to hard labour, to tutoring or sitting in meetings. What a massive irony considering that just about every task or human function has over time been on a journey to monetisation. There are so many services you can pay for including but not limited to tutoring, baby sitting, carwashing, shoe polishing, sneaker washing…it’s an almost infinite list. Don’t believe me? Well did you know that there are now people paid as professional cuddlers? Yes you read it correctly, there are people who are paid to cuddle other people. Here is a link if you want to read up more on this!
So my question is this…in an era where just about every service can be monetised, why do we have so many people working for free? Im talking about volunteers of all varieties. Why do we get people every day offering to provide services to society for free, when the current zeitgeist is for all services to be monetised? In my community we had someone put out communication for the community to come together to clean up a local park. Many people showed up with their tools and spent a day in the sun sweating until the park looked really good. At my local Church many services are provided exclusively by volunteers. You put out a message that you need help with something and in most cases people volunteer to help and show up. These are just examples but these types of examples play out across most societies in the world (I can’t prove this, but I have strong hunch). At my most audacious I could say that if I were to put out communication in my office building that I needed help for a specific community task, I would certainly get some people showing up. The response would not be zero. Why on earth are we agreeing to partake in work that has zero monetary reward?
I think it is is something to do with the idea that humans may not be inherently evil. At our core is a desire to help other people and make things better. Maybe the lessons learned from our parents or pre school teacher begin to bear fruit in our adult lives. Maybe we don’t feel comfortable when things are not going well and we know we can make them better. Maybe we feel guilty when we do not assist. Or maybe we just have the inability to say no, even when we really want to. It is not possible for us to sit back and do nothing when someone has explicitly informed us that they need help. More importantly once we have volunteered we really like to bask in the feeling of having helped and done the right thing.
So if you are employed and are engaged in some or other commercial venture and feel you have a thankless job. Just remember, those thoughts are misleading because there are real thankless and moneyless jobs out there. And they are not difficult to find, if you really want to find them.
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