At first encounter of a new acquaintance, we inquire about that person's work type. This may be partly for purposes of conversation, but there is much more to it than that. As a society we have stratified ourselves into classes and types. We inquire of a person's work status and classification, and as a society we have quantified and qualified the various classes of work and measured each other by an almost tacitly agreed to variable tied to work type . The almost catholic ethos that work is noble has been reformulated in this nation.
Work is honorable and ennobling, depending on the type of work one does .
All work is noble we say, but certain types are viewed as more noble than others. And the types we have selected as the most noble are not the teachers, social workers, nurses, street cleaners, child care workers, etc., but lawyers, bankers, corporate executives, singers, actors, and now, the high tech and computer geeks because of their newly rich status. Martin Luther King, Jr., said that it does not make any difference what you do. If you are a dog catcher or a street sweeper, be the best that you can be because all work is noble . However, W. H. Auden once attempted to distinguish work from labor by saying that labor is when one engages in a job he finds no interest in but is compelled by necessity to work the job to support his family.