Stories:Vygis' Philosophy Of Jobs

Author: C3PO. A long time ago, back when Vygis pretty much settled into his job at the NRC in Rockville, Lisa and I were dating and Lisa had her job selling flower girls' dresses out of a kiosk at White Flint Mall, which was coincidentally also in Rockville. As charming as it sounds, Lisa's job had the usual collection of retail annoyances. One day while all three of us were hanging out and Lisa was complaining about her work, Vygis told her his philosophy of jobs. He said that his plan was always the same; first he would get familiar with the job. Then, he said, the trick was to begin changing it. His plan was to take whatever job he had, and eventually transform it into the job he wanted. As an example, he cited his job at the NRC. Vygis' concept of an ideal job was to work as little as possible, sit around surfing the internet all day, make a bunch of friends to shoot the shit with, and become legendary. He didn't say it quite like that, I'm paraphrasing a little bit. However, he had suffered through months of briefly learning electronics at the TESST technical school specifically to steer himself into an I.T. job, and for those of you who have ever worked in I.T., know somebody who works in I.T., or have ever tried to get help from I.T. you know that this job description pretty much describes anybody working in I.T. From TESST, Vygis retained only what he needed to know to manage Windows PC's, worked hard for a while at the NRC, but by the time he left it was a supremely easy gig. When he started at Debt Shield, I observed him executing his plan again step by step. He began that job as a fearful, overworked drone, but by the time the operation closed down he had a luxury office in the catwalk area overlooking the work floor, with his own couch, desk filled with toys, surrounded by plants, and friends coming by to visit him all day long and surf the internet with him. Requesting and astonishingly getting two weeks off every summer for tours out west was not only something possible under this plan, it was one of the forces that added to his legend on the job. 
The interesting thing about learning Vygis' philosophy of jobs is that knowing it has improved my own work experiences. As a contractor, I find that at the start of each new assignment that I get it's usually crap with a lot of compromises and stupidity imposed by the standard way things are managed. But I've found that instead of playing that game and caring about all that stuff, I can just do things my own way and watch out for opportunities to change things, and the job will begin to transform into something more fun, eventually becoming the job that I like doing and am suited to. Asking for unusual time off always ends up working to my advantage, just like it did for Vygis. And every once in a while I'll spot somebody else at the workplace who also has figured out the secret and is also covertly using the same tricks.
At the end of the Debt Shield job, ejected once more into the cold world, Vygis had to begin again at Frequentis. During the short couple of years that he worked there, he felt fearful and outmatched by his coworkers, but worked hard to keep up. Although the goal of transforming the job seemed distant under these conditions, he already had a couple of Summer Tours under his belt after the first two years, and his legend was beginning to grow. His coworkers from Frequentis that I met at Vygis' memorial services seemed unaware of what a struggle it had been for him; they all had stories of things he had done that had already made them fond of him. It would have been quite interesting to see what his job could have looked like in a few more years.
Category:Stories
Category:Author:Charles Dickson
Category:Jobs
Category:Jobs:NRC
Category:Jobs:Debt Shield
Category:Jobs:Frequentis