Stop Asking People About Work All The Time

The sun is shining warmly but gently, the cooler is filled to the brim with beer, the guac is to die for, there are five dessert options, and you're surrounded by a bunch of awesome people you haven't seen in awhile. This is the life. Parties are awesome. Now, the host is introducing you to a stranger. You exchange the obligatory nice-to-meet-yous, and then they hit you with it: "So, what do you do?"

All of a sudden, the joy is sucked out of you as the existential dread hits you hard. The existential dread that you had been so happy and grateful to escape for a few hours is back with a vengeance. All you want to do now is punch this stranger in the face. Why did they have to ask that question!!!???

Okay, so that's a bit of dramatic exaggeration, but the emotional core is true as hell. "What do you do?" is one of the most common small-talk questions ever asked, and usually one of the first, which makes sense because we spend so much our lives working. It's only natural something that eats up a third of our weekdays will be an obvious target. However, it's absolutely insane that this is normal, considering how horrible and hurtful that question can be. Anyone who has ever gone through a bout of unemployment, career change, or job unhappiness knows what I'm talking about.

That question from strangers (and it's sister questions from acquaintances/friends/family: "What are you working on now?" and "How's work going?") can be a pleasant invitation to talk about something you're really jazzed about, or it can be the unwelcome reminder of the pain you don't want to talk about and wanted to escape. It doesn't really matter if asked with good intentions; it's still destructive.

How can these questions be so bad? Well, they're part of a larger problem: our identities are usually far too tied to our careers. It's only natural that our careers make up a key part of our identities, for the same reason it's only natural people ask about it: we spend so much damn time working. Plus, our careers generally provide a consistent platform for us to do something for the world, to produce or provide things for the world. Our careers can help us be useful and feel useful.

When we derive meaning or satisfaction from our careers, then it's healthy for it to be a key component in our identity. The problem is that most of us make it a much larger component of our identity than it should be. It isn't just one of the main courses, it's the appetizer, salad, sides, and dessert too. When we get the balance wrong and career takes control of our identity, we run into major trouble.

Whenever things don't go well at work, we're out of a job, or change our career, we have an identity crisis. We feel awful about ourselves because we're not feeling useful. We feel depressed, confused, and anxious because we don't know who we are anymore. We become pessimistic and look at everything with a negative perspective because we're having a negative experience with the one big basket we put most—or all—of our eggs in. Hell, even when our career is great, if too much our identity is dependent on it, we're mentally and emotionally imbalanced, brewing an identity crisis waiting to explode all over the mental health kitchen.

There are a lot of reasons why we tend to invest too much of our identity stock into our careers. It's a complex and multi-faceted issue that I certainly can't address or resolve in one blog post. Nor can I claim to be an expert or that I fully understand it. What I can do is address one of the major players: the frequent and commonplace asking of what people do for a living or how work is going. 

These questions are not solely responsible for the identity issue, but they are most definitely contributors. Because they're asked so often, because work is one of the primary topics of small-talk, and because it's usually the first topic asked about, it only encourages us to regard it as one of the most significant things in our life and therefore identify more strongly with it than is necessary and healthy. By asking about it so much and usually first, we make it a bigger deal than it should be. Moreover, it imposes limits to what's acceptable to be part of our identity. When everyone asks us about our work life instead of the other interesting stuff we're into or have going on, we feel that the other aspects of our life aren't worthy of identifying strongly with. We feel that work is of the utmost importance.

Not that it isn't important. Of course it is, but let's face it, we make too big a stink over it. There are lots of ways for people to be and feel useful outside of work: raising kids, volunteering, helping others, building things, making art, learning new things, teaching, mentoring, coaching, contributing ideas, complimenting people, etc. This list could go on for pages and pages.

The point is, there are so many things for people to round out their identity portfolio with. And while this option is always available to people, we're all collectively making it harder by giving career front and center stage, by giving it more attention than it deserves. One way to improve that is to stop always asking people what they do for a living or how their working life is going.

I'm not saying to never ask about it; that would be silly. Just, let's stop making it the first and primary small-talk question when meeting someone for the first time or seeing someone we know in a non-intimate situation. I don't really have hard and fast rules, just a few suggestions:

1. Always keep in mind that someone might be unemployed, in the midst of career change, or unhappy with their job. All of these are painful experiences that no one wants to make small talk about with strangers or at fun events with friends and family. Sometimes, the best thing someone needs is a temporary escape from their misery.
   
   
2. If you do want to ask about and express concern for someone you know who is going through a hard time in their career, never do it in a public or jovial situation. Wait until you're in a private and intimate situation when they'll feel comfortable discussing their troubles and actually be open to it. Don't ever put them on the spot around strangers or in big groups.
   
   
3. Try and ask open-ended questions when meeting someone or catching up. It gives people equal opportunity to share stuff they really want to share or be private about their troubles. I'm not sure what the right questions are because most of us are really bad with "Tell me about yourself" and "So what's new?" But I think a lot of that is due to us not having enough practice with open-ended questions. If these become the norm rather than direct questions about our career, we'll all slowly learn to step up our conversation game.
   
   
4. Find ways to ask about the other aspects of people's lives. If you don't know any or they aren't good with open-ended questions, look for clues in what they're wearing, tidbits they let slip or you overhear. Or heck, you can always ask what they did with their free time that week. That is still open-ended but with a smaller window of time to reference, making it easier for them to think on their toes.
   
   
5. If you're introducing strangers to each other, be creative with your introduction. Introduce them with interesting tidbits about each other that a) would be engaging topics of conversation and b) you know they won't mind talking about.

I don't have all the answers to the problem of our identities being too dependent on our careers and the identity crises that follow suit, but I do know that one simple thing we can do to help out is stop making it such a big and common topic of conversation. There's more to life than careers, so let's ask and talk about other stuff!