Wearing multiple hats in public would look totally silly, but these days, “wearing many hats” in the workplace is basically a resume requirement.
Anyone who’s applied for a job in the last, hmm, let’s say, 10 years, has felt the burn of needing to be multifaceted. Despite the degrees, the experience, and the innate charisma of a desperate prospect, job seekers are pressured to take on way more than the average employee and are expected to have the same level of work ethic even after they’ve been onboarded. As if getting hired isn’t a full-time job on its own, with some job offers requiring 1-2 months of interviews, back-and-forths, and “we’ll get back to yous,” once an interviewee is officially hired, that’s when the real work begins.
Suddenly, management expects workers to take on more and more, until their job description hardly resembles what they were promised in their offer letter.
As if being a hard worker wasn’t enough, once an employee has transcended and become irreplaceable, they must take on many new roles, putting on as many hats as they can fit on their heads. Not literally, of course, but to a company, ie: the overlords who control your paycheck, wearing multiple hats in the workplace just means that you’re a single employee who’s willing to take on many different job positions without a title change or a raise. “Huzzah!” say the higher-ups, cheering on the other side of their glass ceiling because, from the views of their ivory tower, all they see are hard-working little worker bees buzzing below. On the surface, we are a “family,” but in reality, if an employer demands their workforce take on more work than what’s possible in a 9-5 capacity, that’s not a relative relationship anymore.
Luckily, we have the good fortune of being wiser than that, giving 100% of what we’re due for in pay and cashing out every 10-minute break, every lunch, and every speck of PTO until we climb the ladder and earn the title of a single, perfectly fitting hat. Until then, workers have memes to help them get through the shift, laughing with their favorite coworker until 5 PM rolls along, and we repeat the process once more.
0 Comments