How passion is exploited
We’ve all heard the expression that if you love what you do you’ll never work a day in your life. Or, that if you follow your passion you will find the career that you love. In reality while there are many instances of people finding their professional loves by following their passions. Passion has also become a tool that is used to create unequal and exploitive relationships with work.
When it comes to employers, they look for passion from employees at all levels. They take this passion and use it to engender behaviors that don’t allow for work life balance. Work life balance has faced criticism, as something that doesn’t necessarily promote success. But since success is such a subjective measurement, it will vary on a case-by-case basis. Typically what you will see is the push to work longer hours, take fewer breaks, and go well beyond the extra mile. While this can certainly be seen in specific industries such as finance, tech, and medicine to name a few it is very prevalent in other sectors as well. Most of the time all of these things are a demonstration of your passion and commitment. More often than not those who fail to meet those standards of passion face ridicule and threats of losing jobs or opportunities. Then there are other jobs where you may not face those types of conditions, instead, you face poor working conditions. These tend to be more so based in social good, where the idea is…
