Passion in the workplace

Sadly, this post will not be as steamy as the title implies. Though I did meet my husband at work, and I've heard of more than one rendezvous in the server room, that's not the kind of passion I'm talking about.

I recently had the opportunity to volunteer with a company called Toolworks in San Francisco. The organization provides many services, including employent, for adults with disabilities, as well as those who are homeless or at-risk. They also run a bakery that not only employs some of their clients, but also brings in money for the organization.

As part of a skills-based volunteering program at work, I spent a week last summer at Toolworks. I and two co-workers spent a week at Toolworks redoing the website for Hayes Valley Bakeworks and setting up some analytics and search advertising campaigns for them.

There tends to be an arrogance in corporate American, and especially in Silicon Valley. We think that somehow we're smarter than the rest of the world. We think about what corporations can teach nonprofits about how to run more efficient businesses. I came away from my week at Toolworks thinking also about what nonprofits can teach corporate American. Here are a couple of those lessons. I'm sure there are more.

You've done enough today. Sometimes I'm overwhelmed with the amount of work there is to be done at my job. Silicon Valley tech companies like to try to solve big problems. And we need to do it faster and better than anyone else. But the work we have, with seemingly endless resources at our disposal, is not nearly as difficult as the type of work nonprofits have to do. These organizations serve populations who have the greatest level of need and the fewest resources. Caring for people who are homeless, who struggle with mental illness or developmental disabilities is a really hard job, and no one's getting rich doing it.

I met one of the Toolwork's clients, who has a full time aide provided by the organization. Because of her help, this client is able to live in an apartment with a roommate, communicate with others, and live as a part of the community. No one organization is going to solve homelessness or the housing crisis. Sometimes the small picture is what's important. Make an impact every day.

Passion: I do not think it means what you think it means. In Silicon Valley, we talk a lot about passion. Interview candidates are often rejected because "they're just not passionate about" television, or cell phones, or B2B cloud solutions, or whatever the company is doing. Is that what we want people to be passionate about?

I really love my job. I think the work we're doing has value, and it's exciting being around new technology. My company makes a thermostat. Am I passionate about thermostats? Not really. But I do think climate change is something to throw some passionate energy behind. People at my company are doing all kinds of projects around topics worth getting passionate over like equal access to information and improving healthcare.

Not everyone can be passionate about what they are doing at work, and that's fine. If you are happy and do a good job, I really don't care if you're passionate about analytics or advertising or meeting fourth quarter expectations. But if you are going to be passionate about something, or if we're going to demand passion from employees, make the work matter.

But What If He's Not So Good At His Job?

So there's this guy. His name is Jim and I know him through blogging. He writes a lovely little blog called Just a Lil Blog and his daughter Lily has autism. He seems like a nice enough guy, though he is always going on about sporns and bacon and orange juice. Don't ask.

Anyway, Jim posted on Target's facebook page a few weeks ago about the cashier he had at his local store. You can read the post, but the gist is that the cashier likely was autistic, and that Target was awesome for hiring him because they recognized that someone who might be a little socially atypical could still do a great job. And this post went all kinds of viral (it's up to about 820,000 likes), and was written up all over the place.

My local Safeway grocery store always employs several people with disabilities. This is a Good Thing. This past summer, there was a young man with a cognitive disability who worked as a bagger. Since I generally went during the weekdays when it wasn't crowded, he was often the only bagger working so I saw him a lot.

This young man was friendly and polite and definitely not good at his job.

It pains me to say it. But he just wasn't a skilled bagger. He was very, very slow. He would fill the bags too light and with no sense of organization. He would stop and comment on silly things in the cart, like the Tasmanian Devil on some juice boxes, and if I had one of the kids with me he would spend a lot of time interacting with them (not always entirely appropriately) instead of bagging. The cashiers were kind and helpful to him, but they also ended up bagging most of the groceries.

And I somewhat shamefully admit that I would, especially if my own developmentally disabled child was with me, avoid his line or use self check-out instead.

This feels me with great cognitive dissonance.

I applaud Safeway for hiring disabled people and I want them to continue this. And if that person needs a little extra time to do his job, it should be no big deal for me or anyone to spend a couple extra minutes in line. Let's be honest, I was just going to waste that time on Facebook anyway.

But sometimes a person just isn't cut out for a particular job. I bet there is a job this young man would be very good at, but it wasn't this one. And I don't know that we do anyone a great service by allowing him to remain in a job that he isn't successful at.

I'm new to the issues of disability rights. In part, it seems, it must be about showing people that a disabled person can do just as good a job as someone without a disability, reducing outright discrimination. But it is more than that, isn't it? Maybe it also means that we also have a responsibility to find meaningful ways for people to interact in the world even if they aren't especially adept at it. I don't know and I don't know where the line is between the two.

I don't see this man at the store any more. I don't know if he was let go. Perhaps he was in a job rotation and his time at Safeway simply concluded. Or maybe his supervisors helped him find work that was more suited to his skills. Whatever the case, I wish him well.