"What do you do?"
The ethics of judging people by their work
by Simon Longstaff
My childhood was punctuated by a series of edicts (usually pronounced by my father) designed to regulate the bounds of acceptable behaviour. Early maxims included that: “children should be seen and not heard” and the still resonant “hands down, sit up straight, chew well”. I must admit to having moved beyond the immediate reach of most of my father’s advice concerning etiquette.
However, there is one injunction that I still feel pressing down on me … “it’s rude to ask people what they ‘do’!” But, is it?
After all, if my experience is anything to go by, then the ‘what you do’ question is alive and well – the widely accepted default question in use when meeting a person for the first time. It goes like this … a few moments of inconsequential banter about the weather, the ‘bloody umps’, décor, etc. then … (pause) … “What do you do?”. I reply (hopefully), “I run an ethics centre.” “Oh …” The conversation rarely proceeds much beyond this point – ending with a “What’s that?”, followed by a disengaged glance across my shoulder in search of a more interesting person (an investment banker, perhaps).
I have heard it suggested by some that the reason not to ask a person about their job is that it is just plain rude – a potential breech of privacy or a potential cause of embarrassment. In general, I don’t think that there’s much to be said for the privacy argument. After all, it’s not as if most of us deliberately hide the nature of our employment. It’s true that unless you wear a uniform of some sort, then it’s fairly hard to work out what anyone does – by just looking. But the blandness of most work attire is not a deliberate attempt to hide our occupation – just the accidental camouflage of ordinary life.
On the other hand, there are a few jobs that people do without wanting to advertise the fact – necessary to the functioning of society, but on the outer, darker fringes of life (newspaper columnists, etc). Indeed, the potential for embarrassment about one’s work can be real. Just imagine the shrinking feeling that must come over a tobacco company exec attending a hospital fund raiser when the dreaded question is put. I wonder how many invent a new job on the spot! Even so, I do not think that the weight of objection to the ‘what do you do?’ question lies in its power to reveal controversial facts about our work choices.
When people ask me about my work and turn away looking bored by my answer, the problem is not that I have been judged to be relatively uninteresting – for perhaps I am. Rather, I object to the fact that this conclusion is reached purely on the strength of my job!
Of course, it’s not just philosophers who are likely to generate a response of barely disguised indifference. I started my working life as a cleaner on Groote Eylandt in the Gulf of Carpentaria. I might be the most fascinating character alive today – conqueror of Everest, Nobel Peace Laureate, Booker Prize winner, a new Einstein – and still score a yawn if ever I introduced myself as a ‘service attendant’ (the pumped up title for my role on Groote).
The principal ethical objection to the practice of asking people ‘what they do’ is that any answer is taken as a proxy for the respondent’s worth as a person. That is, the tendency to judge people according to what they ‘do’ is at odds with the principle of respect for persons (the core idea being that every person has intrinsic worth irrespective of age, gender, religion, culture … you get the picture). The quality of a person is no more a function of their job than is their intelligence a function of where they went to school.
One objection to the position I am putting here might be that I am mistaken in thinking that people judge others, summarily, according to their job. It could be argued that asking “what do you do?” is simply a convenient way to get started in a conversation – that all answers are equal (nothing more than a point of interest) and that the question is superior to alternatives such as “who are you?”, “where do you come from?”, etc. It is possible that some questions about a person’s work are asked without any intention to use the answer to ‘pigeon-hole’ the respondent.
However, if this is so, then why not ask a better question in the first place? For example, how about starting a conversation, with a stranger by asking, “where do your interests lie?”
discuss this articleDr Simon Longstaff is Executive Director of St James Ethics Centre.
This article was first published in The Sunday Age on 17 June 2007.
© St James Ethics Centre