This is the quiet truth of institutional work: improvement doesn't buy freedom. It buys responsibility without ownership.
This guest essay by longtime correspondent 0bserver describes the core dynamics of work in America and the global economy: if we don't own our work, we only "rent" our income and the life it funds. I discuss the process of owning your work in my book Get A Job, Build a Real Career and Defy a Bewildering Economy. The system doesn't make it easy to own your work, and this isn't accidental.
Modern work promises freedom but delivers dependence.
The language is flattering--flexibility, opportunity, growth--but the structure is rigid. You don't own the work. You rent access to it. Your time, attention, and energy are leased month to month, contingent on priorities you do not control.
In theory, performance compounds.
In practice, it resets.
Every quarter resets the scoreboard.
Every month resets the scoreboard.
Often, every week.
I learned this twice, in the same industry, in two very different environments.
The first time, I stood in the open.
The second time, I sat in a chair.
The Kiosk
The kiosk sat in the middle of the mall. No walls. No back room. Shirt and tie. Ironed. Serious enough to signal legitimacy, close enough to retail to remain disposable.
Friday morning sales meetings were held off the floor in a business office. Everyone was half-awake, suits pressed, coffee, doing little. The whiteboard showed the same columns it always did: new contracts, renewals, data attachment, accessories.
At one of those meetings, a manager told us--earnestly--that it was harder to get hired there than to get into Harvard.
He offered it as an explanation. Why the pressure was justified. Why the metrics mattered. Why we should feel fortunate.
New and Renew were what paid you. Contracts and commitments. Real money.
The rest--data attachment and accessories--were something else entirely. Loyalty tests. Metrics that paid the company, not the worker.
We were asked to brainstorm ways to raise them anyway.
Someone suggested bundling more accessories.
Someone else suggested reframing the pitch.
No one suggested aligning compensation with the ask.
That was the first time I noticed that performance wasn't cumulative. Competence didn't reduce pressure; it increased expectations. Solving last month's problem simply earned you a harder one next month, at the same pay and with less tolerance.
The scoreboard didn't measure value created.
It measured compliance with whatever mattered now.
You could be excellent and still be wrong.
Strong production but weak accessory numbers? Coaching.
Solid revenue but low data attachment? Attitude problem.
The rules shifted constantly. Quotas changed. Staffing changes altered the math overnight. Decisions made far upstream--pricing, promotions, online upgrades--were absorbed downstream by people standing on the floor.
After work, we joked about it at the bar. About executives not sitting in rooms trying to figure out how to pay us more, but how to make sure they didn't have to.
The kiosk exhausted the body.
But it was honest about the transaction.
The Cubicle
The cubicle presented itself differently. Quieter. Legitimate.
Inbound sales. New customers only.
Hourly base plus commission, paid on completed installs. Long-term contracts paid best. Internet was the product. Phone lines were inexpensive add-ons. Television rarely sold and mostly complicated the transaction.
There were no scripts, but there were constraints.
You couldn't change pricing.
You couldn't change contract terms.
You couldn't change installation rules or service windows.
Your role was to move orders through the system, absorb frustration created elsewhere, and keep the machine operating smoothly enough that customers didn't notice its edges.
If you understood the system, you could do well. Same-day closes. Next-day installs. Competitive pricing used deliberately to avoid marginal accounts that churned and consumed time.
The work rewarded efficiency, not judgment.
Once an install was scheduled, your involvement ended. If it failed, the anger returned to you. If it succeeded, it disappeared. Nothing accumulated. Nothing followed you forward.
On paper, it was a good job.
The promise was stability.
Not fulfillment. Not advancement. Stability.
But the structure was already thinning. Strategic uncertainty. Leadership turnover. Hiring followed by 'realignment.' Compensation plans adjusted downward. Training sessions explaining why this was reasonable.
People began paying attention to different variables. Mortgage payments. Closing dates. Whether a spouse's income could carry the household if this stopped.
The job wasn't asking for loyalty.
It was asking for patience.
I took the position hoping for runway--time to fund entrepreneurial efforts, time to build something that could exist independently before the structure inevitably changed.
The cubicle didn't exhaust the body.
It exhausted something quieter.
The Reset Made Visible
The layoff arrived without drama.
A visiting executive tried to soften it with a metaphor.
"We bought a nice house," he said, "but it's already filled with people."
There was no malice in it. Just accuracy.
That was the moment the language finally aligned with the structure. We weren't being removed for failure. We were excess capacity. The house no longer required us.
Nothing I had done there could belong to me.
And nothing I could have done would have altered the outcome.
Orientation Toward Ownership
This is the quiet truth of institutional work: improvement doesn't buy freedom. It buys responsibility without ownership.
The better you perform, the more efficiently your output is absorbed--and the easier you are to remove when conditions shift.
Ownership reverses that relationship.
You become smaller, but sturdier.
You trade the illusion of scale for the reality of control.
When you own the work, effort compounds. Skills persist across transitions. Mistakes cost you--but they teach you. Success stays with you. The feedback loop tightens.
Ownership doesn't mean safety.
It means alignment.
Large systems promise stability and deliver fragility.
Small ownership looks fragile and delivers durability.
In a world that rents your time, ownership isn't rebellion or ideology.
It's orientation.
Work that leads somewhere.
Skills that survive disruption.
A life that doesn't reset every quarter.
That's not a philosophy.
It's the difference between running in place and moving forward.
This is a guest essay by longtime correspondent 0bserver.
My new book Investing In Revolution is available at a 10% discount ($18 for the paperback, $24 for the hardcover and $8.95 for the ebook edition).
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