Mike Rowe hosted the reality TV show Dirty Jobs, which was probably my favorite TV show while I was in college and then law school. For those who aren’t aware, Mike spent eight seasons exploring the work—and by extension the lives—of people who do some of the most disgusting, thankless, and just plain dirty jobs in our society. If Mike had ever advertised for an understudy, I would have been first in line.
Since Dirty Jobs ended, Mike has been building the mikeroweWORKS Foundation. One of the main goals of the mrW Foundation is to “challenge the absurd belief that a four-year degree is the only path to success.”
In a nutshell, Mike’s doing everything he can to get people to approach work differently. For years and years we’ve been telling ourselves that the way to get a great job is to graduate high school then get a college degree and stay as far away from manual labor as possible. And from a certain point of view, that idea is true. (I certainly know the appeal of that idea, I grew up working on my dad’s landscaping crew). But first on Dirty Jobs and now through the mrW Foundation, Mike’s been trying to teach people that there’s real honor in doing those jobs we’ve been poo-pooing for so long and that learning to do manual labor might well be a better (and better-paying) job than we thought.
And it looks like it’s working. Mike has nearly 2.5 million Facebook followers as of this blog post, many of them talking about his efforts to change attitudes about work. And I’m sure that anyone who has received a mrW Foundation scholarship will tell you about the effect Mike’s efforts has had on their life.
Recognizing the honor of an employee’s honest work is an indispensable part of giving up profit as a primary business motivation. For years and years, we’ve been telling ourselves that the point of business is to make as much profit as possible for the owners and shareholders of the company. There’s a certain amount of truth to that idea as well.
But it’s not the only way, and it’s not the best way. Deepening our appreciation for the work done by the employees in our organizations forces us to reevaluate our attitudes toward them and toward how we’re compensating them. Once we see the honor of honest work, it’s much easier to look at business as a partnership where we’re helping our employees to advance as much as possible rather than merely as a system for maximizing profits.
