Surely we’re more than our jobs

Despite relentless work hustle, we’re more than just our work identity

Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash.

So what do you do?

There is a house for sale two doors down from where we live.

At the weekend, I was working outside of our garage, filling the car with scrap wood from an internal wall that we had demolished.

A man, who I would place somewhere in his forties, left his parked car and approached me. He had seen the listing online and had come for an initial drive by. After telling him what I knew about the area, such as the levels of quiet and the schools, he asked me a question:

“So, what do you do?”

It’s such a simple question. But it’s loaded with many implicit sub-questions in the context of somebody thinking of buying a house and becoming my neighbor:

• What kind of status do I have?
• What kind of money might I be earning, as a signifier for the greater socioeconomic status of the area?
• Am I doing something that is respectable, insofar that it might reflect on the kind of neighbor that I am going to be?
• Am I going to be making noise during the night, or am I likely to be asleep like most people who work standard office hours?