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Tanase Mihaela, 1st year, English- Spanish

Professor Monica Matei-Chesnoiu
Text Typology and Writing
25 April 2009

Motivation for Work

What reasons have people to work? This is an important question that modern

people may ask themselves after they have worked for a while. In many dictionaries the

word “work” is defined as being the activity that is directed at a specific purpose which

involves mental or physical effort. What would happen if people would not want to work

anymore? We would not have technology, food and we would not evolve at all. But for all

this we need money and in many cases through money, people find the other things that

motivates them to work.

Each person has different reasons to work. Yet we all work to obtain something

and what we obtain influences our moral and motivation as well as the quality of our

lives. Some people work to make new friends; others work for a sense of importance in

society or for a sense of achievement. Others work to make a difference in their lives and

other people may work because they want to contribute to the welfare of the society.

Others work because they simply want to fill their time with an activity and there are

people who see work as leisure and they could never stay away from work. Still no
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matter what personal reasons could be, finally everyone or almost everyone works for

money.

According to Walter Dill Scott, “in most countries there is not the slightest doubt

that most people work because they have to work in order to eat and to enjoy the many

comforts that they want”1. Money plays an important part in our lives because the modern

society asks for it. When you ask people why they work a lot of them will say “ they are

in, only for the money”. When somebody works for money he/she can be financially

independent and have some control over his/ her life. Sometimes money is the only

reason a person works. What if someone did not work at all and had even the day for

himself/herself? He/she could choose to go to the beach, watch television, go to the

movies , go shopping, read books, visit friends or places , go out for meals, play sport.

This all sounds wonderful, but he/ she would need at least some money to do most of

these things. But could not we live perfectly without any money? When a person gets a

job the first thing he/ she is interested in may be the money because in the lack of

money we would not be able to pay our bills, get our food, to send our children to

school, or have a roof over our heads, and why not have some fun.

Still, there are people who work in order to socialize, to make new friends.

Workplaces are the most appropriate places where you can meet new people with

different personalities and with different life styles. There is no doubt, according to

research, that social activity and happiness are strongly related. There is little question

that the need for human contact is fundamental for our survival. Being with others gives

us a sense of completeness-something we both biologically and psychologically lack

1
Walter Dill Scott, Personnel management: Principles, Practices and Points of View ( Michigan, McGraw
Hill, 1954), 351.
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independent from the group. Through others, we can balance our perceptions of the

world and find perspective.

Strong human bonds and social interaction are fundamental to the human

condition. According to William Hobson, “people work because it is socially attractive.

Many people work because it is a means of meeting people and a mean of social

intercourse”2. In our fast pace life we do not have time to communicate with each other.

At work, we either want it or not, we have to communicate with the others in order to

collaborate or to perfect our skills. At work we can communicate the information we get ,

we can ask our colleagues for advice and, why not, we can share our work experience

with them.

In addition, there are people who work to gain a sense of importance in the

society. By work we gain respect from the society. No matter what work we do, we will

always be respected simply because we earn our money fairly. For example, a housewife,

by taking care of the children and of the house gains respect from her husband and

children. An employee by doing his job well, gains respect and gets compliments from

his colleagues and from his/ her boss. A man who works in the army will get respect from

the whole country because he defends it.

However respect is not instant. Respect is earned over a long period of time.

Personal attributes like honesty, integrity, diligence, steadfastness, kindness, fairness,

decency, professional success, or involvement in social affairs are usually seen to be

characteristics that earn an individual the respect of the working community in different

cultures all over the globe. Working helps us be more confident in our strength in

ourselves and recognize our true values.

2
William, Hobson, World, Health and History, (Baltimore: Williams& Wilkins. Co, 1963), 229.
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People also work because they want to earn a sense of achievement from it;

people that want more from life, people that have something to offer to the community.

Generally, people who think like may be are people with physical disabilities that want to

be looked at and treated as normal people. They do not necessarily work for money but

for a chance to prove that they can do whatever a normal person can do They need to feel

respected and protected by the others. They generally work in domains that include

human relationships like education, psychology or marketing. Without work, they would

be looked as a burden of the society because this seems to be the mentality of modern

society. Through work they become independent and they gain respect from the others

and self-esteem.

Furthermore, are people who work because they do not want to be corrupted

by the routine or by the thought that they have lived their entire life doing nothing. This

kind of people according to Alice J. Punwar and Suzanne M. Peloquin, “work to savor

success, and if they could feel successful doing nothing , they’d do nothing”3. They work

to improve the quality of life they are living themselves and others. These people are

dependent on what they are doing and if one day they were not able do what they are

doing they would do anything else because they would want to feel proud of what they

are doing and useful. This people are actors, engineers, inventors and even writers.

There are people that need a change in their lives, people that are permanently

look for something new and interesting to keep their attention “alive”. These people work

in order to learn new be in things and to a permanent competition with the others. This

kind of people do not usually work behind a counter as a public officer or behind a

3
Alice J. Punwar and Suzanne M. Peloquin, Occupational therapy: Principles and Practice
( Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000), 7.
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computer writing reports about the weather conditions, these people are always in some

search of adventure and not in search of money, probably only as prices for what they

have done or . For these people human relationships does not count very much.

In addition there are people that work because they want to fill their time with

an activity, with something they enjoy. They work because they are simply passionate by

what they do and not by the money because usually people that work for not to be bored

are rich people. They already have everything a person could want wanted: financial

liberty, families, influence, fame relationships, leisure time which they can spend

however they want. They still work because they have a “personal mission” and they

want to motivate others, and also to help others to be like them.

Moreover there are people who are not rich but still work because they have

nothing to do and they get bored. There are the pensioners that after they have worked an

entire life find it hard to relax and they work in order to feel busy all the time. They take

care of the grandsons, they do gardening or they get cooking just to have something to

do. These kind of people cannot stand not doing anything, even if they are tired they will

always do something for them or for the others in order to stay busy.

Of course there are people that are simply dependent on work. They are called

workaholics and they are compelled to do it. In a way they feel obliged to do it . They see

work as a way of getting away from the problems at home, as a leisure activity and they

could never see life without work. For them work is a way of relaxing, as long as they are

working, they are happy. Still these people do not do what they do not like, they see work

as a leisure only when they like what they do. If they do not like what they do they
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become stressed and bad-tempered. They could talk all they long about their work

without showing any sign of boredom.

We all have different reasons to work. We all want to feel financially independent,

to be respected for what we do and not for what we are; we want to be useful to the

society; we want to be an example for the generations that are to come, so that when we

grow old we could look back and say that we have not lived for nothing. The best way of

achieving something like that is through work and, either we like it or not, we all have to

work at a certain moment.

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Works Cited
Hobson, William. World, Health and History. , Baltimore, Williams & Wilkins Co, 1963.

Alice J. Punwar and Suzanne M. Peloquin. Occupational Therapy: Principles and

Practice. Philadelphia, Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2000.

Scott Dill Walter. Personnel Management: Principles, Practices and Point of View

Michigan , McGraw Hill, 1954.