Are butchers happy at work? Sure thing, according to an Australian survey:
A Galaxy poll of consumers on the perceived happiness of workers found that butchers were the most friendly and contented workers in Australia, and Ricky Beaves agrees.
Mr Beaves became a butcher 35 years ago and is happy every day.
“At the time I went into it simply because it was a job,” he said. “I’m lucky that I’ve always enjoyed it.”
Being a successful butcher has more to do with personality than anything else, Mr Beaves said. “We have fun with our customers.”
So there are apparently a great many happy buthcers.
What about happy plumbers? Those exist too:
Happy dentists? Why the heck not:
Almost any job holds the potential for happiness at work. There are happy bus drivers, nurses, programmers, teachers, undertakers, sewage workers and fry cooks at McDonald’s. There are also unhappy people in every profession you can mention.
This doesn’t mean that YOU personally could be happy in any job. You need a job that lets you do what you do best. You also need to work in a company culture that fits well with who you are.
So this is not to say that anyone can be happy in any job. That would be an overly simplistic, naive assertion. But any job has the potential for happiness, with a few exceptions: If a job is exploitative, if it requires you to be a bad person or if it involves unethical behaviour, then happiness at work is probably impossible.
Update: Just found an article, which proves that you can be happy at McDonald’s – and make a lot of other people happy: McDonald’s drive-thru worker gains online fan base.
Your take
What do you think? Can you think of a job that by definition makes happiness at work impossible? What jobs have made you happy or unhappy?
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