Categories
Antiwork

In memory of my father

My father died this week a year ago. Born in the late 1940s, a generation of high working ethics, he was the AntiWork poster boy. Here are some examples: He would take a yearly sick leave. His best friend was also his doctor, and he would tell him a couple of weeks in advance he's going to be down with the flu. In addition to that, if he actually got sick, he made sure to take a few days off extra after he got better, because “it's a waste to spend a sick leave being sick'. He fell out with his boss about doing work outside his work description. Eventually it came to that he refused working for his boss, and would just bring books to work and read all day in protest. But because he had seniority, and was overqualified and very useful at what he did for others,…


My father died this week a year ago. Born in the late 1940s, a generation of high working ethics, he was the AntiWork poster boy.

Here are some examples:

He would take a yearly sick leave. His best friend was also his doctor, and he would tell him a couple of weeks in advance he's going to be down with the flu.

In addition to that, if he actually got sick, he made sure to take a few days off extra after he got better, because “it's a waste to spend a sick leave being sick'.

He fell out with his boss about doing work outside his work description. Eventually it came to that he refused working for his boss, and would just bring books to work and read all day in protest. But because he had seniority, and was overqualified and very useful at what he did for others, he was never reprimanded or fired for pulling such crap.

He didn't get fired for lots of other stuff, like telling his (very) honest opinions about his superiors to their faces.

My parents used to take 2-3 weeks yearly vacation abroad. One year he didn't have enough vacation days for my parents trip to Northern Germany. So he wrote down the trip as a fact finding tour to Becks & Co. (The beer company). He worked in an aviation technology company.

For about a year I worked about 15 minutes drive from his workplace, and we'd have lunch once or twice a month, he would always clock out “on duty” saying he's meeting with an engineer from a tech company, so it must be “on duty”.

There are many more examples of the fact he did everything within his power to do as little work as possible. But I'll finish with his final act of AntiWork. About 3-4 years before reaching retirement age, he was approached by his boss that there's an option for early retirement. My father said he'll think about it and get back to him. 5 minutes later he called his boss and told him he accepted. Obviously his boss didn't know him well enough, because he said “when you said you wanted to think about it, I thought you meant 1-2 days, not 1-2 minutes”.

This is a sort of a eulogy. I never got to write or give a eulogy to him. We both found it stupid. Just like we find work.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.