“My former employment and Braverman”

I forget what class it was but I found the discussion based on for lack of a better word “crappy” jobs and if they offer the employed freedom. In response to this I would like to describe one of my former employments. One summer six years ago I found myself in need of my own source of income and having hardly any previous work experience I realized that my choices were mostly in either the service sector or in manual labor. This is when my father had the bright idea to volunteer my services to the landscaping company that trimmed our lawn. Not knowing what I was getting myself into and not having much of a choice, I agreed since the pay was not terrible and I would get the chance to be outside. Looking back on it I now realize how pertinent the idea of the division of labor and its profound effect on worker efficiency plays in all forms of business. Much like the film “Modern Times” film that we watched, each person had his own task to take care of and this prevented us from getting in each other’s way and prevented slacking. Furthermore, in accordance with Braverman’s perspective, the management, a skinny, scruff, reincarnation of Mick Jagger named Chuck, was mainly in charge of conceiving tasks, designing, and planning our route and what needed to be done to each property. This removed all thinking on our part except the minimal amount needed to accomplish our tasks. As workers, or what Braverman describes as non-professionals, our sole purpose was the execution of tasks. Fortunately or us workers, there was not the problem of management ignorance that Braverman touches upon since Chuck had been in lawn care most of his life. Finally, I suppose that technology aided our division into menial tasks as there have been various machines and mowers that are made for specific tasks.
As far as the level freedom in the lawn care industry, I will base my evaluation of freedom as my growth and my development of capacities. I feel like I gained very few skills that I did not already posses. So I suppose if I am to judge my freedom in this respect I was not very free. However, I did learn a great deal about myself and what lines of employment I knew that I never wanted to go into. I also gained a perspective on how fortunate I am to have opportunities to choose what profession I want to pursue rather than choose my profession by a lack of another alternative. So I guess that in my particular case I was free because I gained knowledge from my experiences and “grew” as a person. However, I do not think that my fellow co-workers were free, as they had no other viable alternative. I believe that this is why they often reminded me of how lucky I was and to take advantage of all of my opportunities.