Status Anxiety (NON-FICTION)

by Alain de Botton

When production lines grow prohibitively expensive, these may be switched off and will not cry at the seeming injustice of their fate. A business can move from using coal to natural gas without the neglected energy source walking off a cliff. But labour has a habit of meeting attempts to reduce its price or presence with emotion. It sobs in toilet cubicles, it drinks to ease its fears of under-achievement and it may choose death over redundancy.

Whatever camaraderie may build up between employer and employed, whatever goodwill workers may display and however many years they may have devoted to a task, they must live with the knowledge and attendant anxiety that their status is not guaranteed – that it remains dependent on both their own performance and the economic well-being of their organizations; that they are hence a means to profit, and never, as they might unshakeably long for at an emotional level, ends in themselves.