Do Your Job

Posted July 21st, 2006 by Sean Williams

Seriously.

We’ve all got stuff we hate to do, and we’ve all got stuff we’d rather not be doing. But for every single thing you do, there is some kind of incentive to do it, even if it’s just monetary. If you’re a CPA, then you have a job who’s artistry is somewhat limited compared to, say, a guy who sits around his house and thinks up new video games. But you still have a job to do and you can take satisfaction in the fact that 1) You’re getting PAID, 2) there is a deftness to the handling of numbers on any scale, even the personal finances of a regular couple and 3) the job you are doing can’t be done by the average person and still needs to be done for *every single person*, and there’s a lot of pride in that.

But, y’know what? Whatever the justification for the time you spend on your job, that’s really up to you. You figure it out. But for the sake of fuck, if you’re not gonna do your job, then GET A DIFFERENT JOB. If getting PAID isn’t enough incentive for you, then go do something else.

There are many things going on in my life right now. A pregnancy requires a lot of maintenance, and almost all of that has to be done by people who aren’t the father. I CAN’T DO ANY OF THE THINGS THAT HELP THIS BABY. I mean, I make dinner, sometimes, and I try to keep a roof over the mother’s head, but even these things can be worked around if I screw it up.

Here’s what I can’t do: GENETIC TESTING. Oh, and also I can’t BE A DOCTOR. See, I didn’t go to school and… Wait a minute, I don’t have to justify not being a doctor. I don’t want to be a doctor, that’s why I’m not. I became an actor instead.

Oh wait, WHOOPS. I’m not really an actor, right?

RIGHT! And you want to know WHY? I’m not an actor because whenever I was doing a play, there were things about the writing I disliked and things about the producers that I thought were handled badly, and this was a big chunk of what I thought about. So I quit acting and became a writer/producer.

Seriously. As an actor, I wanted to do things like suggest scheduling solutions and give script notes. But you know what? I DIDN’T DO IT. I *wanted* to, but I didn’t. And then when I realized I wanted to much more than I wanted to be in rehearsal, I fucking RETIRED.

(pant pant pant)

Y’see, it isn’t just “do your job”, it’s also “do your job and don’t worry about anyone else’s job”. If a CPA was doing your taxes, and he noticed that you didn’t have any expenses for, say, preschool, and then he started telling you how important it is to have your kid in preschool, and that it’s never too early to start, or something like that, then this asshole isn’t doing his job. He’s doing *your* job.

And the thing I’ve noticed about assholes who do other people’s jobs… they aren’t very good about doing their own job. I didn’t give notes and shit because I was in a MAD PANIC trying to do MY job as well as I could.

I’m currently producing a show that I’m not acting in, because one cannot do all the jobs that one has to if one is writing, producing and acting. Something will suffer. So, if you find yourself in a position where you really feel like you need to fix the scripts and scheduling problems for the shows you’re working on, and it occurs to you that you’re *not* the writer or the producer or the director, then become one of those things before you start doing that job. Just a suggestion. Do your job, completely, and don’t do other jobs unless you are *sure* you’ve done your job completely.

Including the mother fucking doctors. Seriously, you jaggoffs have about two hours to fix all of these problems before we switch doctors. I’m talking about two hours TODAY.