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Last year, we posted "May, what?" to commemorate May 1, International Labor Day. This holiday cuts across faith, gender, class, and national borders, and commemorates something most of us have to do every day of our lives. Because of its inclusive character, for us here at Writer By Technicality, it’s the most important holiday of the year. May 1 is a time to think about how we work, because how we work defines how we live. Therefore, we decided this year to start a tradition and post our reflections about our lives at work every year. I hope you enjoy it, and happy Labor Day to you all.
Sports inculcate lasting lessons. Things like discipline, teamwork, leaving past failures behind, understanding that winning is rare, doing something well takes effort, and that fairness is an illusion. Anyone who sees sports as basic, unsophisticated, or trivial is basic, unsophisticated, and trivial. You don’t have to like sports, but underestimating them is foolish.
Because of the importance of sports, some athletes make a lot of money. Frequently, it’s their way out of poverty and into a world of luxury and wealth few of us will ever witness. Whether that’s right or wrong is a topic for another debate, but a common trope is a middle-aged man sitting on his sofa complaining about how the players on his football team make millions and still lose.
Let’s stick to football for the rest of the argument. Although we on our couch only see 90 minutes of an elite football player’s work, that’s not all they do for their wages. A football player trains with his teammates most of the week. They also spend hours a day at the gym training strength, endurance, and flexibility. After that, they undergo excruciating physical therapy to stay fit and recover from injuries. They also have meticulously regimented lives, with precise schedules and strict dietary limitations. Unlike us, they don’t go to the freezer for another pint of ice cream at halftime.
It’s not only the physical aspect that’s demanding. Most of us would be incapable of dealing with the mental stress a football player tolerates. Money is on the line every minute they’re on the pitch. The pressure from club owners, coaches, managers, agents, and sponsors is overwhelming. Performance is explicitly quantified, and if they don’t make the cut, they get sacked. Those performance reviews we dread going through once a year at our jobs happen every day for a footballer. To that, you can add the press and the fans lambasting them at every mistake. Top it off with travel and dealing with it far from home without the support of family and friends. All of that at the average age of 25.
This is not a justification for their exorbitant wages. If we want to continue living on this planet in a tolerable way, nobody should earn enough to sustain a life of luxury for themselves and countless generations to follow. The point is that the work of a footballer encompasses all of the above, not only the 90 minutes on the pitch. Club owners understand this, and that’s why they give players the infrastructure to train and work out, access to physical therapists, trainers, and coaches, healthy and nutritious food, and salaries that more than compensate for the effort required to carry out their work. Furthermore, a player’s boss understands the mental strain required to compete at the highest level and gives them the time needed to engage in therapy, meditation, or yoga.
That's what differentiates the working life of a footballer from that of most salaried employees: the working conditions. Most employers won’t pay for personnel to stay in shape. Some companies may pay for their employees’ gym memberships, but if they want to keep fit, they have to do it on their own time—the argument being that athletes work with their bodies and the rest of us don’t, which is absurd. We need a body to sit in front of a computer and type our day away. The muscle strength required to deliver parcels, sell fruits and vegetables, nurse the sick, and wait on tables is just as strenuous as trying to break the defensive line to score a goal.
All work requires a fit body, and work causes physical wear that can lead to injury or chronic conditions. Carpal tunnel syndrome, herniated disks, muscle strains…the list goes on. There is a wide range of physical ailments caused by everyday work that could be avoided, improved, or healed with regular exercise. But if most workers want to stay fit, it’s on their own time and dime. We work hard to earn money that we’ll spend to keep our bodies fit, so we can go back to work the next day and break our bodies. And what about fueling that body? Forget about looking to your employer for a tasty, healthy, nutritious meal. Most employees’ lunch hour isn’t even paid for.
We’ve discussed the physical aspects of everyday work, but what about the regular wage earners’ mental health? Surely common workers don’t undergo the enormous pressure of standing in front of a ball in a penalty shootout at a World Cup final. Or do they?
Let’s imagine a typical workday:
It starts with sitting in traffic to drop the kids off at childcare. It’s followed by rushing off to work to clock in on time at a call center, sitting in a cubicle all morning dealing with angry customers, going to the bathroom on cue during the allotted five-minute “bio-break,” having a weekly one-on-one with a team leader who, without fail, demands better and faster results, wolfing down a sandwich during the lunch break while calling the bank and the electricity company to deal with unpaid bills, getting back to the cubicle to deal with more angry customers while receiving a sharp look from a manager patrolling the open office floor plan, running back to daycare to pick up the kids, getting stuck in traffic on the way back home, cooking some dried pasta with a can of tomato sauce, getting crying children ready for bed, hoping they’ll fall asleep soon enough to get some house hunting done online because the landlord decided to raise rent 25% this year—because that’s the market price for the neighborhood now that it’s a popular destination for digital nomads—and passing out during the first 10 minutes of a Netflix series.
Day in and day out. What does that do to your psyche? So yeah, normies, just like footballers, have to deal with psychological pressure. The lucky ones find the time to put in 10 minutes of mindfulness here and there, but I don’t think that’ll cut it. If we factor it all in, a huge number of workers don’t have the resources to live a healthy life.
Now, let’s try to imagine what a healthy working day would look like for people living off a paycheck:
Wake up early, have a healthy breakfast while listening to some music, take 45 minutes for meditation and stretching, walk to the office, drop a toddler off at the building’s free daycare center, work for a couple of hours, have a healthy lunch provided by the office canteen, stop by daycare to spend some time with the kids, get back to work for another hour, have a couple of hours for self-improvement, go to the office gym and do some cardio and strength training for an hour, and once or twice a week, visit a coach or therapist to keep mental health in check. In short, about four hours of work a day, a couple of hours on skills development, and a couple of hours maintaining physical and mental health. Come to think of it, it sounds much like the life of an elite athlete.
That’s impossible! We can’t sustain workers having such a comfortable existence. It would cost a fortune! Professional athletes, football players in particular, make so much money because they also generate a lot of money. Athletes are a good return on investment. Get the regular Joes and Janes of the world making the company millions, and they’ll get their share.
Let’s take a closer look at that idea. According to many sources, the most profitable sports team in the world, by a long shot, is the Dallas Cowboys, earning around 560 million dollars (with an M) in 2024. The second team makes half that amount. That sounds like a lot of money, doesn’t it? However, the most profitable company in the world, according to many sources, is energy juggernaut Saudi Aramco, earning 120 billion dollars (with a B) in 2024. Saudi Aramco could buy the entire NFL, and when the season is over, buy the NBA just in time for the playoffs. The company at the bottom of the top 20, Petrobras—it looks like oil is still where the money’s at—had profits of 25 billion.
A lot of business analysts, claims officers, customer service reps, cleaning staff, maintenance workers, and security guards, to name just a few, work for companies like Aramco. And it sure as hell looks like they’re doing a good job, because these businesses are flourishing. Their return on investment is as healthy as a horse. Thanks to them, these companies are making billions, but their working conditions and compensation are abysmal in comparison to those of even the least-paid player in a mediocre league.
So, this Labor Day, let’s learn from sports. Why does an athlete’s job include maintaining a healthy body and mind when most other jobs don’t? Because we don’t see athletes as workers; we see them as players. Calling them players hides the fact that they’re doing what you and I do every day to make a living: work. This difference in wording is no coincidence. If we spoke of them as workers, we’d see ourselves as being just like them and just as deserving of good working conditions. So maybe a first step to improving our work life is to start calling “football players” “football workers.” Changing nomenclature might lay a new brick in that almost-forgotten project of building class consciousness. If we consider them workers, just like we are, we’re all together in this, and we’re all deserving of a well-compensated, dignified, healthy, and fulfilling work life.
