By Douglas Kruger
IT was flat-out illegal, but I did it anyway. I was 14, and the law required you be at least 16 to be employed. Still, no one ever checked, so I fried and served burgers at a local KFC, and saved my wages in order to buy a mountain bike.
If you wanted something – my parents hammered into me – you had to work for it. Not just because nothing is free. But also because work is good for you.
Next came uni. Funding three years of campus life was the fantasy of millionaire-playboys. And if we asked our government to subsidise it, they would have laughed themselves into a hernia. So I got myself a full-time job, then studied via correspondence through bleary eyes in the evenings.
My wife did the same, working to fund her law degrees. So did my best friend. And so did every South African I know. In fact, we know a guy who didn’t have time to work in the evenings, and so he used the holidays between semesters to work in the mines. I don’t mean that figuratively. He literally went underground, in overalls, and laboured all day digging in a mine, and that’s how he funded his education.
And that is why, like many immigrants in the Island, I am genuinely astonished when I hear questions like these:
-
Why can’t I get trained here for free?
-
Why won’t the government pay for my study?
-
Why don’t they offer those jobs to the locals when they leave school?
Unless you’ve come here from somewhere else, it may be difficult to appreciate how shockingly entitled those questions sound.
In the years we’ve been here, I’ve met a great many hardworking Jersey beans, admirable men and women who roll up their sleeves and haul the Island forward. But, inevitably, you also meet the ones who think a career is like a council bus. It should come to you, if you stand around waiting long enough.
A career is really more like physical fitness. You start from zero, and you put in the work. And it’s gruelling. That’s the norm, globally. Life, it turns out, is hard, and to encounter people who have somehow never discovered this fact is genuinely weird.
There’s also a flaw in the notion that jobs here aren’t offered to locals. I’ve heard a first-hand account of an open day at one of the big four firms in St Helier, in which the proverbial bus did come by, offering careers like candy. Not one single soul pitched up. This was a group effectively offering free employment, and the attendees didn’t even dent the doughnuts.
Now try this experiment: offer that same job overseas, and watch how many thousands of people apply. So it’s not an availability issue; I’m not buying that for a second. I think it’s a hungriness issue.
It’s also most adamantly not an issue of undercutting, as social media commentary would have it. The idea is that foreigners take all the jobs because we’re willing to accept lower pay. “They offer people from other countries more than they could get at home, but less than what we should get locally,” the argument runs.
Here’s the problem with that observation: South Africans are the highest-earning demographic in the Island. This is incompatible with the idea that we are undercutting local salaries.
Then, as for the low-paying jobs, are you seeing locals lining up for those?
And don’t assume for one second that it’s somehow easier for us to access these opportunities. Before uprooting your entire family and your life, (and giving up reasonably priced wine) to move halfway around the world, you must find someone to sponsor a work visa, obtain licences, and clear several other barriers. And I will not here segue into my rant about the discriminatory two-tier housing system.
Again, I think it’s a hungriness issue.
We’ve even heard people argue, “But I get more from grants than I could working.” Putting aside the inherent perversity of a system that actively disincentivises industriousness, this is nevertheless not the full picture.
Sure, your first day on the job may provide less than you’d get propped up artificially by an absurd system. But day one is only about getting a foot in the door. You’re not there exclusively for the initial low wage. You’re there to start building. To start becoming more.
You put in the weeks and months in order to gain experience, build communication skills, learn responsibility and self-discipline, pick up insights on how to be a leader. These are the very things that will facilitate your rise to the next rung.
When a new employee rewards trust with excellence, a funny thing happens. They become more valuable to those who can promote them. Someone leaves, and they have shown themselves worthy of that spot. Lo and behold, the pay is higher. The point, then, was to make a start. Do it again, and you become indispensable. The pay grows commensurately.
By contrast, when your attitude stinks, and you reward trust with contempt, or with a bare minimum of effort, or with child-like whingeing when asked to do anything above and beyond, you will not be rewarded with advancement. Because you’re not worth it.
Business is simple that way. If you make yourself valuable, you will be valued. If you don’t, you won’t.
You also have the option of becoming your own boss. In that case, the same principles applies. If you make yourself valuable, you will be valued. If you don’t… you won’t. The one constant is the work that this entails. It never goes away.
That’s OK, because work is important. It grows people into fully realised versions of themselves. And it’s not just about material gain. When people don’t work, they rot. Tell me I’m wrong.
Ultimately, the biggest issue at play is the degree to which it shows a willingness to honour your own story. You have one life, and it’s precious. Will you put in the effort to discover your own potential? Or simply coast all the way to the grave? What a sad waste that would be.
-
Douglas Kruger lives in St Helier, but speaks globally. He is the author of several books on work, wealth and leadership.
