Why Would Anyone Not Want the Job You Are Offering?—The Two Main Reasons
There are, of course, the “4D” jobs—dirty, dangerous, dull and “demeaning” (although many would argue that no honest work is ever demeaning). These are unlikely to be in your job pile.
But, then there are the really bad skills-challenge and temperament-challenge matches: The introvert who could never handle the challenge of sales, the brain surgeon who would be bored soldering circuits onto a motherboard, the assembly-line worker who would be terrified to attempt brain surgery (even if (s)he could do it), the disorganized types who would flop at any job requiring meticulous record keeping, etc.
Values conflicts eliminate tons of jobs for tons of people, e.g., the vegan who refuses to work at McDonald’s, the ambitious M.B.A. who cringes at the thought of not being the boss, and the devoted mother who won’t work for anybody that is trying to get “milk” legally redefined so that artificial sweeteners can be added to it and most other dairy products without listing of the engineered sweetener as an ingredient. You can be pretty sure somebody will turn down some job you offer because of such values conflicts—even in a tight job market.
Naturally, unacceptable compensation packages and poor perks are a common deterrent. Low pay, no way! Also, it will be interesting to see how many, if any, Yahoo! employees quit now that telecommuting privileges have been revoked and the practice altogether forbidden. (Effective June 1, 2013, Yahoo! president and CEO Marissa Mayer’s memo eliminating working from home could turn out to create a corporate headhunter’s dream bonanza.)
These kinds of anecdotal and hypothetical cases illustrate the plenitude of reasons for not taking a job, but are by no means exhaustive. A more comprehensive list—and one to use in vetting any offered job — is possible and desirable. Here are some of the other reasons:
- Bad money-time tradeoffs
- Authority-responsibility imbalance
- Under/over-utilized valued skills (which is a variant of a skills-challenge mismatch)
- Uncontrolled job inputs/outputs
- Bad job load-latitude mix
- Inadequate job resources
- Excessive internal/external job-related conflicts (e.g., of conscience or job-family demands)
- Status costs (jobs that, even if not “demeaning”, do not confer the status desired)
- Unacceptable physical/mental job demands (too much/many, too little/few)
- Over/under-stimulation on the job
- Unpredictability of reward-to-risk ratios (pure commission sales)
- Unacceptably high effort-to-results ratio (shaky start-ups, real estate in bust times)
- Insufficient(ly) respected role models
- Insufficient(ly) respectful on-the-job or after-work job-related or referencing interactions
- Poor job advancement opportunities
- Excessively/insufficiently high-pressure work environment
- Unacceptable/unclear job goals
- Unacceptable M.O.R.E.S. costs (Maintenance/Opportunity/Replacement/Evaluation/Search costs)
Anyway, this list could go on forever. As far as it does go, it provides a useful checklist against which to compare any job, including any you are offering. Is there not, however, some possible simplification or compression of these reasons into something crisp, concise and manageable?
The Two Main Reasons for Refusing a Job—Too Much or Too Little
It appears there is and that it is as compact as imaginable: In each and every case, the reason for not taking the job is too much or too little of something important, e.g., too much or too little responsibility, too much danger, too little reward for effort and so on.
Does this seem obvious? It shouldn’t. After all, why should all job-related drawbacks be reducible to too much or too little of one thing or another?
In fact, why are we and the universe so constructed that all trouble amounts to too much or too little of something, e.g., cancer as too much uncontrolled growth of cells, declining literacy caused by too little reading and famine as the result of too little or too much rain, warped kids created by too much or too little parental supervision and too much TV and computer-game time?
Even trouble that appears difficult to quantify, e.g., poor timing, seems to be translatable into matters of too much or too little, e.g., too little synchronization. The same goes for anything that is qualitatively troublesome, e.g., a bizarre abstract painting (too little sense, meaning or value).
To find an exception to this rule of “too much-too little”, it would be very helpful to identify something that there can never or in a particular instance be too much of or too little of, and that can nonetheless cause problems, trouble or other unpleasantness sufficient to make the job (or anything else) unacceptable, but without involving a matter of degree of any sort.
Got that? Try to find a reason for not wanting (or offering) a job, even though no excess or deficiency of that or any other possible refusal factor is the problem with the job.
If you think that the refusal factor could be “money”, think again. That would mean that the reason for refusing the job is the money, but not the amount, i.e., it’s not too much or too little. For example, you don’t want to be or offer a job as a drug dealer or Ponzi scheme operator–because, for one thing, that means risk of jail time. You say, “It’s not the money; it’s the time”—too much jail time.
Ah, but since “time is money”, that money, even one dollar of it, is equivalent to too much jail time or to too much risk of it. As everyone knows, money is a medium of exchange. In this instance, it is exchanged for time—jail time. So, in the end, because of the equivalence of time and money, the reason for refusing (to offer) such a job is indeed a matter of too much or too little—specifically, too much risk, too little appetite for jail food and regimentation. In this case, even a dollar-a-year drug dealership may pay too much, for which one will have to pay (too much).
Even if the money is entirely legally earned, it can cause trouble by being too much, e.g., by propelling the recipient into a ghastly tax bracket (that makes it “not worth it”), by triggering nasty IRS audits or other trouble. Perhaps as contingency planning to cover such trouble and costs, the super-rich behave as though one can never have enough or too much money to avoid trouble.
If there is a job to refuse, but not because of too much or too little of something, I haven’t identified what that something might be and invite you to try. As I’ve suggested, I suspect that all trouble in this universe, and therefore with any job, is analyzable or reducible to a matter of too much or too little of something.
Absolute vs. Relative Job Refusal
With respect to a job or career, “I don’t want to be a….” is ambiguous: It can mean relative to other opportunities or absolutely, irrespective of any and all other opportunities. Most refusals to consider a certain kind of work are of the relative sort, e.g., the job pays relatively less than another. The most interesting refusals are those that are absolute—under NO imaginable or real circumstances would Joe Average take that job.
On the practical side of job placement, it may be useful to determine whether a candidate’s resistance to taking a job is absolute or merely relative.
Ask yourself whether there is any job at all that you yourself would never, ever under any circumstances offer or accept. Chances are that the first things that come to mind are jobs that are either too dangerous or too evil. Right?
That makes sense, since the two main ways trouble is inflicted or risked is in making trouble for oneself or trouble for others. Doing something that causes trouble for oneself is dangerous; choosing to do something that causes trouble for others is, in general, evil (justified retaliation and similar such cases aside). If you believe in a punishing God, then the evil trouble one causes is also dangerous trouble.
Hence, the kind of job that Joe Average and you would absolutely, unconditionally refuse or refuse to offer are jobs that objectively will unacceptably harm oneself or another. (Note that the foregoing is almost a tautology—”true by definition”, but isn’t because of its restriction to unacceptable harm).
On the psychological side, these are jobs that, for the person hired, will probably create unacceptable fear for his or her safety, guilt, shame or fear of punishment (for wrongdoing).
This analysis suggests that the kinds of jobs that are likely to (or should) be absolutely refused and not offered are those that are too dangerous or too evil. The rest are more likely to be refused or not pushed relatively, viz., when compared with other available or imagined jobs.
Assuming that all of the foregoing analysis is more or less, if not absolutely right…
…it remains to be hoped that it hasn’t been too much or too little for you.