Why Gerry Gergich Should Be Our Career Coach
A refreshing take on work from the buffoon of NBC’s hit comedy Parks and Rec
Imagine you have five buckets. Each is full of sand of a different color--red, green, yellow, orange, and blue. Let’s say each bucket of sand represents your limited capacity to go about your day emotionally, intellectually, spiritually, mentally, and physically. Based on our natural and developed aptitudes, we’ll all have different amounts of sand in our buckets.
But imagine now that the sand comes in brighter and darker grains. Brighter sand represents our best, highest quality effort. Darker sands are lower quality efforts. Your bucket of red sand is a mix of different shades just like your bucket of green sand is its own mix. Once again, all according to what we’ve got.
If the various tasks of our day (work, errands, being a devoted parent or partner, leisure, hobbies, activism, volunteering) were then represented by glass jars, how would you allocate your sand? Which jars capture your brightest efforts? Which have your darkest? We budget our money with such deliberation so why not our capacity?
By now, you’ve probably read one of the many articles about what we’ve already known: we’re burning out. And the chances are, if you’re a millennial in the workforce, you knew that this was a problem even before the pandemic and that, contrary to the belief of some, my generation hasn’t been lazy or entitled, we’re workaholics. What you might not have known about this problem is that there is someone who can deliver us from this hellscape.
There is a Virgil to lead us forth and out of this careerist, work-life-blending Inferno. And he moonlights as a notary public.
He prints photos of his dog’s rectum on restaurant menus and accesses the internet by opening AltaVista and typing “please go to yahoo.com.”
Yep. It’s this walking dumpster fire.
Out of all of the characters in Parks and Recreation’s charming ensemble, including the indomitable Leslie Knope, it is a small-town Indiana office jester who has the most to teach us. Though he may not be the hero we deserve, Gerry/Larry/Terry/Garry Gergich is the hero we need right now.
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Though Lord Sheldon’s manservant catches most of the flak in NBC’s hit comedy—a show one magazine deemed “the best show about the millennial generation”—most of the mockumentary’s characters are equally inept. Tom, Andy, April, and, to some extent, Ron scarcely ever did their jobs or did them well.
Yet, these lovable public servants find greater happiness once they leave Pawnee’s quotidian bureaucracy, the implication being that they were ineffectual because they hadn’t yet found where they belonged. Tom settles in as a serial “entrepreneur.” Andy hosts a beloved children’s television program. April works for a non-profit and Ron becomes a private contractor. After many will-they-or-won’t-they flirtations with a graveyard-energy accounting firm, Ben gets into politics. Leslie, the show’s hero and memequeen, ultimately becomes President. Parks and Rec’s seven seasons chart the ambitions of its characters until they find work that suits their passions and skills. Though their personal lives add texture, their pursuit of that perfect career is the through line of the show.
“There’s nothing we can’t do,” Leslie says, in Season 4. “If we work hard, never sleep, and shirk all other responsibilities in our lives.” Cue the nervous laughter.
In 2014 and 2016, Gallup and Pew Research Center respectively found that over 50% of Americans derive their sense of identity from their work. The more educated you are, according to Pew, the more pronounced the correlation: 77% of those with postgraduate degrees said their job gave them a sense of identity; those with bachelor’s degrees, 60%.
Under a mantra that millennials should have jobs where passion and skill align, this impact on our identity makes sense. Jobs provide meaning and definition. It stands to reason then that the elusive “dream” job is what we want for our own series finales, isn’t it?
The sobering reality however is more mundane and far more enmeshing.
We need our jobs to pay us a living wage that supports our families, to put food on the table and gas in the car. But we also rely on our jobs for our healthcare and, for those like me with swiss-cheese teeth, dental care. For some, their workplace provides the opportunity for friendship and happy hours. Some rely on it for immigration status. And, while we’re there, we should feel respected and appreciated at work, at the very least, not be harassed or put in harm’s way. It’s such a long laundry list of needs that many workplaces lean on a few of these criteria at the expense of others, leveraging just enough to keep unhappy people in moribund, if not oppressive, roles.
In the absence of meaningful safety nets and alternatives, the grand unified effect is that we’re forced to rely heavily on our employment to shape our lives and, at times, to tell us who we are. To retread a topic in Sarah Jaffe’s new book Work Won’t Love You Back: How Devotion To Our Jobs Leaves Us Exploited, Exhausted, and Alone, contemporary narratives around work are downright religious: I “don’t have a job, I have a vocation/calling” and my colleagues are not just co-workers, they’re “family.”
But what if my “vocation” isn’t going so well?
What if my “family” fires me?
What if we have to set aside our “calling” for the labor of raising our children?
“Even for those who don’t burn out, constructing one’s identity closely around a career is a risky move,” the psychologist Janna Koretz explains. “No matter how it happens, becoming disconnected from a career that forms the foundation of your identity can lead to bigger issues such as depression, anxiety, substance use, and loneliness.”
“Our jobs were never meant to shoulder the burdens of a faith,” Derek Thompson writes in the Atlantic, cautioning us over our worship of work. “And they are buckling under the weight.”
To put it in Andy Dwyer’s words when he failed the police academy exam: “It's just that life is pointless and nothing matters and I'm always tired. Also, I can't sleep, I'm overeating and none of my old hobbies interest me.” Cue the nervous laughter again.
But not to worry, Andy. A prophet cometh.
One of Parks and Rec’s most tender revelations comes when Comic-Sans-loving Larry finally reaches his retirement day (kind of.) In the episode, Leslie pities his lack of noteworthy achievements so she tries to help him accomplish items on his workplace bucket list. It doesn’t go well. At his farewell party, Larry accidentally sets himself on fire and then, doused in sodium bicarbonate, goes home for a celebratory meatloaf. The next day, Leslie visits the Gergich home to apologize for how quintessentially “Larry” his sendoff was.
But he’s already forgotten all about that.
Terry’s adult daughters have come home to celebrate his retirement in synchronized song. His wife is doting and his home is warm. If you look closely at the albums on the bookshelf, you can see the memories along the bindings: one for each daughter; years of family vacations; “Sweet 16”; “Prom”; “Graduation.” For close observers of the show, the other parts of Terry’s life also come into focus. He is a skilled artist in multiple media, can complement the saffron and seafood in paella, and plays Brahms on the piano. He sends kind and encouraging emails to his co-workers. Terry also once invented a device for clean, renewable energy but, in typical Terry fashion, dropped it. (And all of Creation groaned.)
“I know I didn't achieve all my work goals,” Gerry says, to a humbled Leslie. “But, Leslie, I don't care because for me, the best part about working in the Parks department was that I got to be home every night with my family at 5:00. And to me, that's what mattered most.” Gerry’s alternative vision for his workplace is not just a stark contrast to his colleagues at the Parks Department but to the rest of my generation who have largely accepted an expectation of work that may be untenable in the long term.
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Leslie’s jars of sand are predictable. Work-related tasks would be filled to the brim with every color in the brightest shades, all for the sake of public service. So much so that partner Ben Wyatt, best friend Ann Perkins, and friend-boss Ron Swanson need to periodically rein her in.
This Knopian approach of 110% effort into your work all the time gets more than its fair share of endorsements. It gets frontpage covers, book deals, interviews, and venture capital. Leslies get raises and promotions. They’re called hustlers and go-getters. Try googling “Leslie Knope motivation.”
Larry’s work-related sand jars on the other hand look like they’re filled with turds. They smell awful and he’s knocked a few over. Let’s not forget that Larry, while on the job, once dropped a burrito in a creek, broke his arm trying to retrieve that burrito, ate it still, and then blamed the incident on muggers. Larrys are seen as bad for the workforce. Lazy. Inefficient. Incompetent. Might as well give the man a hacky sack.
But the jars that reflect his personal life? They’re bright and colorful; he invests his best self where he wants to. He’s a renaissance man with a wonderful family and throws the hottest Christmas party in town. And he has no regrets.
Though a good case study in contrasting work-life priorities, ice-cream-dropping Garrys are more complex in real life. Consistent incompetence can breed resentment amongst co-workers. If they’re your boss or HR, they can make a difficult situation worse. And if you’re in the operating room, the last person you want to see is Garry Gergich with a scalpel. But real life people don’t spend all their time planning their next trip to Muncie; they may have a child who is sick, or are staving off debt collectors, or are struggling silently with their mental health. Outside of Pawnee, our reality is somewhere between the Knope and Gergich poles.
The question is, do we even reflect on how we view work and whether it deserves every best portion of us all the time? How much of what we give is by choice and how much is by necessity? Should what we do at work ultimately decide our identity?
The answers are complex. They depend on what type of work we are fortunate or unfortunate enough to have. They depend on whether our society has deemed that work worthy of a sufficient wage. They depend on our education, our family circumstances, our other privileges and, among many other things, our capacity. For certain professions, to even carve out some of that precious sand for ourselves after a long work day is a luxury; to have time to consider such questions, let alone come up with answers, is a privilege that not everyone can afford.
Maybe what we need, after we emerge from this dog anus of a pandemic, is to re-evaluate what constitutes a happy work-life paradigm. From an individual standpoint, what are more reasonable, non-Knope-sized expectations to place upon our jobs? Does our job have to be our dream or can it just not transgress our values? From a policy standpoint, what needs to be implemented or advocated so that work better meets the needs of our life instead of the other way around? Can we consider that it doesn’t have to be this way?
Sure, you can keep reading all those articles on how to avoid burnout at work. That might help.
Or you can trust this public urinator to lead you to the Promised Land.
Patrick once placed fourth for “Physics-themed Limerick of the Week” in Physics 101, which he hoped would net him extra credit. Instead, he was awarded a book on quantum mechanics. He never took another physics class again.