This past Monday was Labor Day. I spent it working as usual. I’d like to share a little something about work, mainly about a perspective that, if the work matters, it doesn’t matter if it’s unpleasant.
I’ve just finished reading Zach Mercurio’s book The Power of Mattering. The book is mainly about showing other people that they matter, and how to do that, particularly as a business leader, although the principles apply to parents, friends, and everybody. Near the end is a section called “Develop a ‘So-That’ Mindset.” Mercurio tells a story of someone he met as a doctoral student:
When I was a doctoral student, one of the first research interviews I conducted was with Susan, a sought-after cleaner in the housing department at the local university. Her interview reflects much of what researchers know about how people perceive their work as meaningful, and themselves as mattering. I asked Susan, “What part of your job is the most meaningful to you?” Without pause, she described cleaning the university dormitory bathrooms on Monday morning. To me that sounded extremely unpleasant. She admitted it was, but then pivoted, saying, “I’m cleaning their bathroom so they don’t get sick. You know?”
Susan told me that she regularly uses this “so-that” framing, repeating the statement to herself as she’s doing the task: “I’m cleaning this bathroom so that these kids don’t get sick.”
Later in our interview she recalled a blind student who lived in the dormitory. “When we cleaned her room, we had to make sure we put everything back when we vacuumed—make sure the trash can was in the same spot, and that nothing was moved—so that, when she would come back into her room, she would not trip over anything.”
Then he added this:
Susan’s story is also a reminder that what’s purposeful isn’t always pleasurable. Experiencing mattering has less to do with what we’re doing and more with how we see the impact of what we’re doing. Everything has a “so that.” If you look hard enough, you’ll see another human being at the end of almost every act.
That got my attention this week. It’s certainly true that not all work is pleasurable. There’s a saying that, if you find work you love, you never work a day in your life, meaning it’s too enjoyable to be called work. It’s a nice sentiment, but in real life work entails hard things. Sometimes the unpleasantness is icky or dirty-hands kind of work—like Susan’s cleaning dorm bathrooms. Sometimes it’s mundane, boring tasks, like paperwork or billing, things that have to be done whether you like them or not. Sometimes it’s interpersonally unpleasant tasks like laying off employees or dealing with conflict within a team.
But if you have a larger picture, a “so-that” mindset, you can see the meaning that makes the unpleasant tasks worth doing.
Are you just laying one brick after another? Or are you building a cathedral?
Mike Rowe has made a living out of highlighting those unpleasant jobs and the people who do them. The remarkable people he meets are proud of their work. They make a positive—and sometimes necessary—difference in people’s lives. He often looks at the blue-collar jobs, but the same bigger-mission framing applies to anything from the most humble to the most elevated jobs.
A friend from high school went into medicine and specialized in gastroenterology. I asked her how she chose her specialty, and it came down to, when she was doing rotations, that was one that many other doctors resisted, but she didn’t find it that unpleasant. She saw a need, a way she could help people, that made any associated unpleasantness worth working through.
There’s a story about a gas station in Texas that’s worth telling. Back in the early 1980s, a man named Beaver Bam (real name) was working construction with his father, but he was looking for something entrepreneurial to do on his own. He noticed that, wherever you stopped for gas, you faced dirty bathrooms, icky snacks, and unpleasant service. He knew he could do better—way better!
He specialized in clean bathrooms. That was the first goal. And the next was better food. His place wasn’t what you’d call a restaurant, but he started selling brisket sandwiches, and a whole lot else. And added in Texas specialties and local foods, like homemade brownies and caramel popcorn. There were car washes too. And did I mention 50+ gas pumps—so there’s hardly ever any waiting in line.
This first location was on the interstate between Houston and San Antonio. Everyone traveling west or east on I-10 passed it—near the small town of Luling, where there weren’t many other services. And it was the perfect place to stop for gas or a rest stop or snack break. And once travelers found how pleasant it was, they planned to stop there the next time.
This is Buc-ee’s, in case you hadn’t guessed—or if you don’t live in a place where you get this experience. There are many of them now, mostly everywhere in Texas, but now expanding to other states. Buc-ee Beaver is the mascot, and he shows up on just about every kind of merchandise. I tend to buy cookbooks there for out-of-state family. And sometimes socks or toys with Buc-ee Beaver on them. (There are two British guys who explore a Buc-cee’s in this YouTube video.)
Beaver Bam made stopping for gas an experience worth remembering, instead of just a sad, dirty part of a road trip. His “so-that” is something like: “make a rest stop a clean, pleasant, and memorable experience for travelers; it will make their whole trip better.”
It started with the unpleasant job of cleaning bathrooms—and he has always paid his employees well for meeting the mission: $18-$22/hour to start plus benefits and 401-K matching. No wonder they’re happy to greet each and every person who walks through the door. And, by the way, this has affected other gas stations in Texas as well; Buc-cee’s set the standard high, so others had to step up their game.
If the work matters, it doesn’t matter if it’s unpleasant. You just have to know it’s worth doing.
I ran across a Daniel Pink post on LinkedIn in which he recommends the book The War of Art (another favorite at our house), and says,
You won’t always feel ready.
You won’t always feel inspired.
But if the work matters, show up anyway.
I guess it’s in the zeitgeist for the Labor Day week—or maybe for every day.
If you don’t know whether, or how, your work matters, it’s about time you found out. Try asking yourself, “I do this so that ____.” If you’re a parent, you know this about the unpleasant tasks: changing diapers, cleaning up messes, handling crying in the middle of the night. You do those things, and commiserate with other parents about it. But you do those things so that you can provide a happy, healthy, loving environment for your child to grow up in. What a sad life for those who miss the wonderful blessings of parenting, because they focus on—and dread—those unpleasant things.
In your work, if you can reframe the drudgery, the boring tasks, or the difficult and dirty jobs into something you do “so that” you can accomplish a particular mission, then your work has meaning. If you can help someone else find the meaning in their work, or simply in their life, all the better.
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My name is Linda Nuttall. I've been writing the Spherical Model blog since 2011, on the interrelationships of the political, economic, and social spheres, which I moved to Substack in June 2025. I'm a writer/editor, former homeschool mom, grandmother, musician, devout Christian. The blog is always free, including for subscribers, but if you’d like to support the work, you can choose to become a paid subscriber.
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