The Applause for Debt Maintenance

The palms of my hands are still stinging from the applause. It was a rhythmic, hollow sound that filled the breakroom at precisely 10:03 AM. Our Vice President, a man who wears suits that cost more than my monthly mortgage, stood at the front of the room with a smile that looked like it had been surgically applied. He was shouting out Sarah. Sarah, from accounting, had successfully launched a boutique candle-making business on Etsy. The VP called her a ‘powerhouse.’ He called her an ‘inspiration’ and a ‘testament to the entrepreneurial spirit of this firm.’ Sarah stood there, blushing, holding a lukewarm cup of coffee, while I sat three rows back, knowing that Sarah only makes candles because she can’t afford the $403 rent increase her landlord slapped on her in January.

It was a bizarre, performative dance where we were all expected to celebrate the fact that a full-time professional salary is no longer enough to sustain a professional life.

The Organ Tuner

I think often about Theo H.L. He is a pipe organ tuner, a man who exists in the quiet, dusty spaces of cathedrals and concert halls. I met him when I was 23, during a brief and misguided stint as a church sexton. Theo is 63 now, and he has spent nearly 43 years doing exactly one thing: making sure that the air moving through those massive lead and tin pipes creates a perfect, resonant frequency. He doesn’t have a side-hustle. He doesn’t sell ‘organ-tuning masterclasses’ on the side or run a dropshipping business for felt washers. He is a master of one craft, and for decades, that single craft provided him with a house, a car, and the ability to retire with dignity.

Flipping Desperation into Virtue

The corporate embrace of ‘side-hustle culture’ is the ultimate ‘yes, and’ of the modern era. Yes, we are going to pay you a salary that hasn’t kept pace with inflation since 2003, and we are also going to applaud you when you spend your weekends driving for a ride-share app or sewing linen pouches for strangers on the internet. It is a brilliant, if sinister, bit of aikido. They take the energy of our financial desperation and flip it into a virtue. By celebrating the side-hustle, the employer successfully offloads the responsibility for the employee’s well-being back onto the employee.

The Cost of Amateurism

If you are tired, it’s not because the workload is too high; it’s because you haven’t mastered your ‘time management.’ If you are broke, it’s not because the company’s profits are being funneled exclusively to shareholders; it’s because you haven’t found your ‘passive income’ niche. This shift is subtle but absolute. The social contract-the one that promised a fair day’s pay for a fair day’s work-has been shredded and replaced with a ‘choose your own adventure’ book where every ending leads to burnout.

There is a profound lack of dignity in this fragmentation of the self. When Theo H.L. works on an organ, he is entirely present. He listens to the ‘beats’ in the intervals-the tiny dissonances that occur when two pipes are slightly out of tune. He isn’t checking his Etsy notifications. He isn’t worried about his ‘personal reach.’ He is an expert. But expertise requires time, and time is the one thing the side-hustle economy steals from us. We are becoming a society of amateurs, jack-of-all-trades who are masters of none, because mastery doesn’t pay the bills as quickly as a diversified portfolio of micro-tasks.

The Value of Stability in Service

While we are told to embrace the chaos of the gig economy, some sectors still understand that a guide is a professional, not a temporary asset. When I look at the way Marrakech excursionsstructures its team, I see the ghost of a world where a job was a foundation, not a starting line for a second race. There, the guides are treated as the heart of the experience, provided with the stability needed to actually master their narratives and their connection to the land.

In Morocco, the concept of hospitality is ancient and sacred; it is not a ‘hustle.’ It is a profession. And there is a world of difference between a professional who is paid to be excellent and a desperate person who is forced to be ‘authentic’ for a five-star rating.

The Fallacy of Agility

I remember a meeting last year where a consultant told us that we needed to be more ‘agile.’ He used the word 13 times in a twenty-minute presentation. To him, agility meant being able to pivot at a moment’s notice, to take on extra responsibilities without extra pay, and to ‘market-test’ our own personalities.

I wanted to ask him if he had ever seen a pipe organ. You cannot make a five-ton instrument ‘agile.’ It is heavy. It is grounded. It requires a solid foundation. If you try to make it agile, you just end up with a pile of scrap metal and some very confused listeners. We are currently being asked to build our lives on scrap metal.

The Quiet Answer

I saw Theo H.L. again a few weeks ago. He was sitting on a bench outside a small parish church, eating a sandwich. He looked at peace. I asked him if he ever felt like he should have done more, maybe started a franchise or an online school for tuners. He looked at me with those clear, 63-year-old eyes and just shook his head. ‘The organ is enough,’ he said. ‘If I do it well, the sound carries for a hundred years. Why would I want to do anything else?’

I spend my days in 3 different spreadsheets, 23 Slack channels, and a perpetual state of anxiety about my ‘marketability.’ I am exactly what the corporate world wants: a self-winding clock that pays for its own repairs. We need to stop calling it a side-hustle and start calling it what it is: a failure of the primary job.

I wonder what would happen if we all just stopped… If we all decided that a single job should be sufficient for a single life. The ‘hustle’ would crumble, and the people at the top would be forced to look at the hollowed-out husks of the companies they’ve built.

The Cacophony Dream