Lila Blewitt’s qualified thoughts about work

In Robert Pirsig’s masterful Lila – an inquiry into morals, there’s a great scene in Chapter eighteen, just after the Captain and Lila have a verbal altercation leading into her being thrown off the boat. Still reeling from this and a lifetime of other turmoils, she enters a restaurant in Rochester N.Y.”

“She didn’t like the dark.

In Rochester it was even darker, she thought.

Maybe she could just go back to Rochester and get a regular job.

She couldn’t go back there. They all hated her there. That’s why they fired her. Because she told them the truth.

Everybody wants to turn you into a servant. And when you won’t be a servant for them then you’re no good. Then you’re bad. No matter how hard you try to please them your still no good. You can never serve them enough. They’ve always got to have more. So it doesn’t matter; soon or later they’re going to hate you no matter what you do.”