One of my oceanography professor’s favourite expressions was, “Let’s call a spade a geotome.” I was never sure whether he was just having fun with us, trying to impress us with his knowledge of Greek, or showing us the depth of his subtle sense of humour where, in this case, the joke was the expression.

It’s been a few years since he lectured to us about the Coriolis effect, but I think he may have been using his dry wit to say something about human nature. Namely, that we use words to complicate what are basically simple concepts to make ourselves appear authoritative or to spare ourselves embarrassment or to hide some unpleasant truth. A friend once pointed out that there’s only one word for “not drunk”. The word is “sober”. But there are many words to soften the blow when sobriety goes before a fall—usually the heavy drinker’s and off their feet.

We tell our children to put the loose tooth that just fell out under their pillow so that the Tooth Fairy will leave money for them. Has anybody asked where the Tooth Fairy takes those teeth to dispose of them? Is the facility environmentally friendly? Can they be recycled?

Consider the concept of “work”. My father left home at 6:30 in the morning to go to “work” six days a week. I thought “work” was a place with a street address. At the ripe old age of somewhere on the near side of 10, I hadn’t connected the idea of “work” the street address with “work” as something he did there that put food on the table and a roof over our head—by standing on his feet all day from morning ‘til night. It takes a lot more than “Bring Your Child to Work Day” to get across how that feels.

PDD defines work as, “the production of goods and services for trade and the creation of wealth”, because that’s what it is and that’s what it’s always been. Anything other than that is a bonus if the employer delivers. Otherwise it’s just muddying the waters.

There’s nothing in that definition that talks about visits to a dentist or self-expression or fitness club memberships or subsidized drug plans or cafeterias or motivational speakers or performance appraisals or team building or matching contributions to a savings plan or Human Resources departments.

Speaking of which, do you remember when those departments were called Personnel? Some companies, WestJet for example, refer to them as their People Department. That’s encouraging. It’s human and it’s honest.

The list goes on: no mention of genuine respect for the individual or career development or managers who actually know how to manage or on-the-job training. How about, “We would never dream of shipping your job offshore.” Or, “Sure we could do what you do overseas, but what kind of corporate citizen would we be if we did?” Yeah, right!

PS: For all the flak it’s been taking lately, Apple just announced its new Mac Pro. It’s designed and will be built on American soil. Apple wants you to notice.

Remember those careers we used to advertise in the Careers section? I did when I was a recruiter. Does anyone even have a Careers section that’s bigger than one page any more? How about respect for the customer? Oh, here’s one: “quality” as in, “It’s built so well you won’t need that extra-charge extended warranty.”

One of my favourite muddying-the-water buzz phrases is “job creation” as though governments and employers do it out of the goodness of their heart. Governments create policy. People who innovate and build and sell and service create demand: it’s the need to satisfy that demand that creates jobs. Employees and employment are expenses to be tracked and accounted for so that employers can apply that expense against gross sales to calculate taxable income. That’s why we have payrolls and T4’s.

You have the right to want to provide your services to and solicit an employer who’ll treat you like a human being because they want to, not because the laws of the land say that they have to. You have the right to seek them out just as you do to compete against other people who have precisely the same right.

On November 21^st of last year, PDD began tracking articles about Canada’s economy, Canada’s household debt, management stress and work related stress. As of today, Google Alerts has returned 746 links to articles about those subjects as follows:

• Canada’s economy: 442
• Canada’s household debt: 68
• Management stress: 28
• Work related stress: 208

There are OK employers out there, good employers out there, and as Steve Jobs used to day, insanely great employers out there. Work can be more than “the production of goods and services for trade and the creation of wealth”. If you want it, you can plan for it. Finding work that matters to you is hard work, but it can be done. If you want us to help you, it would be our pleasure.

L’Oréal Paris is fond of saying, “Because you’re worth it.” PDD thinks you’re worth it. And that’s calling a spade a spade.