“I have become nothing more than a glorified slave,” an acquaintance of mine recently wrote me. The image was rather incongruous. This was a man at the height of his career, with access to the highest echelons of Saudi society and annual earnings that most ordinary Saudis could not dream to earn in a lifetime.
What struck me most about this comment is that it has become a common gripe among the Saudis I meet. It was one of the things that struck me most on my last visit to Saudi Arabia. Whereas the Saudi Arabia of my childhood was characterized by people having rather cushy jobs by Western standards, the Saudi Arabia I witnessed last December was one where job insecurity and overwork have become commonplace. Almost everyone I met complained that their quality of life had significantly dropped. They were having to work much harder in order to earn significantly less in real purchasing terms.
Back in the Saudi Arabia of my childhood, the contrast between life in Britain and life in Saudi Arabia was dazzling. Standards of living were high. The pace of life was slow and luxurious. Whereas in Britain people struggled to find time, in Saudi Arabia people took their sweet time with everything.
It was a time of plenty. People got rich just for being there. It spawned a generation that thought that money was their birthright, just for being Saudis.
I remember being shocked by an undergraduate lecture on developmental economics. The lecture was about Saudi Arabia; it was billed as a case study in economic mismanagement. The essence of the lecturer’s argument was that Saudi Arabia was treating oil revenue not as a windfall but as a constant. This, he argued, was a recipe for disaster. The country was staking its future on unsustainable development, future generations would pay the price for the unrealistic assumptions of their parents.
I disagreed with his economic analysis but thought it could be applied to social development. When parents have it too easy, children end up having unrealistic expectations for their own lives.
The boom days may be long gone but their memory is still vivid in people’s minds. This can lead people to have an inflated outlook on what life should be like, which in turn leads to pervasive dissatisfaction.
And as for those who earn the big bucks but still find themselves running like a hamster on a wheel, the problem is one of shifting expectations. If you go into a job purely in order to get rich, what you generally find is that the goal posts keep moving. Every time you move a step up, your financial demands go up accordingly. In an increasingly materialistic society, the pressure can become relentless. Your children would be embarrassed to be seen with anything less than the latest model of mobile phone. Your wife must absolutely wear the latest Bulgari designs. You wouldn’t be seen dead driving the car your own father drove at your age. It’s a variation on “walk the walk and talk the talk”. Even relatively serious people find themselves tied to the symbols of success. If you don’t play the game, how can you expect to win?
The focus on appearances has become endemic in our society. Take traveling first class. In the West, it is the privilege of the very few and usually restricted to business travel. Even the British prime minister flew economy when he went on holiday to Barbados with his family. But in Saudi Arabia, flying first class is de rigueur in certain circles.
When I flew from Jeddah to Dammam last December, the flight was switched to all-economy at the last minute. One of my fellow-passengers threw a tantrum like a four-year-old child. “I demand to fly first class”, he kept shouting. The stewards tried to calm him explaining to him that there were no first class seats on this flight. He carried on shouting until one of the stewards grabbed him by the shoulders, held him still, and spoke straight to his eye level, as you would do to a misbehaving child. “You are going to have to calm down,” he told him, and he did.
Times have changed but there is a natural time lag between acceptance of change and adapting to its implications. In the 21st century, jobs for life no longer exist. The pace of life has become hectic. Finding a work/life balance is a challenge the majority struggle to achieve. This is true in the West and increasingly true in the Saudi Kingdom.
The changing nature of the way we work brings with it the need for a recalibration of expectations. Success will increasingly be defined not just in terms of how much people make but by how rewarding and satisfying their lives are.
In a recent study in Britain looking at job satisfaction, vocational workers were found to be much happier than their white-collar counterparts. Hairdressers were the happiest people in Britain. This sits well with the growing trend for people to give up well-paying jobs they hate in order to take up more rewarding vocational jobs. They may earn less, but they get to spend their days doing something they enjoy. By downsizing they find they achieve a greater quality of life and spend more time with their families.
So if you really hate your job and can’t wait for your working day to be over, maybe you should become a hairdresser!
