Until my final years at school, the path ahead was one of working in a trade. Brethren mostly seemed to work with their hands or supported others who did so. I spent my school holidays doing building work, and have been glad ever since that I did. Then there was quite an abrupt shift from tradesmen to trading, and within quite a short space of time practically everybody was in the buying and selling business. The reasons given were that there was less defilement, as you don't have to mix so closely or enter people's houses, and of course the potential for increased income. That began to be very important as the cost of living in the fellowship increased.
I was one of the early ones required to spend an extra two years in schooling, so my earning started late. Since then, the leaving age has reduced again by a year. That did mean I achieved some extra qualifications, but I haven't found a use for them yet, as they are conventionally used as a means of getting into university.
With all brethren businesses being variations on a theme, and the only difference often being the contents of the boxes on the warehouse shelves, it will be obvious there is not a great choice of careers. There is an unacknowledged hierarchy of jobs within those limits, though. Sales is at the top if you don't count management - which is obligatory for family members and not an option for anyone else. More recently there has been an effort to boost the standing and rewards of working in purchasing and accounts, and marketing has made an appearance as a separate entity instead of a side issue. Still, though, the people who actually bring in the orders are the ones to be emulated. As for warehouse work, that is usually done by non-brethren, so it doesn't count for much.
I have experienced most of the roles possible. To be honest, none of them suit me particularly, though I am glad to have had the experience. I started, kind of accidentally, managing sites, but a feature of my working life has been taking on tasks that need rapid picking up, and the first of those was the sudden responsibility for a company's accounts because the previous person left. I still have a lot of respect for my boss at the time, who was a practical man with a clear idea of his limits in the paperwork direction, and who took his christianity seriously enough to be totally transparent about the running of his company. All the figures went through my hands, and I was only eighteen - and that included management salaries and banking details. His working method was to leave specific people to do the things he found difficult himself, and judge by the results. Needless to say, he's rare in that, and in the openness, and despised by other more obviously successful brethren.
Accounting, though, is deathly dull, and I couldn't stand it for long.
Still, if I go through my working life, this will be too long. I'll return to what it's like to work in a brethren company another time.
6 comments:
I'm interested in the status given sales. And now marketing. Don't these functions usually require some genial contact with heathens?
As usual your posting is educational, at least to me the bystander. JND, the EB's founder, was clearly an educated man but one inference from what you say is that it is likely that early brethren stock came substantially from hewers of wood and drawers of water heritage. Given the solidly Anglo-Saxon names (like Hewison) presumeably this meant British but I wonder if some anglicised French names meant Huguenot refugee ancestry. This is a whole other subject of course, but, any thoughts?
In a small local EB business (a shop) at the end of last year I found that there were a lot of staff and, apparently, there wasn't much for them to do. In the shop there were about four young women assistants who were discussing their own lives excitedly as I went in. No attention was paid to me until I coughed. I spoke to the young woman who turned towards me, and then watched as my requirement was passed from one to the other down the line, almost like the game of Chinese Whispers - except that it was spoken out loud.
The assistant at the end of the line then went into the back of the shop and asked a young man for help. He came into the shop and put a ladder against the shelves behind the counter. A second young man came and climbed the ladder, fetched down my purchase and handed it to the first young woman who sold it to me. All the time the other young women continued gossiping about what "he" had said to "her" etc.
As I left, I gave the young woman who had supervised my purchase a Christmas card that I had made for them. It was in an envelope, so I said, "This is to wish you a Happy Christmas". A that point all the young women turned in my direction and paid attention to me, and they were obviously surprised and delighted. "Thank you - oh thank you!" they said warmly.
Are all EB businesses so overstaffed, and is it only young men who get to climb the ladders?
Would there be any connection between the status of sales and marketing and the discontentment of the more intelligent young people who feel frustrated, limited and bored in a manual trade? Could this be some sort of alternative for them?
I'd be wary about generalising too much (I've been in trouble before). In previous decades, there were a lot of brethren in professions, and I understand the sixties were business-focussed, much like now. The trades must have been emphasised in the late seventies and eighties, I imagine. I don't think my own family heritage is from anything beyond the menial, though.
Contact with heathens is OK, incidentally, but conventional brethren wisdom has it that geniality is not necessary.
As for wasted staff, it varies from place to place. Full employment is pretty much guaranteed, so where there are similar people and not much work, there will probably be some idle people. In other places they might have too much to do.
Oh, and of course it really wouldn't do to have young women climbing ladders. They wear skirts.
I must say that I dislike the narrow focus of brethren careers. I know many who love the business life, and who would be bored in manual work, but personally I've found the reverse. We're all different, and if we try to fit in the same mould, some of us will always hurt.
Touche la pussycat about the generalisation thing.
To me the biggest potential difference about work in and out of brethrenism is that out, work can be the thing which gives most meaning to one's life and the sky 's the limit.You could become the head of MI5 or the British voice in the World Bank. Or whatever else takes your fancy...
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