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Work’s only justification is: it pays the bills. And in some cases it keeps a ferocious father stowed in a cold place away from children, for the better part of the day.

But then you get bills in the first place because people have made it their business to keep adding jobs in the state services sector that is already grossly overstaffed and obscenely incompetent. The fatter the government gets, the more bills you receive. It’s not exactly a fantasy in today’s world to buy a ticket from a machine, board a driver-less train, show the ticket to a machine at your destination, and … you have just used a facility that is pure service; it does not create additional jobs like bill deliverers, bill receivers, customer service staff, etc. That’s the model nature intended for us.

Let machines work, because they are made to work for us, not the other way around. Our only work is to find a wok force to create those machines. Hence, people make robots, automated plants, and companies that run like machines … there is any number of ways to live comfortably without having to work. To sit back and watch the machine make money for you.

But then a majority of us are not born in the immediate family, or to friends of, Malik Riaz. So we have to work – for money, for security, authority, for the sake of appearance, for social needs, to show off, to get even, or if you are dragged down by fate … for one reason or another, work becomes inevitable. But do not despair. I’m not a career guru if I can’t tell you ways of enjoying a mean job when it becomes unavoidable. To get paid without having to work for it. To treat employment with the contempt it deserves, while ensuring your salary and perks are reviewed upwards every year.

I’ll let you in on a little secret: all the leaders of trade and industry, who rise from the ranks, do so by not doing the work assigned to them. They emulate their superiors in every way, including an unsuppressed aversion for any kind of work, on their way up the promotion ladder. Those who really work, get high blood pressure, pension, and a card signed affectionately by their colleagues at the send-off party held during routine tea break.

For those of you living in Pakistan, I’ll recommend a government job – any position from naib qasid to director general. The trick is: you have to treat the employment as an investment opportunity. Say there’s a vacancy for an upper division clerk in the ministry of science and technology. To qualify, you need to be the first to deposit a million rupees with the tout peddling the job. Now, you go to a loan shark and get the money, to be repaid with 100 per cent interest in one year time. Having made the investment, you earn the right to sit as gate keeper to the decision makers of the ministry. Any file seeking their attention will refuse to move from your table without a few crisp, blue, Quaid-e-Azams to grease the path. Nothing related to science and technology will ever get done until someone repays part of your loan, or contributes towards buying your new house in the subsequent years.

If you happen to be abroad, and therefore subjected to alien and irritating cultures and ethics that glorify work, find a job in the nearest diplomatic mission of Pakistan, for it offers the same convenience of claiming a salary without taking responsibility and without rendering any work, that’s available in the mainland. If there is no advertised vacancy, you can have one created, and if the mission has no money to pay, you can offer to create your own income and share it with the mission.

So you concentrate on finding a government job and in the meantime I’ll look for similarly disposed jobs in the private sector, and present them to you.

Masud Alam is an Islamabad-based writer, columnist and journalism trainer. He can be reached at masudalam@yahoo.com

The views expressed by this blogger and in the following reader comments do not necessarily reflect the views and policies of the Dawn Media Group.