For the Love of Work

Pre-Test For the Love of Work Read sentences A–C and then the article that follows. Focus on meaning and look for clues to help you complete the text with these sentences. Compare with a partner.A. Judging from the lovingly selected décor and smiling faces, new restaurant owners are overwhelmingly impervious to their chances for success.B. Sometimes work made in this manner comes to public attention by winning national and international awards.C. By refusing to separate personal finance from business finance, many entrepreneurial workers, whether artists, restaurant owners, or vendors of handmade goods, stand to never make a very big profit.For the Love of WorkMost people look for jobs that will allow them, after some initial investment in education and training, to make more money from the marketplace than they or their benefactors ever spent from their own personal savings. Yet there are those who never separate their personal finances from their business finances by performing such clear mathematical calculations regarding the pay they receive for their work. These workers think mainly in terms of the ideological, creative, or entrepreneurial satisfaction their activities give them, with little regard for the unpaid hours or personal savings they invest on a daily basis.Artists, writers, and filmmakers belong overwhelmingly to this group. Very few of them make a living off their creative work, yet they continue to invest money in fine arts degrees, professional development activities, and hours of labor simply for the thrill of seeing their work hanging in a community exhibition hall, or printed in a non-profit literary journal, or broadcast at a small film festival. (1) _In the field of film, an independently financed film may win an Oscar and recoup its original investment, even making the producers, director, and writer a profit. But a recent study by Jeremy Juuso, author of Getting the Money: A Step-by-Step Guide for Writing Business Plans for Film, warns that the odds of turning a profit on an independent, non-studio movie are less than 3%. Restaurant owners can also claim membership to the same club. Around 1,000 new restaurants open in New York City each year and 80% of them are destined to go out of business within five years, yet the rate of openings continues to grow. (2)_The same goes for purveyors of handmade goods, varying from knitted shawls to tea cozies to customized furniture. The popular online store etsy.com, “the place to buy and sell all things handmade and vintage,” has over 60 million items in its marketplace. The marketplace for handmade and vintage goods connects 2.1 million sellers with 39.4 million buyers. It’s hard to make all the products stand out, but that doesn’t deter anybody from spending many dedicated hours dreaming, drawing, sewing, stapling, gluing, sawing...(3)_So why do they do it? Perhaps they simply don’t believe the odds against them. Perhaps they are convinced that working for themselves, as opposed to a boss they don’t get along with, is worth the sacrifice. Perhaps they feel that they would rather fail at something they love than succeed at something they care little for. Whatever the reason, their choices give diversity, intrigue, and a sense of surprise to everybody else’s experience of the market. Identifying opinions, arguments, and examples or facts Look at the reading text For the Love of Work and identify the parts where the writer expresses an opinion, gives reasons for this opinion (arguments), and provides examples or facts. Make notes in the following chart. (5mn) Opinion Argument Examples Artists, writers and filmmakers care only about the satisfaction their activities give them Restaurant owners also belong to this club Another group that care only about personal satisfaction are purveyors of handmade goods