The job isn't big enough.
As a keen young man of promise I progressed rapidly in a
certain manufacturing company from an after-school delivery boy with a weekly
pay packet of coins and one solitary banknote to the manager of a busy
warehouse with staff under my care and a $17,000-a-year executives’ salary
(very generous in those days) with equally generous 'fringe benefits' including
two tailor-made suits a year and twice-weekly dining vouchers.
In order to commit to a life of service to others, I chose
to leave all of this to train as a community health nurse with the prospect of
less than $5,000-a-year after graduation.
The company's Managing Director argued long for me to stay,
offering me an increase in my annual salary to $20,000 and he dangled the
carrot of extra benefits including free golf-club membership and less hour’s
work.
I turned it all down, explaining that the money was
certainly great enough, the fiscal benefits were generous enough, the prestige
was big enough, the social-connections were grand enough, the extra leisure
time was inviting enough, the material rewards were large enough, but the job
itself was too small.
