Just A Job

Someone who has nothing intellectually or morally worthwhile about them—in other words, the typical non-rationalist—might struggle with orienting their life without realizing that it is the inherent truths of reason that grounds all things and seek menial distraction, financial reward, arbitrary self-esteem, or social approval through professional work.  The last of these four motivations is a reaction to the person's culture or standing in it.  If it was not for their given society pretending like wealth or workplace success makes someone intelligent or morally upright, they might never have even considered the idiotic idea that affinity for professional labor is the core of human nature.

Some people, out of desperation to fit in with what they perceive to be the cultural norm, driven by monetary woes, or due to self-imposed slavery to greed, really do talk and act in public as if their job is the most foundational part of their life or perhaps of all reality.  They neglect logical necessities in favor of fixation on the workplace and the money, status, or subjective fulfillment it brings them.  They might show respect to people based upon whether they have a job or what their role is, not based upon their rationality and moral character.  They might intentionally or "unintentionally" sacrifice their freedom, health, relationships, and what would otherwise be personal time for the sake of appeasing a delusional boss, but not in a self-aware way, or put off addressing any glaring issues beyond the workplace.

Such people are philosophically delusional: they have purposefully or accidentally lived for work rather than the other way around.  It is logically possible to enjoy work or lean into it without making any of these potential errors.  This, however, is not what can be commonly observed among coworkers or employers.  They might be falling for the asinine conditioning of their local community or broader society, but they are also voluntary fools because no one has to make assumptions, ignore the intrinsic nature of reason, or sink into an invalid obsession with their profession or class.  

Their professional role is just a job, a social construct.

Unless someone's job also happens to have some sort of default moral significance (at least if Christianity is true), though this does not at all mean they themself are rational or righteous, their job is never anything more than a means to a financial or psychological end, whereas reason is the means and the and of all reality, being inherently true and required for all knowledge of truth.  It does not matter whether someone is an executive or a frontline customer service representative; despite how irrational corporate structure and the widespread exploitation of workers, professional work is only a way to achieve a given goal, whether that goal is fulfilling a practical need or a personal desire.  No one works just to work in the ultimate sense.

If not earning money, then staving off alleged boredom, feeling a sense of empowerment in one's abilities, improving people's lives (for very specific jobs), or trying to "make" others regard oneself as worthy of human attention will be the aim of professional work.  Someone who is in denial about how someone else might not not share their positive but subjective feelings or attitudes about work, or who bases their philosophy of labor on what other people pressure them to ascribe to, is a fool, but more than just being irrational, they also lack any psychological comfort with the reality that work is not the central part of human existence.  A job really is just a job left to itself.