What Do You Do?

A weighty question in the States proves to be light as a cloudberry in Sweden.

“So…what do you do?”

I was 23 the first time I activated someone in Los Angeles with the question “what do you do?”

The four of us were sitting in a Hollywood strip mall dive called The Woods, cosplaying adulthood with casual drinks “after-work” on a Tuesday (the quotations, you’ll later find, are integral to the story).

In a musty booth substantiating the bar’s name, we were dissecting a date Susannah, an actress, had recently gone on. It felt like she was auditioning for Sex and the City before our very eyes.

“We just didn’t have all that much to talk about from the go,” she violently spun her baby straw in a vodka soda, chasing an innocent lemon wedge.

I decided to ask a perfectly normal question.

So I thought.

A transcript of my crime:

“Did you ask him ‘what do you do’?”

“What do you do? WHAT DO YOU DO?!” Susannah parroted, outraged, as if I’d just insulted her mother’s lasagna. She searched our two other friends for mirrored shock and awe at such an inquiry.

“Um that’s irrelevant,” she cooly answered, regaining consciousness. This line - its delivery, its aggrievement - is seared into my brain forever.

Being in the same general soup of our early twenties, identities not quite cemented, the bystanders of this conversation sided with Susannah. I don’t blame them. It’s much less corporate, more bohemian and glamorous to simply not care about “work” or “income” this way.

But the bewilderment with which this question was met was equally bewildering to me.

One week after graduating college, I moved to LA for an internship at a major movie studio. I would show up early and leave late like the college guidance counselor tells all the pleasure-to-have-in-class types to do. I ran menial errands, wore blazers and told many men they were full of bright ideas.

In an absurd turn of events, I was handed an entire commercial to produce on the tail end of the summer, something I had no idea how to do. The whiplash of this trajectory alone was cause for therapy I couldn’t yet afford.

Low and behold, my DIY commercial (co-produced by one Google search box, thank you for your service) landed me a full-time job as a coordinator. I’d leapfrogged over assistant. Score! But now, the practice of sustained concentration for eight plus hours a day, especially when you had skipped a grade, was a herculean feat in itself, actual projects aside.

All I wanted to do was talk about work. The challenge of it! The cage of it! The cracks where you got to smuggle in your own ideas! The Tupperware culture! Who is “DAVE” and why has his mystery dish been in the fridge since I got here?

But also, the bright spots. My hopes! Thrills like visiting set or giving Jeff Bridges directions to the bathroom! I wanted to hear about what others were up to in their Hamburg era. And also, how are you guys affording these drinks, haha?

The table had gone to boarding school together. This informed Susannah’s reaction in a way I did not yet understand. There was a flexibility afforded that I didn’t have. Such chic carelessness about “what you do” is a privilege. A luxury enjoyed when you are not in survival mode, an endless scroll of paycheck math in your head. I don’t say this with resentment or criticism, just at the time, a misunderstanding. We were having a conversation from different points of reference and I felt I’d offended her for reasons unknown.

Around the Susannah administration, I went to a dinner party at the boarding school friend’s house. Her neighbor, now a famous actor and director but at the time known simply as the brother of a famous actor, was there. Let’s call him Nick. I asked him what he did because I had not yet learned my lesson.

It fully destabilized him.

“Well uh, boy, I’m just so lucky! I was signed with CAA and I really love my agent! I know what a position I’m in and I feel, you know, nothing but gratitude!” He bowed modestly with his hands in prayer-formation like he was on stage at a late night show, greeting fans in the audience.

What the hell just happened?

“He’s an actor,” my friend later informed me in a hushed tone, stirring risotto in the kitchen. Were they conspiring together to make this as weird as possible? Why couldn’t Nick just say he was an actor?

When I started meeting people in Stockholm, I noticed “what do you do?” didn’t carry the same baggage. It wasn’t a provocative faux pas. It was part of the table chat, breezy as “do you live in this neighborhood?” or “have you tried the cacio e pepe at Nizza?” or “are you going to the rave in the woods later?”

It felt refreshing to ask this and be met with so much emotional neutrality.

Some responses:

“I went back to school and I’m finishing a sculpture study. I tried every program at the art school first. Because it was free.”

“I manage a wine bar.”

“I write algorithms for HBO Max.”

“I style the NK windows.”

“My job is boring but I love taking photos. I show in galleries and post everything on Instagram.”

“I direct movies. Maybe you can give me notes on my script.” (this came from, later I learned, a Cannes award-winning director. The humility in Scandinavia continues to astonish me. He wasn’t flirting).

Even my answer often received something like “Oh cool. What are you drinking, by the way?” That was nice. It didn’t make me feel like a Hollywood zoo or have to justify why I was leisurely reading a Cookie Mueller biography on a Wednesday instead of terrorizing a PA about call sheets.

I recognize that in both of my LA examples, we’re talking about actors which is a level of self-consciousness I hope I never have to grapple with. Also that we were young, unpracticed in our conviction of self.

But Susannah and Nick’s reactions were just the beginning.

Some would approach “what do you do?” like a job interview, performing an impassioned reading of their résumé that may as well be delivered in a polyester suit amid air dancers. Some would indicate the company for which they worked, banking on the name recognition but never explaining what it is they actually did. Some would straight up short-circuit, unable to list just one thing: Director! Model! DJ! Entrepreneur! Artist (General)!

“What do you do?” was like striking a match at a gas station.

I can appreciate all the reasons this question would be inflammatory in LA, specifically. This was the house of dreamers and broken dreams. We were cowboys compared to the smart, responsible people securing their 401Ks and futures with pre-paved career paths.

I can also empathize if you don’t feel proud of your work or are confused in general about what it is you’d like to do. Maybe you’re not working at all at the moment. Not uncommon.

My exasperation is directed more at the systems that have created such anxiety around a very normal question rather than the people answering it. This is small-talk as common as the weather. It shouldn’t lord the ability to place you in a private, existential crisis cocoon for the rest of the night. And not in a fun, mushrooms way.

I have observed a million other ways Swedish people seem to be liberated from attaching personal value to these very basic IDs. The question is not a loaded gun in either direction: one of not caring about what you do for work or one of caring a lot. Not to point at the obvious culprit but I do believe that baggage is tied into a system of (sorry) capitalism: if you are neatly put in a box, it is easier to sell you things. It’s like a game of word association: Artist? Free-spirited, visionary, you like to sleep in and chain smoke. Let’s get you an Elf Bar. Corporate executive? Ambitious, conventional, regimented. You should own a Keurig. It’s boring, right?

We seem to hold little space for complexity or ambiguity in what we do vs. who we are. The answer to “what do you do?” has evolved into a heavy-handed device used to spoon-feed personal qualities that could, in time, simply be revealed.

It’s a conversation starter at the end of the day, not a declaration of your self-worth.

I’m curious what would happen if we approached our professional titles and the inherent assumptions attached as openers rather than conclusions.

I say this, by the way, as someone who cares deeply about my work. Creativity, commitment and discipline are values I hold sacred. But I am always trying to remind myself that I’m in the business of doing good work, not chasing a good title.

To this day, I don’t find the question “what do you do?” to be impolite or taboo. Even if what you do is keep the lights on, work is usually where you spend most of your time. Not to mention, keeping the lights on is something to be celebrated. There are also other ways to respond, be it with what you like to do or with a canned “What do I do? My best!” That’s my current answer.

Reading this, you are probably thinking: it’s not that deep.

And I would agree. It really isn’t.