Last week I observed two polarising attitudes towards work on the same day:

The first was in an office break room, which I share with academic staff and other professional office workers. This particular break room is far larger than necessary for the number of staff that use it, and I use it to look out the window during lunch. Today, however, there was a staff meeting occuring at one of the tables. This was surprising for two reasons; first, the six people including myself was the most staff I had seen in this 30 seat break room at one time, and second, the staff meeting felt confidential but was being held in a shared lunch space. I’m still learning how to work in an office, so many things that are normal seem weird to me, and one of those is holding meetings in the break room that aren’t open to any staff member wandering in. Perhaps this was a union meeting? Do unions have meetings in staff break rooms? These are the quirks of academic life that I have yet to figure out.

I wasn’t asked to leave, but the meeting goers had strained faces when I entered the break room. Still owning the ‘I’m new here’ pass that allows me to commit social faux pas on purpose, I sauntered in and sat down to stare out my favourite window. I need to test the waters to understand their depth, and so if these people were having a confidential meeting they would have to ask me to leave the… staff break room whose door was wide open and next to my office. They chose to continue their meeting but hastily tried to wrap it up now that there was a potential spy amongst them. What I observed from these strangers was a general negativity about working conditions, lead by a comment that there are only so many hours to get things done and our employer wants things done that take more hours than there are available. This sentiment was chorused and praised, and as this appeared to either be the parting word of this meeting or the summary, the group wrapped up their session. During their farewelling it was made clear by all of them that they were heading home for the day as the weather had packed up outside (they work inside, everyday). Remember that I was in there for lunch. I looked at the time: 3:20pm. There is no way staff at this office have worked an 8 hour shift by 3pm, I know because the car park is virtually empty at 9am. With that said, fair is fair; they might work from home as that is permitted here.

That same evening I had stopped by the supermarket on the way home and I made my second observance of workplace attitudes. The check out operator was a person I recognise from years of frequenting this supermarket – I don’t know them, and they definitely don’t know me, but I do feel some familiarity as they have been working here longer than anyone else. This person was a 60 or so year old woman, a pleasant and happy person who like any experienced checkout operator knows which customers to chat with and which to politely ignore. Sadly, I’m a customer who prefers to be ignored, and she realises this with great efficiency early in my checkout procedure, meaning she says hello (I respond of course) and then says nothing until the payment stage.

During this silent time the supermarket employee turns to her superviser and has a quick word, which I accidentally overhear:

“Should I work late this shift?” She asks.

The supervisor asks why, to which she replies “I showed up ten minutes late this morning, so I should stay ten minutes late tonight.”.

The supervisor, clearly not knowing that she had arrived late that morning, learns this information and affirms that if that’s the case she should work ten minutes longer tonight to make up for it. After self reporting her misdeeds, my operator happily continues her work. She did not appear upset at having to work every minute she is getting paid.

The checkout operator’s attitude to work is familiar to me, and I am still trying to understand and adjust to the salaried office worker’s attitudes. These office workers appear to be negative about their work, despite significantly higher pay and the ability to start and end work at leisurely paces plus without constant direct supervision. I don’t want to judge these workers, but I haven’t found a path to empathy just yet.

My personal experience with work is storied with casual, seasonal, fixed term and temporary contracts; I haven’t had a single permanent full time job in my first decade in the workforce, but I have worked a minimum of full time by spinning these plates simultaneously in my own little ‘gig economy’ that strafes across multiple industries. Being an agricultural contract worker who gets paid by a calculation of productivity for the week in a system that effectively puts you in competition with your colleagues was my first experience in the realm of full time work. This set my expectations for work that I have since carried forward as a cleaner, manufacturer, general labourer, painter, stopper, hammer hand, glazier, landscaper, machine operator, CAD drawer and accounts assistant. All of these roles have filled the gap between being a full time student for 6 of those ten years, and working as a teaching assistant at the University – my most consistent casual employment role over this time. Every work role has been met by me with the same attitude of that check out operator. I have always watched the academics and office workers at Universities, but I have never been one of them; I don’t have sick leave, I don’t have stable weekly work, and I can be fired with 24 hours notice without reason at any time, and that’s okay. I don’t generally complain unless I am in a meeting with salaried workers that I am effectively voluntarily attending, or if I get too many email inquiries that need responses during unpaid time – this happens with anyone in the ‘gig economy’ and is not unique to University teaching assistants. I have had builders ask me to attend a site evaluation without pay as it is a prerequirement to start work in earnest the next week – this is also true of inductions, interviews, catch ups with your boss and work socials. Salaried staff get paid for most of this, contractors do not. Whether this is legal is irrelevant; it is mine and others’ lived experience in this way of employment.

I will continue investigating the culture of salaried office workers, and try to conclude that I am not staring privilege in the face. That is too easy a conclusion to reach, and I pride myself on exercising empathy, so there must be a resolution to the differences in attitudes I have experienced.

On a cold Wednesday day in the Winter of 2023 a lecturer for Massey University delivered a presentation that no student heard. This presentation was not advertised, but was in a central and prominent location on the campus, in a room with glass walls and its doors wide open. Hundreds of people saw this presentation take place, and a dozen or so curious onlookers entered the room at different points of the lecturer’s oratory. In the room was a stool that the lecturer occasionally perched on, although mostly he paced slowly while speaking into a microphone connected to the speaker system in the room. Facing this lecturer was five chairs, all different types. They remained empty for the duration of the lecture, despite the occasional student coming in to listen. This lecturer was delivering a Soapbox, and his audience were the students that, for all sorts of reasons, could not access what he had to say. He delivered this Soapbox, this lecture, to no one, but a particular and explicit no one. His knowledge was shared with the missing learners from his University in a method that they could not access; only those rare curious onlookers who crossed the threshold into his glass room were educated. The lecture was not for them, but they gained the knowledge because they were in the right place, at the right time.

Open air public oratory, or soapboxing, is an artistic tradition that originates the way people share and debate ideas. Since people began congregating into communities of relative strangers, mostly due to the advent of cities, we have taken opportunities to express beliefs and rally allies to our causes. This has traditionally occurred in outdoor public spaces where people naturally come together for other reasons. Orators would often present to the public in parks, market squares and other areas that people are already enjoying together as strangers.

This oratory has been historically foundational in how we establish philosophies and paradigms that could reliably be developed through discourse. Sounding out ideas with others in increasing detail and discussion is how we understood the world around us, and only once writing and publishing written works became accessible to the masses did oratory lose its dominance as the primary method of cultural expansion.

Today the written word remains dominant, and the foundations of soapboxing have become digital. So what defines soapboxing and separates it from other written communication?

A traditional soapbox event would be understood from the era that particular term was coined; the late 19th century moving towards pre World War I. It was at this point in England and Europe, that the common worker upturned their soapbox crates to stand on a street corner and have ‘street meetings’. This was the golden era of the Labour movement, where reforms for worker conditions were fought for through multiple channels of negotiation and conflict, and Soapboxing was a feature of information dissemination. This soapbox was spontaneous; you would more likely stumble upon a soapbox presentation than be invited to one, and no permission was sought by authorities to hold these events. By the virtues of free speech these orators would present their views, and the only barrier to access of this information was being at the right place and the right time. This freedom to express ideas was staunchly defended, however over time there have been adjustments to this fundamental right that defends others ability to express their own views. For example it remains forbidden to insight violence in others, and to express hatred to people or groups. The rules of engagement for public discourse remain contended, and modern traditional Soapboxers often present on highly controversial subjects.

A modern, and therefore digitized and written Soapbox would be a discourse on topics that are spontaneously presented, with no particular authorised event for dissemination. Institutions do not present Soapboxes; only people do, and institutions also do not allow or disallow them either unless they have the legal right to stop such presentations. Therefore a modern Soapbox would be a private blog (like this one), a social media post of an individual’s views as well as comment threads of discussion, and perhaps a newsletter or other informational service by people for people. The information that is most valued by people was once in this very form, however in the modern era we have a new format of valued information.

This art form is the origins of the much more systematic education system that we utilise today; state primary and secondary education, and relatively privatised tertiary education. Universities still rely heavily on an adapted form of Soapboxing; the lecture. Lecturing is oratory from a qualified person delivered to students who wish to learn what the lecturer knows. This is very similar to a Soapbox, however it has been moved away from this description for a number of reasons.

Firstly, lecturing is delivered by a person, but that person is under the authority of the relevant University. This institutionalisation of delivery is important to note; lecturers are required to deliver content that the University desires to be delivered. In general, lecturers have strong academic freedoms to deliver content as they see fit, and the control Universities have over content is limited by the virtue that the lecturer is the specialist, and they know the content better than anyone else. It must be acknowledged, however, that Soapboxers have no institutional authority that requires consent for information to be delivered. The importance of this distinction cannot be overstated, and there are starkly different risks associated with each system of communication. Where University lectures carry the risk of institutionalised norms being enforced, and therefore stagnation of ideas and an unwillingness to discuss controversy, Soapboxers are uninhibited, which risks their information to in fact be misinformation, and carries a higher risk of disseminating informational hazards, conspiracy theories and propaganda.

Secondly, Universities only deliver courses that have student enrolments. Some courses are compulsory for students to enroll in a major or degree, and these course’s information is considered important by the University (and also often the Government or industry bodies), whereas others are elective, and therefore run based on the popularity of course enrolments. Compulsory courses have their information qualified by institutions, which is expressed by the first point above. Elective courses, however, involve an additional separation of University education from its Soapbox origins; the free market interfering with information. Soapboxers do engage in a free market of information in the same way as Universities, however a Soapboxer cannot be silenced because they do not draw enough crowds. In fact, traditional Soapboxers are known to continue their presentation even when no one is listening. It is this artistic distinction that is important to note; Universities silence unpopular presenters because students won’t enroll in a course. Soapboxers are incentivised socially to be silenced when no one will listen, and it is observed that a Soapbox orator develops their content based on the crowds they draw. Over time a Soapboxer changes what they say to attract listeners, and therefore in a more direct manner their information is changed by the free market. With that acknowledged, fundamentally a Soapboxer may present views that are unheeded by passers by, whereas lecturers are not offered the opportunity to express views that students will not enroll in (unless of course it is a compulsory course, which comes with the aforementioned authority of the institution rather than free market principles).

Finally, and most importantly, a lecture is not publicly available. Soapboxes are in the free world; they are on a publicly accessible blog, a street corner or newsletter. Universities privatise the orator’s information by presenting barriers to access through enrolments. Enrolling in a University course is a bundle of many barriers, the chief of which is a time commitment. This main barrier is similarly applied to all forms of education including Soapboxes, and as it cannot be avoided is an ineradicable barrier. In addition to this however, enrolling in a University course also has other barriers attached, the most prominent being the financial barrier in most tertiary educational systems. Where there are no financial barriers to entry there are often instead prior educational achievements required, like secondary school results of entrance exams (both barriers exist in some form for all Universities in New Zealand). Add to this other institutional barriers that remain stubbornly present which can broadly be summarised as discrimination, whether ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, culture or income. These other barriers remain in University systems, and although Soapboxing has rampant controversial presentations that can only be described as discriminatory (and in some cases hate speech or misinformation), the audience members do not face individual barriers to listen to their choice of orator. In the digitised form there are no barriers at all to consuming information from Soapboxers, whereas a discriminatory lecturer may fail students for reasons beyond their merit, causing their educational access to be restricted for reasons beyond their control when compared to public information like Soapboxes. In fact, the testing element to University education, while important to qualify a student’s knowledge, is a barrier itself to accessing further knowledge held by the University in higher level courses.

With these differences, we can see that lectures from Universities carry with them risks of an echo chamber due to insitutionalised norms, catering information to mass enrolments due to a financial incentive, and providing huge barriers to access to their presentations. Practicing Soapboxes is an antidote to these risks, and although the artform carries its own problems, it should be celebrated and welcomed onto campuses (perhaps in a regulated manner). In particular, there is an opportunity for the privatised information in lecturer’s heads to be made available to the public on an accessible forum. Universities hold valuable information that people with barriers to access arguably have a right to hear, and the institution has an opportunity to counter the more radical forms of modern Soapboxing by occupying that same space with the qualified thinkers that they employ.