the dwarves worked for no particular reason at all; they punched no clock and drew no paycheck. By implication it was simply their nature to work as they did, and they went cheerfully off to work, singing as they headed for the mineshaft.
The owner of the pickup truck with the bumper sticker probably does not set off for work with the cheery heart of the dwarves, and the bumper sticker is there specifically to make that point. It reflects our general social attitude towards work. "The average human being has an inherent dislike of work and will avoid it if he can" (McGregor, 1960, p. 33). We work because we have to, not because we want to. We go to work grudgingly, and leave as soon as we can get away. We dislike Monday, the usual start of the work week, call Wednesday "hump day," and proclaim "Thank God its Friday." For years, Miller Beer saluted the end of the work day as "Miller time."
This negative attitude towards work is deeply ingrained in our culture (McGregor, 1960, pp. 33-43). Adam and Eve were forced out of the Garden of Eden and condemned to live by toil. A sentence to prison "at hard labor" is harsher than one to simple prison time. Medieval society placed those who worked, the peasants and artisans, at the bottom of the social order, with non working warriors and clerics above them.
Even when work was not treated as a sort of punishment, it was regarded as a rather grim necessity of life, a social duty to be performed (Morf, 1989, p. 31). "Who does not work, shall not eat." Eating itself, or sleeping, is also a necessity of life, but we do not feel the need to stress it as an obligation. At best, work is indeed sometimes treated something like a diet: a form of self denial that is unpleasant, but good for us in the long run.
Much of twentieth century industrial engineering and work analysis has been rooted in the proposition that workers do not like to work and will do what they can to get out...