Joe Vaupotic, 22, sits on the ground with his legs crossed and a guitar in his lap in Zuccotti Park.  Next to him is his guitar case with a sign inside that states: “Been here since day one, need $ $ $ to go home.  Much love!”

This is how Vaupotic spends most of his time, playing melodies from his guitar that’s missing a few strings. Passersby sympathetically drop money into his guitar case.  Yet this image has made Vaupotic want to leave the Occupy Wall Street movement.  “I don’t want to reinforce any hippie stereotypes,” Vaupotic said.

Vaupotic, who is originally from New Jersey, has been at the park since the Occupy Wall Street movement began on September 13.  The 99 percent continues to gain strength, sparking other Occupy Wall Street movements in cities like Orlando, Los Angeles, and Oakland.

At first, Vaupotic was enamored by the cause against corporate greed that brought thousands of protestors to the park.  After a month of camping out and playing his guitar, he now realizes that perhaps its time to get back to his own reality.  His ambition is to one day create melodies with his guitar so that other people can write lyrics to them.  Right now his next sept is to get a job and move to Rochester. NY.

The survey: What is a Job, Really?

Click here to see the results.

I created my survey with the intention of shedding a little light on some of the less discussed elements of employment. Namely, I wanted to see whether time flexibility, vacations, stress and workload were more important determining factors in employment that simple dollars  and cents.

Only three of the 26 people that took my survey believed that a stable paycheck was the most important aspect of the work that they do. Whereas, nearly half of those polled believed that a flexible schedule and good vacation time were the biggest benefits to their jobs. Most people took their job because it had an exciting work environment or substantial future opportunities.

Although nearly every person surveyed is involved in some kind of creative class employment, I believe that these results are very informative. A more expanded survey would focus on the working class, and I suspect that the results would be surprisingly similar. Seasonal labor, “gigging”, telecommuting: these are all examples of job organization strategies that have huge untapped potential in a modern, hyper-connected economy. Full-time employment presents major financial challenges for Americans that are dependent on failing transportation networks, expensive child care, and dehumanizing conditions.  Perhaps tweaking the model for greater autonomy could mean less burden on employers and alleviate rat-race burdens on employees. A win-win.

The survey had several flaws. Firstly, I asked people about their own jobs, whereas I think it might have been beneficial to ask more speculative questions like “what is the most important aspect of a job” and focus directly on how they feel about the various social factors in finding employment. I especially enjoyed the question “why do you do what you do?” as it elicited some very provocative, albeit qualitative, information. One particularly interesting and poetic person had some thoughtful insight into the fruits of his labor:

“Gigs are the jobs of the future. People come to their senses and want neither to serve or be served. In lieu of a career: 100’s of meaningless gigs by which I can acquire 100’s of corresponding perspectives of the human world. Understand the bitterness of clerks, the chipperness of toothbrush operators, the true lives and opinions of the butcher, baker and candlestick maker. No station is without its secrets.”

Vincent Fontana, 33, was born into a pizza empire. His father and uncle emigrated to the United States from Sicily and opened Original Pizza on Avenue L in Canarsie with the family recipes. The pizza is good. Damn good. As the Italians moved out of the neighborhood, all the other pizza shops closed down. Original Pizza weathered the rough years and now they have five shops in every corner of Brooklyn.

Vincent Fontana certainly loves pizza, but he never intended to join the family business. He wanted to be a scientist. A zoologist, specifically. But duty calls, and family comes first, so he set his dream aside. Ten years ago, when his dad handed him the keys to Original Pizza #1, he decided it was time to spread his wings.