Work Ethics: Interesting Facts!

Attitudes Toward Work During the Classical Period:

Rose stated that the Hebrew belief system viewed work as a "curse devised by God explicitly to punish the disobedience and ingratitude of Adam and Eve" (1985, p. 28).

The Greeks, like the Hebrews, also regarded work as a curse (Maywood, 1982). According to Tilgher (1930), the Greek word for work was ponos, taken from the Latin poena, which meant sorrow. Manual labor was for slaves.

Mental labor was also considered to be work and was denounced by the Greeks. The mechanical arts were deplored because they required a person to use practical thinking, "brutalizing the mind till it was unfit for thinking of truth" (Tilgher, 1930, p. 4). Skilled crafts were accepted and recognized as having some social value, but were not regarded as much better than work appropriate for slaves. Hard work, whether due to economic need or under the orders of a master, was disdained.

Aristotle viewed work as a corrupt waste of time that would make a citizen's pursuit of virtue more difficult (Anthony, 1977).

Braude described Greek belief that a person who worked, when there was no need to do so, would run the risk of obliterating the distinction between slave and master.

For the Romans, work was to be done by slaves, and only two occupations were suitable for a free man--agriculture and big business (Maywood, 1982). Any pursuit of handicrafts or the hiring out of a person's arms was considered to be vulgar, dishonoring, and beneath the dignity of a Roman citizen.
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I believe i still belong to the belief systems of the Classical Period :)
Read the complete article here History of Work Ethic and thank Mr. Roger B. Hill