I lived in New York for a few months before I moved to Detroit. I subleased a hot but otherwise pleasant walk-up in Sunset Park (traditionally Brooklyn’s Chinatown, presently the next stop on the “where’s the cheap rent” train not-so-slowly pushing through the outer boroughs) and interned at a pharmaceutical advertising agency, so it was always a little strange taking my lunch breaks to coordinate my eventual move to Motown. I viewed the cities as pretty clear opposites of each other.

There’s plenty to talk about there, and if you spot me around town then I’d love to have a conversation about the 212 and the 313—but for my purposes here I want to merely take a New York “thing” and do some thinking out loud.

The “thing” in question: tens of thousands of people signed up for a civil service exam in the hopes of landing an NYC sanitation job, and it’ll probably be years before anyone from that pool is selected and put on trucks.

Even novice Gothamites are used to stories and situations like this, as New York is basically a beautiful and enormous parody of how human beings can live and interact. The not-so-absurd thing about the scramble towards NYC garbagepersonhood is that sanitation workers get solid benefits, more or less unlimited sick leave, and a salary that can grow from $33- to $69,000 in five and a half years. If you’re okay tossing trash, it’s a great job that recalls the mythic past (where middle class access was supposedly earned by walking into any old establishment, asking for a gig, and collecting paychecks and pensions until death).

And now, in the oddball world of meaningless degrees and schizophrenic job markets, there’s a certain appeal in the clock-in/clock-out lifestyle that asks you to trade bad smells and sore muscles for job security and a good paycheck (though not that good in New York, if we’re being honest; better look for a rent-controlled apartment in Sunset Park before prices double by this time next year). Why not play the Department of Sanitation Lottery when the prize is no longer living in Girlsian chaos?

And because I’m a Challenge Detroit fellow, not a Be Tortured by New York fellow, I want to use this New York “thing” to talk about my new home base. Detroit, in its latest renaissance, is looking for an identity; New York, in its latest apex, has arrived at one: a highly important Disneyland where greatness, ridiculousness, depravity, money, and rapidity intersect. If 60,000 Detroiters ever express interest in hauling trash it’s probably because unskilled and semiskilled gigs here are much-needed antidotes to poverty, not golden tickets that erase the anxiety of reading job descriptions that say “champion” and “self-starter.”

So maybe Detroit, beaten down by the misguided placing of every egg into the automotive basket, is a good place to begin rethinking “work.” A huge number of Detroiters need income and the means to continue earning it; a smaller and more privileged number (generally open to ideas and causes and change) need something to do. My dream is that “work” can be acceptably retooled to mean whatever the worker wants it to mean, that a sea change as large as the one Henry Ford enacted may take place so that being a garbageperson is just as “okay” as being a tailor or web developer or surgeon or bus driver or stay-at-home-whatever. That people can pursue what they would like to rather than what they can afford. That someone who takes an undemanding job because it affords him the time to pursue other interests and activities is not considered a flake. I am very quickly getting ahead of myself, because I know little about labor or economics or automation or population growth or psychology. But I believe that when it comes to making money, building lives, and being happy, almost all of us turn up our arms in shrugs. It would be great if that could change, and it would be great if Detroiters could make it happen.

Think about it: if tomorrow everyone could earn and live comfortably on reasonably hard work and teachable skills, wouldn’t every community grow stronger? If folks were free to read or birdwatch or waterski or whatever the hell they want and not worry about work performance or judging eyes, wouldn’t net happiness skyrocket? If you could live comfortably but have three-day weekends instead of two-, wouldn’t you be ecstatic?

I don’t know how to make any of these things happen, but I believe that Detroit is a place where they can be tried and prodded. I don’t believe that it’s the only place, nor do I believe that there is something particularly “Detroity” about a dilemma that the entire western world is probably going to have to come to terms with. But I do believe that there are people to be put to work here, and I do believe that there are people willing to try out new kinds of work here. Why not get to the bottom of something when resurfacing it fails?