Mandy Brown’s unified theory of fucks:

But if you give a fuck about the living, about all your living kin in all the kingdoms, they will give a fuck right back. Maybe not every one of them; maybe not every time. Some people’s bags have been empty for a long while, and they may feel the need to ration whatever they have; some people have been taught that to give a fuck is to lose something, not realizing that to withhold is what it means to lose. But I believe—I know from having given and received, from having lost and been renewed—that enough of them will come back that you can keep on giving, for a while at least, for as long as any of us has time to give.

That’s what work is, after all. Work—the action of change, the movement of energy from one being to another—is the means by which fucks are granted. Good work is the art of giving a fuck about the living. And all of us, every day, are faced with good work that needs doing, and good work that we can do.

I agree with the notion, the more fucks you give the more fucks you’ll receive. But in the context of work, the opposite is true. You get fucks back from your peers, sure; but from anyone above your pay grade, if you give a lot of fucks, they tend to take more fucks, until you run out of fucks to give. Unless of course, you like to talk about how many fucks you’re giving, which is a common replacement for giving actual fucks, but it works because it’s easier for the bosses to return the favour.