Virgo at work: care, criticism and collaboration
A great deal of what is said about Virgo stays general. Yet nowhere does this sign show itself as plainly as at work: in how someone takes hold of a task, when they let it out of their hands, and what wears them out in the doing.
The Sun passes through this sign from roughly 23 August to 22 September. If that is your part of the year, you probably know both sides of it: the good name that thoroughness earns, and the price it charges you for it.
The work nobody sees
Most of what a Virgo contributes appears in no presentation. The file named in such a way that a year later somebody can still find it. The wrong name on page four that would have embarrassed someone. The question asked on Thursday that prevented the trouble on Monday.
A very real problem follows from that: a mistake that was avoided cannot be put on show. Anyone who sees to it that nothing goes wrong is left in the end with nothing but a smooth process – and smooth processes look as though they cost no effort. So it is worth saying out loud, now and then, what you have checked. That is not boasting, it is a piece of information nobody else has.
Criticism, in both directions
This is where the commonest misunderstanding of working life arises. Anyone who names a mistake means the matter. What reaches the other person is the person. Between “the total is wrong” and “you work sloppily” there lies a world for one side and nothing at all for the other.
What helps against that is unspectacular, and it costs nothing. Ask beforehand what is wanted: a line-by-line check, a second mind on the thinking, or just a quick look over it. And say first what may stay – not out of politeness, but because someone who knows that not everything is up for debate is able to listen at all.
The other way round, the same holds: criticism of a Virgo is rarely news. They have usually noticed the place long since and have already sat over it twice. What helps then is not consolation but a yardstick – an agreement on how good it has to be for this particular purpose, and from what point on further effort is of use to nobody.
What wears them down
Three things grind this sign down with fair reliability:
- Assignments with no criterion. If nobody says when something is finished, it never ends.
- Activities with no end: inboxes, on-call duties, responsibilities that can be administered but never closed.
- The sentence “just do this quickly”, said of a matter that cannot be done quickly.
The remedy is unromantic: settle beforehand what “finished” means. A deadline, a scope, three points on a list. It sounds like administration and is in reality a permission – permission to stop at a particular place.
If you work with a Virgo
A few small things take effect at once. Be concrete rather than encouraging: “the introduction is too long” is worth more than “that was great”. Say in advance how exact it has to be this time, and not afterwards. Leave time for the second pass when one is needed, and say so openly when it is not. And when something has come off well, name what came off well about it; blanket praise is received politely here and filed away inwardly.
Are there Virgo professions?
The old lists claim there are, and in doing so they do the sign no justice. A sun sign fixes no occupation; it describes rather the conditions under which someone comes into form. For Virgo those are: a bounded area they are answerable for, standards that can be followed, a result that can be looked at in the end, and people around them who notice the difference between careful and indifferent at all. Conditions like that exist in nursing as much as in bookkeeping, in the workshop as much as in copy-editing.
What shape that takes in your case depends on Mercury, the ruler of this sign: he says something about how you think and how you sort things out. Out of the same care there comes, one time, someone who takes texts apart, and another time, someone who sets machines up. You can look up where Mercury stands in your own chart under Planets.