A guy had called in to complain about the poor people he works with. He was explaining why they continue to be poor. You know, how they bring it on themselves.
The points he brought up:
1. the incompetent manner in which they spend their money &/or what they spend it on.
2. the way they use up all their vacation & sicks days but still call in all the time & complain that they can't get any time off
3. how they do the bare min (work), just enuf to get by
4. how they always try to leave early or as soon as possible
I gotta be honest here. This guy had so perfectly nailed my coworkers that, at first, I could swear it was this new guy at work. He always appears as tho he's totally disgusted by all of us at all times, will never look us in the eyes (well mebbe cept for you, Matt, which doesn't count) & refuses to hold a door for anyone. Ever.
Yeah, I could see that guy having such an opinion.
Still, the more I thought about each point, something didn't seem quite right. Something about ppl doing the bare min, just enuf to get by. It seemed as tho that description fit another group of ppl. Something that I'd complained about for years. Who were these ppl?
Oh yeah! The mgmt of every company I've ever worked for! Yeah! Always, the laziest bunch in the company. Always. The first to try to get out of doing anything. Hands down.
This caused me to examine why, when the opportunity arises, I will gladly leave work early. Why is that? Cuz mgmt is always lazy & incompetent. It's all one can do to get thru the day with all the mixed msgs, broken promises & back handed compliments. Always new challenges that cannot be met cuz mgmt doesn't examine matters fully. What is possible? How to go about the thing? Rather it's, hey we gotta a new client/procedure/upgrade of whatever we can't possibly handle. We're gonna put together something like a plan with perhaps only a few steps in it & you fuckers have to make it work. If we lose the client, YOU lose your job!
It's as tho I've been working for the Bush adm for the last 20 yrs. Everything they say is like some fucked up spin. Logic & reason never apply. Ever. These deadlines they come up with altho they apparently have zero concept of how time works. Time or space or any concept that one would need to use to plan something. It is disturbing beyond words. It's like working within a cult. Glassy eyes. Check. Batches of meaningless words, which, btw, can never be challenged. Check.
Anyway, back to this asshole objectivist guy who called into Neal's show.
Wow. If only it was so easy to turn these ppl around!
What a bunch of dumbasses!
Sure. Sure they are.
I see it as a cultural thing. I don't completely understand it either & most of the time, I want to beat these ppl. Oh, damn them & their bad decision-making! What could they be thinking?!
The way the kind of ppl he referenced function in such a complicated way, it's not possible to logically explain it, much less understand it.
Most of it seems to be mired in "tradition." Oh, tradition how can I possibly count the ways I despise you...
Tradition. Obligation. Faith. Oh how I hate you all so..
Christmas. Star Wars. Fishing. Marriage. Family. Poker. Nascar. The Beatles.
How many times have I pointed out a serious flaw in thinking/action only to have it explained away as tradition?
Tradition is surely the end of all reason.
How many times have I been asked, haven't you ever blah blah blah & said, "yeah, when I was four."
Another thing would be the lack of information. You can label it as education if you want. That gets thrown around alot. I'm personally not convinced that a person (parents or their children) needs thousands of dollars of classroom hours to learn boundaries, think in a logical way/have the most basic problem solving skills.
Maybe this lack of information comes in the form of being trapped inside a culture &/or not having much interest in other cultures.
Hell, I haven't spent a single dollar on a formal education & I know lots of shit. Of course, I can't earn money based on my knowledge of these things so, darn the luck, it doesn't count!
Anyway, just for fun, let's use me, a white trash, uneducated person, as an example.
I was seriously interested in taking ballet classes when I was in high school (I had zero afterschool interests other than drinking out of sheer boredom). Mom said no. She said, don't you remember the last time you were in a ballet class & got kicked out cuz you were screwing around so much. Yes, I barely remember that. I was six. I guess you got me there.
I figured I would go to college. You know, esp since my grades were so good. Unfortunately, I didn't know jack shit about scholarships. I mean, I was at the ceremonies when they were handed out to ppl, but I didn't know what they were. I figured only the smartest & most popular ppl got those.
The one thing I knew for sure was that I would never have anything. Cuz that's what we were. We were the have nothing ppl. And it would never change. And what little I got, a man would prolly take it away from me. That's was the whole of my knowledge.
In regards to college, my Mom let me know, "you're on your own, kid." Not a huge surprise. Esp since practically every day she told me we were this close to living on the streets.
Well, wouldn't you know it? Later, after she sold the house and looked at all her assets, she realized she wasn't so bad off afterall. She told me she had no idea how much money she'd saved over the years.
I could not imagine paying back $30,000 to $40,000 dollars in school loans. I could not imagine paying back those loans AND moving out & there's nothing I needed worse than to move out.
Obviously that education thing was for other ppl. I assumed that every one who went to college had rich parents. That's the only thing that made sense. I mean, how else would these kids be able to pay back half a house loan AND move out on their own. That was the only possibility.
Retail work, here I come!
See, I lacked the most basic information. I could think of no other option. I had to leave that house. Barely scraping by was ok cuz as far as I knew, that's what ppl like us did.
I can't say I regret it now. I mean, I prolly woulda gone into accounting (only cuz I seemed to have such a talent for it - but then, who wouldn't?). I don't know how successful I would be at it (in the way that career = worth) . Or how much more meaning it would give to my life as compared to the dumb shit I'm doing for a job now/the stupid shit I've done at other jobs. I'm gonna go out on a limb here & assume that the mgmt at a real job & the politics at a real job would be comparable to what I see every day/have seen in the past.
Point being, I didn't make a very good decision cuz I didn't have ALL the information to work with. I basically had Mom bitching every day & I used whatever info I was able to glean from it.
Back to the objectivist asshole & his utter outrage at the poor ppl he must work with every day:
1. How they spend their money. The lottery/gambling. That's faith. I guess I shoulda recorded the conversations ppl had with me last week re why I should by lottery tickets.
Buying cheap shit we don't need. I hafta assume that is just something ppl do when they're bored/depressed/unsatisfied.
2. Absenteeism. Ok. I'm not really sure how this works. I've heard every excuse in the book for this sorta thing but was never satisfied with the explanation(s). According to one hot girl I useta work with, they didn't pay her enuf to show up there on a regular basis. I guess I'll hafta go with that. No matter how many times I explained to her that it had no effect on mgmt but it totally affected the rest of us, she continued to do it & explained it away the very same way.
3. Doing the bare minimum. In the past, my answer for that was "It's the American way!" Mebbe not. Maybe it's just part of being human & testing the boundaries. I'm not really sure. As per usual, I am the exact opposite & I wanna immediately quit a job if it becomes apparent there's not gonna be enuf work to keep me busy. Even for a day. I cannot stand it. I want to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of stupid tasks (and believe me, they are always stupid).
4. Leaving work early, if at all possible. I've got plenty of shit to do at home. Too much. There's not nearly enuf time in a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime to learn about all the things I want to learn about - much less things I actually want to participate in. It's like, "the man", if you don't need me, I've got other shit I can be doing. I've got lots of interests. Too many. I want to continually feed my head. You know, we've got a limited fucking time here in a state of full consciousness. Some of us less than others. It's bad enuf that we are forced to do all this meaningless shit just to pay the bare min bills. If you don't need me to be a cog, let me the fuck go. I need to feed my head.
Jobs I've worked have always been the thing I'm least interested in. Of course, the ppl who claim not to understand why I hate such n such a job so much are the same ppl who call in all the time so go figure.
How can we turn around these horribly disappointing poor ppl we work with? How can it be done? What can we possibly offer them as an incentive to straighten up & fly right? How can we make them care? About themselves or about the ppl who must deal with them & their hangups every day? I think, like almost every subject one can discuss, there is no solution. It's like the human condition. Here we are with these brains & nothing to do with them. Or mebbe we're not interested in doing anything with our brains. Wait. Is Survivor on yet? Is there enuf time to stop for lottery tickets before the show starts? Are the Rolling Stones coming to town soon? Is the liquor store still open? Is that Batman sequel/prequel at the theatre yet? I think I saw an ad for a new sandwich at Burger King!
And so on.
most people are dicks