Carpe Diem

Work brings out the worst in people.

You take a bunch of humans, throw them together in a work environment, and they turn into vampires and serial killers and ladder climbers.

The ladder climbers use your head as a rung and talk out of both sides of their mouths as they do it..

It is a strange phenomenon because we are all scrambling for paychecks and longing for stability, just trying to find a way to negotiate life as painlessly as possible. We are all, for better or for worse, in the same boat.

Yet the work environment magnifies pettiness.

You can't expect to like everybody you work with. The situation is unnatural. You grab yourself a job and do the best you can with your workmates. It is unnatural because the majority of us are not doing anything that we enjoy. Negativity exists but it doesn't have to be amplified.

If you are passionate about what you do, most likely you end up in an environment with people who think and feel as you do. That is rare, but if you are that lucky, you can expect to like the people you work with if you have a common goal, a common interest, a driving commitment.

The typical environment quickly descends into pettiness. It would be ideal to recognize that everybody shares a common frustration, a communal unhappiness, and a discomfort for the situation. It would be ideal to make a conscious decision to work as a group as best you can during the day, and then go out and get obliterated in booze and drugs at night.

That is a workable solution.

Instead............there is back stabbing, talking behind backs, petty territorial struggles, meaningless arguments, gutless challenges. People actually fighting for a piece of turf they don't even care about.

Jealousy about who earns what, who gets more hours, who the boss likes, who the boss hates.

These are responses and actions based in nothingness. Fighting like hell for something you don't want, don't even like.

How bizarre, how bizarre.

Maybe it is based on childhood frustrations; the need to be recognized, the need to be wanted, loved, appreciated no matter what.. Like the kid who proudly proclaims "She beat you with a belt but she beat me with a sledgehammer. She loves me more."

Efficiency, getting the work done, is not the issue. Every corporation automatically sabotages efficiency with rules and regs that attempt to manage the tiniest situations. The more they do that, the more inefficient the organization becomes.

Getting along is not about efficiency. Getting along is about sanity, happiness, peace of mind. Recognizing common humanity and the common frustration of working for a paycheck and nothing more; approaching each other gently and with a wink The Corporation is incapable of seeing, that is what getting along is all about.

Carpe diem is more about the soul than about capitalism.