7/29
When I first started working, as an adult, I couldn’t really believe that this was how the rest of my life was supposed to go. When you think about it, working means being forced into one place every day for eight hours with the same people and the same situations, five days a week. Half of your waking weekdays are spent this way. The people issue was a major part of what chafed me: I did not choose these people, and I potentially have to spend more time with them every week than I do with my family or friends. How is this reasonable? How is it not a farce, a phony situation where I spend most of my week with humans who are chosen practically at random by the hiring taskforce of whatever my workplace is?
I learned that the thing you do is you make the best of it; you gravitate towards people (and potentially workplaces) that don’t suck. You try to find things in common with your coworkers to make the day pass. You are polite and friendly. You deal with it. But even after doing office jobs for most of my adult life, on some days I still find myself walking into the office and greeting my coworkers with private amazement. Who are these other humans? Why am I forced to tell them good morning? Why do I have to see them again, when I just saw them yesterday? – I spent eight good hours of my twenties with them, and only an hour with BF before we had to go to sleep. How is that fair?
July 29, 2010 at 8:30 pm
Whomever invented this work thing needs to be taken out back and beaten. Daily.
The thing that gets me is the expectation to be psyched to be there at the office with all these people that you’ve been thrown in with. Where I work we were asked whether we are “on the bus.” They had this whole “We’re taking the bus to amazing places…” thing going on. My window on the bus must have been dirty, b/c I didn’t see any wonders of the world.
But then, when asked if I was on the bus I simply replied “I am following along in my car.”
July 30, 2010 at 2:44 pm
It’s that sort of false-camaraderie-building crap that pisses me off most of all, and will most assuredly poison my attitude toward a workplace.
A feeling of comradeship isn’t built by creating an external, rah-rah framework. If you’re doing anything right, it’ll happen – if you’re doing everything wrong, no amount of jingoism will fix it.
I really, really hate modern corporate America.
Anyway, my short answer: Once upon a time your family farmed, and the people you “worked” with were the people you lived with. Maybe you apprenticed for a trade, and still you woke, ate, worked, and slept with the same people all day every day. Nowadays we’re more mercenary than that…but that comes at a potential cost.