As we spend at least one third of our life working hard to make someone else rich or richer, it is reasonable to spend some time writing about this thing which I have seen all my life as “my hell in earth”. This statement pointing to the fact that I spend that much time of my life laboring it is not new in this blog. I have already said it several times. I will keep saying it until I decide and implement the solution, which is always an alternative for everyone, known as “I’m free, I’m laboring for myself”. Laboring(1) is really a pain in the ass(2) even if what we do is what we always thought we would like to do ever since. I am not entirely against Capitalism but there are a couple of capitalist practices I am not absolutely fond of. Essentially, Capitalism is what keeps us moving on.
Every corporation lives supported by our inability to take decisions or, sometimes, for us to take them as fast as the situation requires. For some people, taking a decision hurts. For other people, taking a decision it is much beyond the task they have defined for their own life. Other, take decisions without knowing they are practicing the act of deciding. Finally, many other think they are deciding, yet they are just transmitting other’s decisions. Taking the right decision, within the right timing, in the right place with the right people is a hell of an odyssey. These, the ones being able of taking decisions in the proper way, are only few and, effectively, the special ones!
Every corporation survives daily supported on people with the inability of measuring the problem they are facing. The slogan “don’t be part of the problem, be part of the solution” it is nice and might bring some efficiency, assuming that people is able to detect the problem and after that have at least a single clue about what might be the solution. That is elementary: without equation, there is no solution for the equation. Equating a situation it is not a task for every of us. Even if you are able to equating, resolving the equation it is not a task for every of us, as well. If, after all, you already have the equation, you resolve it and get the result, it is not a task for every of us to get the right result. But if you are one of those Einsteins populating the world and you finally get the equation, resolve it, get the result and this is the right one, is still not a task for every of us to apply the solution. How about that?
It is impressive the amount of people surrounding me, day after day, in the same place, at the same time, venerating the same god(3), moving like zombies expecting the lucky day when they are announced to be the only winners of “EuroMillions Lottery”. It is almost crashing the feeling of watching so many co-workers totally convinced they are being exploited by their boss and they are earning a salary much below the one they think they would deserve. It is almost surreal to see this amount of people over-evaluating their skills and their labor, complaining all the time about their “low” wages and always under-estimating the relevance of the colleague next to her/him. All this, in a country where more than 80% of the population blame the government (no matter what color it is) for its miserable situation. I hope people from this country will understand, some day, that the State it is not a third person…
I usually say that most of the people in this labor network rather wish to be bluffed than to face the reality. The naked and raw reality hurts, doesn’t it! It is not easy to have someone in front of us telling us we are no more than a simple tooth in a (probably) well lubricated system of tooth wheels. It would knock us out to listen from an arrogant person, who will turn to ash and dust as much as we will do, tough words saying we are doing the very same task for two or three decades and even so we are not doing it properly. The fact is, that most people do a wrong evaluation of the situation they are sunk in. It is also a fact that most people cannot get the right tool for fixing a specific problem. It is still a fact, also, that there are too many people living a boring life in their job convinced that they were born to be workaholics, they forbid themselves of getting sick, they place everything else before their job and finally, they feel great when they are receiving that nice watch, bought in some Chinese shop, from their boss who is, full of splendor and respect, thanking him/her for the forty years (or more) of unconditional dedication to the corporation. For instance, how daring is the job of a lady spending ten to twenty years just clearing and processing invoices? What happens if she is mistaken in a couple of euros? Stops the corporation? Starts an international war? Causes lay-off? Nop… She has only to repeat the clearing and processing as many times as required to get a result that everybody already knows. Human beings? So cute we are…
Some corporations suffer of a typical disease which normally happens in multinational companies installed in Portugal: their staff are inductively efficient people! Meaning? While Sonae, a huge Portuguese industrial group, is large because its owner, Belmiro de Azevedo, is a highly bossy CEO, some companies’ efficiency is due to the fact that Portuguese people is normally very much foreigners underlying. The good part of it comes from the fact that the company might be well ranked within its economical/industrial group, the bad part of it is that nobody learns much when is moving on an inductive efficiency basis. Why? What will happen when the inductor just goes away? As a matter of fact, the best companies in Portugal either are bossy style or multinationals. Our Economy sucks, unemployment is rising, poverty as well and when one gets to know the attitude of many of Portuguese workers, it gets very clear why we are compared to Greece… Generally, when Portuguese workers are inquired about who is, in their opinion, the responsible for the less good things in their companies, they will reply at once: the boss! After that, they just keep going on with their boring work with no guiltiness feelings. What a bunch of mushrooms!
A normal company moving within a typical industrial environment can only exist based on labor supplied by normal people. If the company is not predominantly oriented to research and development or, in other words, if it is a normal productive company, then normal people is what the company needs to recruit. It makes no sense to insist in highly skilled people owning high academic degrees if what you just want them to do is no more no less than repeating simple tasks. However, the actual labor market in Portugal could not be worse. Portuguese universities are producing too many PhDs, too many university qualified people: supply is exceeding demand! Furthermore, Portuguese universities are not (yet) producing the right university qualified people considering our commerce and industry needs. No wonder that some corporations are hiring university qualified people by the kilo! When this happens, meaning, when you sell yourself at any price, who the hell cares, at the board level, about worker motivation? Self-realization? Career perspective?
One of these days I had to explain to a colleague of mine the difference between a “prostitute” and a “mercenary”, in the context of labor domain. First of all I need to go back to a concept I already wrote here about: I sell my ability of converting my skills to profit to my company while this, the company, just pay my services(4). Being so, I classify myself, within the labor domain, a mercenary. You might think that mercenaries often fight for a cause besides money. I am not talking about those (if they exist). My pragmatic view of life has driven me to this position: while I get compensations (not necessarily material ones) I will be at my company’s service. I do not negotiate wages at any price. A prostitute, negotiates wages at any (convenient) price. Prostitution is a profession. Mercenarism, not. Prostitutes, might have to sell body and soul. Mercenaries, none of them (very often they do not even own a soul). I am target oriented, I usually get very bored when chit chat is in the order of the day and I do not waste time blaming people when things go wrong or not that much right. Mutual respect is mandatory but goals are my business. I cannot stand “yes man”, “9 to 5”, “ass licker”, “white-collar”, “wearing company’s colors” and other type of amorphous people spending their life polishing their boss’ shoes.
Ms. MM usually says she loves her job. She is working for the same institution for approximately two decades. I know her for a while (a big while, I should say) and I cannot find anything in her job that would make me happy. She is doing the very same tasks, every day, with the very same people, facing the very same problems, in the very same building, aiming the very same goal (none!), sitting on the very same chair, at the very same desk, in the very same body posture, showing the very same smile, lunching at the very same place at the very same time, earning the very same salary, hearing the very same promises from her boss, complaining about the very same frustrations, processing the very same files with the very same MS Office and waiting everyday for the very same tomorrow. I am already feeling nauseas after writing this “very same” expression all these times and I am typing for about a couple of seconds only! Imagine, the very same “very same” expression during twenty years! I shyly have tried to ask her how could she be happy with her job carrying all those “very same” things for all that time gone and the time that is coming (cause she is doing nothing to change a single bit of her life). It did not work! How could it work? Ms. MM loves her job plenty of unlimited routines in every detail of her working day. Why am I still that much stupid and I still try to put some color in colorless lives? Shame on me…
Life is short. We spend one third of our life asleep and another third laboring. Remaining time is used for many other activities with what, probably, we will get some pleasure. Probability of a sheep-style worker being a sheep-style human being is enormous. Isn’t it? Probability of a non self-driven worker to be a non self-driven person is high. Isn’t it? Corporations have no much space for self-driven professionals. The image from the movie The Wall, where red-black hammers are marching on synchronized at the sound of a command voice, is still an icon, still actual. Empowerment(5) is a nice bullshit frequently sold by behavior makers hired by large corporations. Paradoxically, the major part of managers I have known are empowered with the authority to hold decisions until their boss tell them what to do. When they are told to do this or that, they can then show how much they have got from training actions like “Team Leadership” and “Communication Techniques” because they have to transfer those orders they have received by giving the impression they have been the ones designing and taking those same decisions. So cute, they are…
Oh, the times they’re a-changin… I am sure you will like to read the next text because if you are still reading this post you deserve to be called a survivor, you deserve to be challenged even more in one of your (here demonstrated) great skills: patience!
Come gather ’round people
Wherever you roam
And admit that the waters
Around you have grown
And accept it that soon
You’ll be drenched to the bone.
If your time to you
Is worth savin’
Then you better start swimmin’
Or you’ll sink like a stone
For the times they are a-changin’.Come writers and critics
Who prophesize with your pen
And keep your eyes wide
The chance won’t come again
And don’t speak too soon
For the wheel’s still in spin
And there’s no tellin’ who
That it’s namin’.
For the loser now
Will be later to win
For the times they are a-changin’.Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don’t stand in the doorway
Don’t block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There’s a battle outside
And it is ragin’.
It’ll soon shake your windows
And rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin’.Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is
Rapidly agin’.
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’.The line it is drawn
The curse it is cast
The slow one now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The order is
Rapidly fadin’.
And the first one now
Will later be last
For the times they are a-changin’.
Finally, you are maybe inquiring yourself about the reason which made me to place here this song from Bob Dylan. Do not worry, do not waste your brain with trivial things because there was no special reason for it. I have just had a flash when I thought “the times they are a changin’” and it came up to my mind a celebrity of other times. If the lyrics fit or not to this post’s matter, I will let that conclusion for a sharp and bright guy like you because, if I were a sharp and bright guy, I would not be here writing this post, which is an humble expression of my actual philosophical state.
May the gods be with you…
- I could say “working” but for some reason that I have not found yet, the verb “working” carries me on to the Laws of Physics and to the mathematical concept of “work”: W=F.r (simplified formula). ↩
- How I love this very American expression! You have no idea of how much… Maybe it is because I find it very similar to “ass licker”, an expression I use very often and I intend to use in this post, further on. ↩
- I would believe in God if it would exist but here I am not talking about religion but only referring to the CEO of any corporation. A matter of humor… ↩
- I do not care that my services are paid below the profit my company gets through them because that is the rule of the game everywhere. The only escape to this is you to work for yourself. ↩
- I still remember that training action I made part of, as a student, in Germany, having as teacher an American trainer. I had to read the book “The Empowered Manager”, by Peter Block, prior to the course and I did it passionately. I had then the opportunity to be in touch with concepts I still have in mind nowadays. ↩
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