You’re walking down a quiet hallway at work. You’re on your way to get a much needed drink of purified water because you’ve been stuck at your paper-riddled desk all morning. Besides, stretching your legs and heading to the nice clean employee only restroom sound like a plan. Maybe you’ll even turn this little 5 minute break into a 20 minute detour, just to treat yourself a little. We all do it.
Hold on! As you’re walking down this corridor to get that satisfying gulf of watery goodness, you hear voices. The soft mumbling you hear at a distance is now becoming distinct. As you approach the crowd of co-worker huddled around the corner at the very station you are about to visit…you stop short. You stop before you make the turn to listen to what “they” are saying about everyone whose not present.
Voice #1: “He’s such an idiot, he put the cover page on the back of the report”.
Voice #2: “Yeah, he asked me for my sister’s phone number. As if he could ever date my sister. *Laughter*”
Voice #3: “Would you believe he tried to ask me out. I took everything in me to hold my lunch down.”
As you listen intently from your stealth position, you wonder whom they are talking about. Who is this poor sap who is incompetent at work and can’t get a date? Then it hits you…THEY’RE TALKING ABOUT YOU! You put the cover sheet on the back of the Centurios write-up instead of the on the front. You asked Greg to hook you up with his sister. Lastly, you were the unsuspecting leper who asked Kris out and she looked at you as if you just asked her to let you grope her left tit in the broom closet.
“They Are So Lucky I Didn’t…”
Ah, office politics. This is just one illustrative example why you should not be working a job anyway. If you are going to subject yourself to stress, embarrassment and toil at least make a boat load of cash for it. Most of us take abuse on the daily from people who are less intelligent than us for close to minimum wage. You’ve got pride, use it. Here are some feats employees threaten when they feel they have no other recourse. My job is lucky I didn’t…
1. Quit. They can’t run this place without ME! I’ll go take a pebble of the ocean floor and what you notice on the surface is how much you’ll be missed. It may just be the best thing to ever happen to you.
2. Break the copier! You’ll pay for that from your already slim check, then, lose your job.
3. Kick his ass! Right after you do, when the police escort you out, ask them to drop you off at the unemployment office.
4. Give her a piece of my mind. Again, mistake. It’s not worth it. Wait! You should lose your job. Curse her ass out! LOL
5. Report my creepy supervisor. You could, and things could get better. However, it might just make your job hell. Shut up, start your business, and leave!
6. Report my boss for not promoting me. Ah, the discrimination plea. Let’s see: more work, more hours, not much more money. Stop bitching, save your money, and get the f*** out of there! Problem solved.
If you have a gig where you complain everyday, get headaches, despise your co-workers, and could take a shovel to your bosses occipital lobe, you need to work on YOU! The way YOU feel about situations is what controls your life, not the outside circumstances. If you complain every day, stop hanging around those whining ass pikers. If you hate your co-workers, find something positive about them and concentrate on that. Before long, the hate goes away. (Trust me…I’ve done it) If you hate your boss, avoid him/her at all costs. Limit your exposure, limit your stress.
However, if you are at a job where you work long hours for short pay, if you are not growing by learning new areas, if you are wasting the hours of your life in a cubicle, work there just long enough (and I mean just long enough) to get your own business started or find your passion project that’ll pay you what you deserve. Like the ghost writes on the mirror in most horror movies, “GET OUT”.
I can’t tell you what your passion is. That, you will have to find in your own time. I do know we can’t get out of life alive, so you’d better do something worth while before the end. When your credits roll, you should have left everything you had on the stage.
Professor X