[No Habit]

(05-20-2014 01:43 AM)Feisbook Control Wrote:  

These situations are a major mindfuck because they're so Kafka-esque. You're meant to go along to get along, even if the other person is being an unprofessional dickhead and affecting your ability to do your own job. Yet the moment you call them out on that, everyone acts like you're the person behaving inappropriately and being unreasonable. I don't know, is it so unreasonable to be angry when someone openly fucks with you? Is anger an illegitimate response after you've asked nicely a dozen times?

Eventually though, I realised that the deeper issue is just that when you interact with idiots, there is no winning solution other than not interacting with idiots. If you give up or lower your standards, you become just like them. If you react against them, they play "gotcha" with you, whether that was their intention all along or not (and that question -- are they intentionally fucking with me or just that idiotic that they really don't see what's going on here? -- is a secondary mindfuck).

My solution in digging myself out of this mess and the collateral damage it has inflicted in other areas of my life has been threefold. Firstly, knowing that I am going to leave, I have stopped giving as much of a shit, or have engaged in petty politicking whereby I try to employ passive-aggressive modes of pinning something on someone else. Those are really bad both in terms of my responsibilities as a teacher and upon myself, and I could see how long term, they would be devastating, even if adaptive in a sense. That's no way to live life.

I feel you. That's the shit I am dealing with, too everyday. I am young and just about to finish an IT apprenticeship and I am already going mad.
Please explain to me why people have to make shit as difficult as possible for you? When I started there I just wanted to do a good job and keep my whole private life separate.

I got moved into an office of three people with a supervisor spending half of his day telling me private shit and complaining. After every interaction with a customer on the phone he would face me and start complaining.

I resisted the whole thing in the beginning trying to be professional but he would constantly come at me. If I ignored it or told him "Man I just want to get some work done" he would start with "What is wrong with you? Do you have a bad day?" and march to the other colleagues with that. So I caved in listening to his bullshit most of the time.

One time I basically carried out my job and the job of three of my lazy colleagues at the same time and was going strong. Would I have continued like that they would have had to either change their attitude or get fired. One colleague noticed this and came at me "Man you are doing all the work of this lazy bitches. Aren't you pissed about that? I would hate them..." and I made the mistake of nodding to that.

So when the other colleagues came into the office he went like "Hey people Bad-Habit just told me that he thinks you are a bunch of lazy bitches and is tired of doing all your work."
Motherfucker stabbed me right in the back.

Someone please tell me what motivates these people? I just want to be professional and do my work and they have to come up with their bickering and attacks and all kinds of shit to disrespect me and undermine my abilities.

Are they scared? I just don't get it. I never attacked someone out of the blue. Is it just me? Should I change my behaviour and start planning attacks on people to move up the ranks?

[Feisbook Control]

Bad-Habit: I don't have the answers to your questions, to be honest. I'm still trying to figure it out myself, and I've hardly been successful at it so far. My solution is to get out and do my own thing (my final day is 4 July -- I just realised the irony of that as it's my own Independence Day).

I think that you and I probably share something in common in that we both just want to get stuff done and done properly. A mistake might be to think that other people approach life in the same way. Perhaps sometimes we are too uptight and rigid about that attitude. The solutions then, might be to either become less uptight and better at playing office politics or simply become one's own man. I suspect the latter is the only worthwhile (and truly possible) option. The former will always be an illusion, and you'll always fail at it because it would be cutting against the grain of your nature to act in such a manner. Maybe what you need to do is gain whatever technical knowledge, connections, capital, etc. you can now, and treat the entire enterprise as such. Set clear objectives for yourself in terms of what you want to achieve, and when, and also have an exit strategy so that you can move on and keep growing. All of the bullshit is an unfortunate accessory. Then, get the hell out and start your own gig instead, or at least move to another company where you will have new opportunities. You can't wallow in it or in the long term it actually becomes who you are.

Sometimes, I feel like a caged tiger. When you see a tiger at the zoo, it's always of one of two types. The first is the one that still hasn't given up yet. It has stress written over every pace it takes up and down its enclosure. The second has given up or been placated and lost the essence of what it means to be a tiger roaming freely in the jungle. Sure, the zoo tiger is well fed and has no concerns at all regarding its own survival, but the free tiger, even if it fails and starves to death, is still free. You need an escape plan. Just having the escape plan in and of itself changes your entire psychology. As I get closer and closer to my own date of exit, I notice my psychological well being changing for the better.

As to what motivates these people, I think a lot of it comes down to the psychology of groups and fitting in. Another part is jealousy. Both are related. The average person achieves so little of worth. The average person is fully aware of that, too. At some deep level, it really irks them that they will never be anything. So, if they will never shine, they want to make sure that others don't either. Most people judge themselves not in absolute terms, but always in relative terms, always according to their peers. It's weird, but to some extent, people would rather earn $50,000/year and have all of their colleagues earn $50,000/year than earn $80,000/year and have all of their colleagues (or even just one) earn $100,000/year. Of course, people will say that that is absurd, but there have been studies done that confirm that people judge themselves relative to others, not in absolute terms. Thus, I think that you just can't be around losers. You can't have them as your peers because they'll always be like crabs in a bucket. They don't care about looking bad in absolute terms. They don't see the world in terms of black or white. They care about you looking good, because that makes them look bad in relative terms. Everything is grey for them.

Another thing that I have to tell myself sometimes (because it's very easy to become really self-centred) is that the person you are dealing with may be a negative dick because he's struggling in his own way, and not being particularly successful at it. I know that there have been people around me who have suffered various outbursts, rants and generally shitty behaviour from me over the past few years. Sometimes, if you can, it's worth taking a step back and having a little empathy. It's something I really struggle with, but if you can be the bigger man in this respect, not only might you transcend your own situation, but you might help the other person transcend his. If you turn everything into two bulls butting heads, then the situation goes nowhere. I remember being a kid and having a couple of teachers who actually stepped back from the situation. Rather than coming down on me like a ton of bricks and making me really oppositional, they basically said that they were just trying to do their jobs and be reasonable. They showed me clemency, and it turned the entire situation around. Likewise, a couple of years ago, I had a student who was really screwing with me in class. Perhaps I picked the right kid or I just a rare moment of brilliance, but I turned that kid into my biggest ally in that class, and because he was a really smart and popular kid, he kept his peers in line. The entire dynamic of that class changed after that. As I say, it was a rare moment of brilliance (or luck), because I normally struggle to not make things a personal battle of egos.

Of course, there is a fine line between seeing things from the other person's point of view and becoming a doormat, but maybe it's worth keeping the above in mind. If you find that it's received badly (i.e. people perceive any outreach as weakness), then it's probably an indication that you truly are dealing with idiots and you're best off getting away from them before they infect your own mindset.

I hope that helps. Like I wrote above, I'm no master at these kinds of things.

[Sawyer]

This reminds me of a story about when I worked at a pizza joint in college. There was a girl there who was milking the shit out of having had brain surgery. She was fine, she was just milking the shit out of her brain surgery to get away with doing jack shit. It was patently obvious. When we would work together she wouldn't do anything. I'd be doing all the dishes, serving people, etc…. I don't know what the hell she was doing. But whatever it was never amounted to jack shit.

One night I got pissed, I don't know why exactly, but I told her she ought to do something. She said "well it's hard to do something when you've had half your brain removed!"

The next morning I got a call from the assistant manager telling me it was not my job to tell fellow employees about their level of work. I said nothing, because it was her obvious assumption that it was my job to do all the work of my fellow employees, even though we all made the same pay.

I now work with people as little as possible, and thank the Good Lord for it. I think in a good hour I can get more done than a "team" of employees can get done in a day. Sometimes I believe the focus on "teamwork" in business is agitprop to make sure as many idiots can be employed as possible for political purposes.

Moral of the story, why are people so miserable? Because they've had half their brains removed.