October
2003 | Double Work Rant!!
Work:
when you have nothing to lose
Those astute
and faithful tiny dog readers among the masses may have noticed
a blistering work related rant that appeared but briefly over the
weekend, and then receeded into obscurity shortly thereafter, leaving
only a blank left column. The management here at tiny dog in fact
yanked the column after it went to press for breaking one of the
tiny dog commandments.
I digress to
inform you, for reasons totally unclear even to me, that I am sitting
in a cafe next to two hapless dorks who are talking very loudly
and knowingly about all of these wannabe technology subjects like
"windows." It is clear they are not true technology guys
as the latter are no longer proud of being associated with technology
due to burnout and a desire to fraternize with people who are not
technology wannabes. Whatever dweebs.
Anyhow, back
to the commandment that was broken: Thou shall not write about
work in any specific way. This is sometimes hard to avoid and
I found that rage took the wheel on this one. Thankfully tiny dog's
management regained control of this gas-guzzling SUV of content
and steered it rightfully back toward non-specific meaninglessness
and environmentally unsound mental consumerism.
Before I return
utterly and completely to non-personally-identifiable screedage,
I would like for one last time to declare that my career suicide
is complete: I started over in a totally new, random job after years
in a very established position with loads of people I knew and liked.
I did this for a number of reasons, the balance of them making it
the right thing to do.
But before
I entirely leave the old incarnation of my working self to the scrap
heap of easily forgotten memories, I must confess that, in one final
evening out with the team --including many visitors from overseas--
, I was witnessed by basically all of my now former managers and
colleagues to have downed two glasses of Chianti (one and a half
glasses past my personal intoxication mark) and later screamed "Snake!
Snake! Snake!" in the successful attempt to convince a co-worker
to perform a complex break-dancing move on the floor of the restaurant.
It feels good
to have nothing to lose.
I
am that career cadaver, standing before you
Recently
I wrote a rant about work –lessons I have learned based on
recent experiences– and the tiny dog editorial board censored
it because it broke one of two well-known tiny dog violations of
code:
- No
work rants
- No
political rants
And
yet work continues to disturb me, as it has for the last sixteen
years, whether tiny dog censors rants about it or not. And so I
rant onward.
Before
I continue I must remark that it just struck me suddenly that Californians
willingly elected a credentials-free, weightlifting action star
to govern their state. People, you are too stupid to live, much
less vote. Let us pray:
God,
please deliver America from the vice grip of wild-eyed, goose-stepping,
slack-jawed morons who are enthusiastically stuffing every last
vestige of rational political thought down a vast toilet of stolen
elections, before our country implodes like a black star. Hurry
god, hurry! There isn't much time.
Ok
where was I? Work. To continue the saga of Having Recently Changed
Jobs, I am now in that ego freefall known as being The New Person,
which is characterized by long, anxiety-producing days in which
you can contribute nothing meaningful, in which you chase down skittering
tumbleweeds of coherence at an inchworm’s pace by pursuing,
annoying, and observing your more competent new co-workers for weeks
on end, and feeling every bit as useless and parasitic as you actually
are.
You
know how sometimes, if someone has died, you wonder what it would
be like to talk to them again, learn what it was they truly regretted
not having done, what lessons they learned that you won’t
know either, until its too late? Well, today is your lucky day,
as I
am that career cadaver, standing before you in my burial suit.
You
know that epic fear you have of looking for another job, that you
think is merely a sign of your own pathetic inertia and inability
to reach just a little further for the true glory that eludes you?
That terror of the stressful tedium involved in revising your resume,
re-wording your worth, trying to secure interviews with pushy networking
and fruitless phone calls, ironing your interview jacket (you know
the one, hanging un dry-cleaned right now in that side of the closet
with the clothes you never wear?) Lying sleepless the night before
the interview, wondering just exactly when it was that the precious,
finite days of life became primarily a debasing competition with
everyone else?
Fact:
it’s a totally legitimate fear. I am not here to say I regret
what I did—but changing jobs is not the answer to the “work
sucks” conundrum unless the job you changed to is exactly
what you want to be doing with your life. If it isn’t (and
you know it isn’t), I’d think twice before putting yourself
through all of that aforementioned crap.
See
what you can do to fix up the job you already have. Take some real
risks. Stop being such an economy-phobe, cowed by the torrent of
inconclusive, negative job market reporting in the career pages,
and try to roll up your sleeves and clean up the mess you’re
already standing in. Tell your superiors and co-workers, within
reason, what you really think or really want changed. You know why
this is worth doing? Because you already have some equity and leverage
in where you are presently at. Move to a new job, and any positive
impression you’ve made on anyone, any amount of leeway you’ve
bought for yourself, it’s gone, and you’re back to trying
to prove yourself like the rankest high school freshman on that
first depressing September morning of your high school career.
If
your present job is truly a suckfest heretofore unrecorded in history,
then disregard what I’ve said above. This rant is merely an
assertion of the wisdom commonly dispensed in the platitude “the
grass is always greener.” Once you jump the fence, you still
have to mow the lawn—but this time, you’ve left behind
your favorite deck chair.
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