I Wish, I Wish

I Could Be Frank.

Not, Frank as in a guy named Frank. Gross. I would never want to be a man. Nothing against men, I like men, it's just I wouldn't want to be one, not for all the tea in China. I like being a woman, I like being loved by my man.

I mean, frank as in honest. I'm as honest as I can be, but I would love to talk about some of the ridiculous stuff that people say and do, but that could be to my detriment, so it's best I just keep it zipped. Oh well, I guess I can talk about my friend's job.

You know what happens when you are constantly harping on employees about the most ridiculous things, like making them walk a half a mile out of their way just to get to their workstations, and then picking on every single thing like saying they must take the stairs rather than the elevator, and other such things? I'll tell you, they reach a point, a point where they say, "I don't give a shit, I'm tired of being threatened all the time, I'm tired of all these ridiculous rules, I'm going to take the elevator instead of the stairs for once!" Of course that one time they decide to do that, someone is watching on one of the numerous cameras strategically placed around the joint and reports said employee to their supervisor, said supervisor has to bring employee in for a sit down chat. And what is employee going to say? What can they say? Only thing I can think of is the truth, "I didn't feel like walking all those stairs after walking so far from my workstation, I just wanted to get home."

That won't fly. There will be reprimand. There will be general frowning on the actions of the employee who meant no harm other than they just didn't feel like taking the stairs that particular day. They will tell the employee that being negative is not a good work ethic, that being negative is not professional, that not feeling like taking the stairs is negative. In the next staff meeting at least 20 minutes will be devoted to extolling the benefits of being positive. They will try to use peer pressure to make the negative ones suffer, they will discuss ways to diffuse negative people taking suggestions from the audience. They will outright say, "We don't want negative people here!" Paying no attention to the fact that most of their subjects are not negative people at all.

What gets to me sometimes is the insincerity of it all. Want to know what your employer thinks of you? Watch what they do when people leave. Do they just blink their eyes and move on? Where my friend works, when someone leaves they are immediately forgotten, and never mentioned again. I realize business is business, but you can't talk all that crap about we're a team, we're here for each other, and not care one iota about people. All the while harping on how actions are so important, yes, people do watch your actions as well. If you don't care, they know it. You can talk all the talk you want in your pep meetings, in the end your subordinates will watch your actions.

Your subordinates will take note of what you do when one of their own's neck is on the chopping block. If you don't do right by people, they don't forget that, they make a note of it, and tuck it away and get on with work, but they don't forget it. When you and your team each take turns taking off the holidays, while decreeing only a very small percentage of the pee'ons will have the opportunity to take even just one of those special days off, watch morale plummett to low levels never seen before. Just watch.