Is This High School All Over Again?

Have you ever left work early because you just couldn’t take it anymore?  Have you called in for a ‘mental health day’ lately?  Do you question whether your coworkers are the spawn of Satan?  If so, then Hi, my name’s Gen Clever; you must work with the same people I do!  Nice to meet you and I’m so very sorry.   

Image Courtesy of ClkerFreeVectorImages

Coworkers:  People we are thrown together with, usually by circumstances beyond our control, generally in a work environment.  Different but similar people may be found in your organizations, clubs, or civil activities.  The bottom line is that you wouldn’t spend time with these folks without some form of compensation, monetary or otherwise.  It is a forced relationship.  Maybe that’s why it’s called a work-force…

Back at work some days feel like a high school field trip where everything is fun and everyone is bonding like fingers dipped in superglue.  Other days feel like that day in high school when that note you wrote got passed directly into the wrong hands and you felt more embarrassed than if you’d shown up naked to gym class. 

Alas, there are those high school tales of undesirables undergoing extreme makeovers and a musical montage morphing them into the Prom Queen with a heart of gold…  Spoiler Alert!  These tales are unlikely to unfold in the workplace.  One is generally the victim OR the bully, the awkward loner OR the socially accepted, not one and then the other.  Sometimes a transfer or promotion will toss you from one status to another, but after an initial adjustment period, one usually ends up in the same old group, just perhaps now wearing heels from time to time.

Where am I going with this? 

If you're like me, it matters emotionally how your coworkers treat you.  It matters more than how your boss does.  (Much like in high school where your peers’ opinion of you was infinitely more vexing than any teachers’.) 

Nope, definitely not me.

I once was Homecoming Queen of the workplace.  Middle management with a smile.  Stern but fair and pretty darn likable.  Kinda like the Prom Queen but better because I got to hang out with the marching band and that is so much more fun than cheerleading!!  I mean let’s face it: upper management is just saying the right words with the proper enthusiasm while simultaneously shunning the minions and pleasing the shareholders.  I’m just not that girl.  

So there I was, minor royalty, when the company decides to cut corners and ‘laterally move’ me.  (That’s upper management speak for a demotion without a pay cut.)  So here I am, working in a department I used to run.  Ouch.  It feels like the queen is now forced to eat lunch at the Goth table.

It’s not that I mind the Goths.  I look great in black.  I appreciate Poe.  I’ve dabbled in cynicism and sculpted my own ‘Bell Jar’.  I get it.  So now I deal with insecure clones that push me around because they know I can and have done the job better than them.  I get micro-managed.  I get to be the scapegoat.  I internalize.  Then I go home and write.  Thank you?  

Image Courtesy of Gen Clever at insane_ekard Productions

It’s simple: treat me as you would a stranger.  It’s the least you could do.  And hey, we all know you’re good at doing the least…  

Please feel free to share this memo.

This post means no harm to Goths, Cheerleaders, Prom Queens, or Upper Management.  Especially that last one.  

Let's start with the BIG stuff shall we?!

Who, what, when, why, and how.  Right?  The important questions in life:  Who am I? What do I want to be when I grow up? When do I have to know by?  Why is it so important?  How much does it pay??  Decisions and questions and then some…

When I was in grade school I knew exactly what I wanted to be (an astronaut) and pretty much how to get there.  However, being as young as I was, I wasn't as thorough as I could have been in my planning.  It turns out that engineering is really hard, not to mention boring, and being an astronaut is more than floating around in a tin can pushing shiny buttons and drinking Tang.  Also, unless you look a lot like Sandra Bullock, you more than likely won’t successfully fumble your way home if you are the only surviving civilian after a space catastrophe.  Soooo maybe I chose the wrong career?

I can do anything I set my mind to.  That’s what my mama told me.  What she didn't tell me (or perhaps she did and I forgot to listen) is that money sucks and has a paradoxical relationship with happiness.  Money cannot buy happiness, but not having money can buy lots and lots of misery, on credit, at a ridiculously high interest rate.  I grew up with just enough to know that everyone else had a little more, but I was happy nonetheless.  Or maybe that’s why my life’s ambition was to get off this rock.  They never run out of Tang in space. 

I am definitely not unhappy now, but I can assure you that having more money would definitely not make me less happy.  My spouse makes twice the money that I do, but also works nearly double the hours.  So we bring home a lot of those freakish peanut pods that only have one peanut inside the shell.  (Same amount of work for only half the reward).  I feel like there exists somewhere a secret balance; a mystical percentage if you will, that allows people to work a realistic schedule and earn enough money to pay the realistic bills, maintain a realistic social life, and put away for those future days of retirement bliss; you know, realistically.  Who can do the math?  What are you waiting for?  When will you have this figured out?  Why weren't we told about this sooner (OR why didn't we listen)?  And finally how do we spread the message once the answer is found?

People are being paid millions to catch vermin and air their dirty laundry and bad habits on reality television.  I have no answers, only questions.  For instance, should I have learned to wrestle gators instead of spending all that time in college?  I’m asking…