Job
Hell Principle #4: Rational Considerations Are Not Important in Job
Hell Land. Emotional Ones Are.
You don't believe
this. You believe you are a rational creature. You believe you are
working for rational economic and social reasons. You believe your
Executive Brain makes your Important Life Decisions and you believe
it makes these decisions based on careful consideration of Important
Relevant Factors.
This is an entirely
natural and comforting belief on your part. It is also completely
wrong. Nevertheless, being the delightfully human creature that you
are, you will need to pretend that you can handle Job Hell with your
Executive Brain and go through the Futile Job Hell Rationalization
Process. Like this:
Soon after you
land on your butt in Job Hell, you will dust yourself off, look around
and start trying to Rationalize. You will explain to your brain stem
that economic security is important. You will point out to yourself
that you are lucky to have a job. You will enumerate various factors
in your job that ought to be considered Goodies, such as income, parking
space, prestige, Impressive Title, and so on. You will present for
your own consideration the seniority and benefits you have compiled.
You will wheedlingly and cajolingly point out to your brain stem that
it is a real fucking pain in the ass to try to get another job. You
will try to placate your brain stem by Attempting to Address the Problems
in Your Horrible Job. You will then realize this is hopeless and you
will tell yourself Things Aren't So Bad. You will try to Look
on the Bright Side. You will tell yourself 'That's Life.' You
will say 'I'm taking what they're giving, cuz I'm working for a living.'
You will spend months doing this and you will annoy yourself almost
to death in the process.
Meanwhile,
your brain stem will not be placated. It's decided in that you're
in Job Hell and that's where you're going to stay until the appropriate
Goodies start rolling in. And your brain stem will let you know the
firmness of its resolve by periodically blasting you with Bad Job
Chemicals in such excessive quantities that you will be forced
to share them with everyone you meet.
And still you
will persist. You will tie yourself up in knots trying to make a decision.
You will throw yourself on the mercy of your brain stem and say 'But
I'm scared to try and get another job. What if I can't get one? What
if it's worse? What if all jobs are like this?'
You will tell
yourself that you don't have a choice. You have to keep this job to
feed your kids or keep your health benefits. You will tell yourself
the job you want doesn't exist. You will explain to your brain stem
and your wife that can't talk to your boss about the situation, it's
hopeless, you tried that. You will vigorously explain to your brain
stem that nothing you could do would ever work, it just has to adjust
to the situation. You will try every fucking rationalization you can
think of and then you will try some more.
And
still your brain stem will not be placated.
It will continue
to blast you with bad chemicals just when you least expect it. You
will be trying on the 'It's not so bad today' Rationalization when
your least favorite co-worker will saunter over to your desk, drop
fifty pounds of Excess Pointless Work on it, and breeze out saying
'I'm leaving early today for my ballet class. See ya.' And bad chemicals
will rise and churn.
You will be trotting
out the 'But I've always wanted to be a teacher, it's my life calling'
Rationalization, when the District Superintendent will make a special
point of humiliating you in front of all your colleagues. And your
brain stem will zap you with hot scorching embarrassed Job Hell hatred.
You will alternate
between Rationalization and fury, Rationalization and Crying in the
Ladies Room, Rationalization and despair, Rationalization and physical
illness, and still you will think that you can win the battle against
your own brain stem.
You will implement
Emergency Gossip Bad Chemical Reduction Procedures until you
have said so many bad things about the Other People where you work
that everyone who knows you will be exhausted. You will know instinctively
that if you give away your excess bad chemicals to others, you will
have just enough left yourself to leave you in torment but not dead.
You will gossip to sympathetic co-workers, your husband or wife, your
girlfriends and boyfriends, your mother, your dog, your therapist,
your pastor, your acquaintances, and even people you don't know. You
will complain, whine, moan, bitch, and trot out every single one of
your favorite failed Rationalizations on anyone who will listen. You
will Explain, You will Analyze, You will Speculate, You will Attempt
to Understand. You will lapse into defeated silence, in which you
are afraid to tell anyone exactly what kind of Job Hell you are in
because you think it will prove beyond a doubt that there's Something
Terribly Wrong With You. You will feel like a failure. You will
take Prozac.
And
still your brain stem will not be placated.
Show me the
Goodies, it will demand. And all the rationally calculated goodie
substitutes you present to it will fall short. You will learn what
kind of contempt it has for your 401K. You will experience its full
disdain for Gainful Employment. It will mock your Future Opportunities
for Advancement. It will sneer at your paycheck. It will brutally
encourage you to balance the scales by stealing from your job anything
you can - time, supplies, copies, long distance phone calls, lunches,
anything you can think of - and then it will dismiss your attempts
as pathetic and trivial. Show me the real fucking Goodies, it will
say. It will hiss at you, even in your sleep, 'Get me the
fuck out of Job Hell!'
And you might
just as well give the fuck up and do it - give up the goddamn useless
Rationalizations, bow down before your brain stem and serve it - because
your brain stem rules. It was invented a long time before Corporate
America and it has every intention of outlasting it. Go ahead and
get yourself out of Job Hell.
Now the crafty,
conniving question becomes - How?
Good question.
We'll start with the very important Job Hell Analysis Exercise.
In this exercise,
we'll ask ourselves various questions about our Job Hell Experience.
We'll do this so we can avoid actually dealing with our Job Hell awhile
longer. Dealing with Job Hell is hard. Answering stupid questions
on a website is easy. We
like easy!
Job Hell Question
#1: Answer
either a) or b).
Do you think that:
a) You could quickly
and easily get rid of your goddamn fucking job hell if you'd just
fucking quit and go find somplace better to work? Some place that
wasn't so full of fucking assholes. Or better yet, how about if you
didn't fucking work at all? That would solve the problem, wouldn't
it?
b) You're desperate
to get out of Job Hell but you're scared to quit and you feel all
guilty and confused and unsure and you're gloomily and anxiously half-convinced
that even if you did get a different job it wouldn't really be any
better, jobs are just hell and if you could just fucking figure out
how to cope, you'd be able to deal with this fact of life the way
people are supposed to, instead of running around being unhappy and
hating your job for stupid reasons that really ought to be inconsequential
but bug the shit out of you anyway?
Excellent!
Now it's time to score your answer.
If you picked
a) - You are wrong.
If you picked
b) - You are wrong.
Congratulations!
You are wrong. This certifies you as a normal Human Being. You are
not wrong because you are stupid, your body is just set up to ensure
that your initial analysis of your Job Hell Situation will be wrong.
It wants to protect you from that nasty entity, the Truth. Your body
frequently doesn't like the truth and wants you to strenuously avoid
it, because it sucks. Like this:
If you chose a),
you will not escape Job Hell by going somewhere else, you will just
cart it around with you where ever you go. Your body is telling you
that you can escape it by going somewhere else because it doesn't
want you to know what it really thinks.
What it thinks
is that you are an incompetent fuck-up who can't get along with
people. This is a horrible thought. You will be in big trouble
if anybody finds this out. You don't want to face a truth like this.
It will really hurt your feelings.
Much better to
implement emergency Blame Everyone & Everything Else Procedures.
Distract attention away from your obvious failings and point and scream
at others. Being an incompetent fuck-up who can't get along with others
is nerve-wracking! You need to offload some stress by Justifying
Yourself, Attacking Others, Hating People, Identifying Unreasonable
Demands, and Being Sure That It Is Not Your Fault. Because if
you're an incompetent fuck-up who can't get along with Other People,
there's a chance that these same Other People will take advantage
of your shortcomings, decide you're Unacceptable, gang up on
you and kill you! That would be bad! You're doomed! You have
no chance for success in the world ever! You can't survive. You're
gonna die!
Your only chance
for safety is to ditch the job, and run for the fucking hills.
Get another job where no one yet realizes that you are an incompetent
fuck up who can't get along with people. Then you can breathe easy
for a moment. What a fucking relief! That last experience with Job
Hell was harrowing. Thank God you are safely in another job where
you can fuck things up, not be able to get along with people, and
prove how incompetent you are.
And so on.
Getting out of Job Hell when you're secretly convinced
you're an incompetent fool who can't get along with people......
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