Take that Ayn Rand

The young man was still in a daze when he went to work that morning. He spent the first few hours reading the emails he had missed, surfing the internet randomly, looking over baseball statistics that he already knew by heart. He paid very little attention to what he was doing, his mind was elsewhere, still thinking over the events of the past weeks, of the thoughts that were now rushing to his head and swirling uncontrollably. He went for a cup of tea at the kitchen, wandered past the cubicles in his aimless daze, oblivious to his co-workers passing him by.

He stopped outside his managers office and went inside. He suddenly felt compelled to talk to someone about what he was feeling. His manager, 46 years old, shared his dislike for the corporate game. He worked because he needed money, and not because he enjoyed it. He would leave in a second if he could, he had experienced life in his youth and had found that there was much more than what presented itself between thin cubicle walls.

'Is it still as busy as it been? Have things calmed down at all?', the young man asked, knowing full well that they hadn't but wanting to lead the conversation in a direction that he might be able to burst free his rage.

His manager's eyes had sagged noticably in the past few weeks. The recent work had taken its toll on him, the late nights in meetings and the heavy burden of responsibility. As our hero stared at the older gentleman he wondered if the burden of that responsibility was made even heavier by the knowledge of its pointlessness. One perhaps can take solace in a responsibility that has meaning, for it might give the drive to carry out above and beyond what might be done under a usual circumstance. His manager, while older, was not that different from the younger workers. He had no children for whom he was responsible for, he was not married. There was no firm ground from which to derive strength from. Strength must come from purpose, in this particular case from the knowledge that what one is doing needs to be done. In the corporate world of greed and selfish individuality, and in the absense of loyalty, finding root for this strength is difficult.

He stared off at the wall for a moment before answering. He often did so.

'No, no they haven't. They're still on our backs. They don't stop pushing. They work a lot of hours themselves, they are willing to put in 14-16 hour days, and they expect the same out of us. It doesn't leave us with much of a choice. If they're all working those hours... But how long can this go on?'

It was the young man's turn to stare at the wall for a moment. Not blankly, mind you. Trying to grasp something that didn't make sense.

'I don't understand why they are willing to put the effort in that they do. What is the point of all this work? They must realise that, in the end, they are going to retire and move on, and that when they do all of the work they do will be forgotten. I understand a job, certain responsibilities come with that job, and that you have an obligation to those responsibilities, but it seems to me to go far beyond any reasonable expectation. What is the point of sacrificing your life for a job? If the sacrifice had an importance in the end, then maybe. If it saved lives, or had some real, positive value. I could understand it if it was my own business, if there was a pride that I could associate to in growing and achieving something that is mine. But this, what we do, what everyone does, has none of those characteristics, at least by the standards I would measure them by. We make products for consumption, and if that does have a positive effect, and I think you could easily argue that there are as many ill gains as good ones. If there is some good, it certainly would be small, not something worth sacrificing ones life over. We are wage labourers. Sure, we're technical and educated, this makes the branch between us and what you associate with wage labourers a little more fuzzy, but really we aren't any different. We have little to gain from working hard. We own a few stock options, a small piece of the company, and so some might argue that our success hinges on the work we perform - but to believe that somehow our efforts are somehow directly tied to the companies success in anything more than an anecdotal sense is delusional. The companies we work for are large enough that success and failure doesn't come from us lower ranks, unless the hiring policies are so atrocious that the lower ranks are completely incompetent. When it comes right down to it, there just isn't even room for ingenuity. We work for machines that will keep rolling with or without us, so to think that we are a vital cog that is irreplacable is an egotistical and, I think, an almost laughable idea. I certainly do not think that the correlation is strong enough to warrant 16 hour days. I would think that if you desire 16 hour days you would be best putting your efforts towards a business of your own, one where the success is narrowly enough focused that your efforts really do strongly correlate with it. Sigh... I don't understand what these people think they are accomplishing. It seems delsusional to me.'

The manager shrugged. And our hero went back to his cubicle, and back to work.
- posted by Sigurd4/15/2004 10:11:00 PM