Schrödinger's Job

So recently I interviewed for a decent promotion at work, and after a couple weeks of twisting in the wind, waiting, wondering, it turns out that not only did I get passed up, but more insultingly, got passed up for someone who had distinguished themselves among their peers with their rather intense displays of anger and sheer disloyalty in the workplace. Ho hum. Perhaps Harry Truman had a point.

The mind goes through some unusual contortions through that interim period, between the interview and the communication of the final decision, win or lose. You are in a strange limbo, where you both succeeded and failed in getting the job. Even the phrase "win or lose" effectively demonstrates the zero-sumness of the game -- you either get the job or you don't -- but during that decision-making period, both things are true. In the era of the jobless recovery, this ranks as a post-modern form of self-induced psychological torture.

As annoying as such a situation -- which surely many of us have been in (or worse) at one time or another, as many modern workplaces are intrinsically humiliating -- can be, it can also be immensely clarifying. It's an opportunity to look at things and note dispassionately, "If decision-makers are this fucked in the head, why do I want to stick around and help them screw the pooch further for a couple bucks more per hour?" Large (100+) organizations that are systemically dysfunctional in nature cannot be fixed by just one or two people, no matter how noble their intentions or how broad-based their skill sets. It's a law of physics -- inertia of a large object can only be overcome with sufficient amounts of applied force.

This is especially true nowadays, with the constant threats of "downsizing" and "restructuring" looming over everyone's head. Fear is perhaps the ultimate demotivator, though you can only push people around so much before they decide to work just hard enough to not get fired. But the less people respect their leaders, and more importantly the word of those leaders, the less they are able to even continue going through the motions, day after miserable day. This is especially true when you can see the bigger picture and realize that it really doesn't have to be that way in the first place.

But ultimately this sort of thing happens to all of us, sooner or later, and when it does you go through the professional version of the Five Stages of Grief. The thing about the dysfunctional organization -- and, like Tolstoy's unhappy families, pretty much every dysfunctional organization is dysfunctional in its own way -- is that once you get past the anger, the feelings of betrayal and bitter recrimination, you realize, once again, that if they're that fucked up, you don't want it anyway. Sort of like getting dumped, the old "sour grapes" sentiment.

All that said, pride doesn't keep the lights on, doesn't help me get any traction on covering my wife's medical bills (because even with pretty good insurance, a simple bronchoscopic procedure a couple months ago ended up costing us about $5K out of pocket, because our medical system, as I've said ad nauseam, is a fucking racket), doesn't get me out of my 20-year-old hooptie and into maybe a ten-year-old hooptie (I live in the sticks, so bicycling everywhere is not an option, though I do ride when I can for recreation), doesn't pay the bills.

This is not a plea for your hard-earned cash money, because things are tough all over. But there are a couple things you can do for free that will help a brother out. One is word of mouth -- tell anyone and everyone you can think of who might be interested, to check this place out, check out Mockalypse (soon to be re-formatted for Kindle Direct Publishing!). The other is checking out anything and everything on this page, rumor has it some of the things here generate revenue.