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February 14, 2005
workplace rules
I had a conversation this evening with a former coworker who is a good friend. In the course of the usual catching up, we got to talking about another former coworker, who had decided to exit our former workplace by slitting his wrists in his cubicle and asking his teammates to call the director so she could see what the place had done to him.
Now, such drama should be cause for deep concern about the health and well-being of the individual in the cubicle, but for me it's really not. Actually, my first question was "were the cuts vertical?" My friend didn't know, but my guess is they were not (this guess is partly based in personal experience, and partly in knowing that he recovered and wanted his job back). I know the individual in question - I was a chief advocate for hiring him. I'm glad I wasn't there when he decided to traumatize the rest of that working community for whatever personal issues he had going on (and he did have many). I hope the rest of the folks in that hardworking office got over the event, hope they knew enough not to carry a guilt burden, but I know some of them did, and that's the real tragedy of it.
What's my point? It's this: if the job was so damn taxing, why didn't he just quit and get a different one? Why subject the other people in that office to something haunting? I'm told the director, also a friend, declined to rehire him because his was an act of workplace violence, for which the institution has a zero tolerance. (rock on, woman!) What is it about people that makes them think they can take a job and then demand that the job conform to their whims?
There's something about this culture of demand and entitlement that rankles me, but probably never so much as when one selfish individual determines that his or her personal pain gives him or her the right to afflict others in some traumatizing way. What he did wasn't about seeking help--it was about hurting others. And that will never be okay with me.
Meanwhile, the coworker who called is off with a positive outlook to seek work in the field for which his is best qualified: working with the most valuable of corporate resources--humans.
rock on, Shawn. Thanks for calling.
Posted by cageyer at February 14, 2005 11:27 PM