diglydoyo

I find that people can be possessed by something that makes them act like someone they’re not. Often, when you or someone else is deprived of something that they are dependent on. Serious things like drugs and alcohol, and more mundane things like food and sleep. We’ve all been there; feeling hungry and impatient. But something has gotten in way, like an indecisive person in front of you at the drive-thru. They spend more than five minutes talking to the little speaker, and then you pull up and get your order done in less than 30 seconds. On a good day, you might wonder if the person ahead of you has ever ordered food before. On a bad day, you may consider making sudden romantic contact between your front bumper and their rear one.

I’ve observed something like this when talking to, or hearing about, mangers at a job. They become possessed by the demon that lurks in every business. And not just managers, regular employees too. A friend told me a story once, when the accountant asked him to do something that wasn’t usually his purview. He playfully retorted that this task wasn’t part of his job description, and she replied, in full seriousness, “your job description changes over time.” Do you see what I mean? It’s the same thing when people complain about coworkers leaving at the time when their shift ends. That to me is one of the more explicit examples of this; coworkers being annoyed with you for sacrificing time spent at your job so that you can leave when you were expecting to.

And I see this in managers to a potent degree. They become possessed by the “values” of business; being on time or early, doing things by the book, avoiding all risk, quantifying everything on a spreadsheet, always being busy, etc. They become feeble creatures, who can only tolerate total consistency and safety, who respond to occasional hiccups or mild insubordination like a rash responding to an infection.

I will concede that managers are still humans when away from work. But the role of being a manager makes them cowardly, and lose their memory of being a regular employee. In the same way that we all become possessed by something outside of ourselves.