It always amazes me how many times, in the work place, I hear people say "that's not fair".
Such & such got offered the job and they didn't even need to go for an interview ! That's not fair.
The whole of marketing were taken on a boozy river cruise as a so-called "team building" event - we weren't ! That's not fair.
We're boxed in like rats in a cage, you have to book a meeting room ten years in advance, but the CEO has a office you could lose yourself in for a fortnight and yet he's always "working from home" ! That's not fair.
The thing is, "that's not fair" is a phrase I normally associate with five years olds. It's the sort of thing you hear being bawled at a hundred decibels by some screaming little red faced youngster who after a day of playing on the beach is now being told it's time to go home.
It's the cry of the wronged toddler who's just beginning to realise that there are rules in this world, and that worse, it's initial assumption that the world obviously revolved around them, might possibly be incorrect. Now that I type that I'm suddenly a lot less surprised that I hear it in the workplace.
I have a theory. Most of us go to work for one basic reason; to earn money. It's kind of a necessary evil. If you want to pay the rent/mortgage, own a TV, go out occasionally, you need money, and to do that you need to give up five sevenths of your daylight hours to earn the stuff.
As everyone else is in the same boat "work" often becomes some sort of club. We're all here for the same reason; we don't want to be here, but now that we are we might as well make the best of it. That's the adult thing to do. No point in sitting in the corner with a big scowl on our faces, we might as well jolly together and get on with it, and who knows, we might even enjoy ourselves.
In our minds we create this mini semi-socialist society. We become a group of people brought together against our will but with a common aim. Sure there's usually a hierarchy, not everyone is "equal" - but there's structure. There are rules. Everyone knows them and everyone's playing by them.
Until an event happens. The powers that be intervene and something takes place that (in our minds) shouldn't happen: Somebody gets promoted ..for no good reason. We score a 100% on our assessment ..but apparently there's no more money to be had. An entire department gets laid off overnight ..but without any warning whatsoever. Surely, this can't be right ?! Who's making these decisions ? Don't they realise there are rules ? Who do they think they are for goodness sake ? It's not like they run the damn company ! Sorry ? You mean they do run the company.. ? Oh..
Which is why I started using the phrase; "there is no justice, there's just them."
It's not my phrase really. I borrowed it, and changed it a little, from a one of my favourite authors, Terry Pratchet. For those of you who've never read any Pratchet I strongly recommend him. He writes comic fantasy novels that revolve around a mythical world of wizards and witches and monsters. It's a load of old nonsense obviously, but hugely enjoyable none the less. In most of his novels (of which there are hundreds) a few key characters keep showing up. My favourite of these is Death, who's job it is to usher souls into the next world. And for probably the first time in literature we get to see how tiresome this profession must be as frequently many of Death's clients, on realising that they are, well, dead are a little upset at the prospect. They were much happier being alive thank you very much, and being, well, dead strikes them as a tad unfair. Many of them demand some sort of justice from the scythe bearing, skeletal figure that now stands before them, which is when the weary character of Death, who's heard this so many times before, tells them that "THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE'S JUST ME"
It's possibly a little cynical, maybe a little pessimistic, but realising that the work place isn't fair, and that you don't (usually) have much say in how the rules work, or if you do that they can still be bent, broken, overruled, or completely ignored by those who's company it actually is, is in my opinion the first and most crucial of steps to maintaining your sanity in the workplace.
Most large companies also realise this. They also realise that if everyone cotton's onto the fact that they're nothing more than cogs in a machine, well, there's a risk that the cogs might a) demand more money or b) bugger off to a better machine (ok.. so the metaphor fell apart there a little, but you know what I mean).
Which is why companies go to such great lengths to keep all this a secret. The invention of concepts such as "grades", "assessments", "work ethics" and "job satisfaction" are all just tools to keep the employee under the illusion that they are part of a "team", that somehow there's more to their daily grind than merely earning a pay cheque. But there isn't - it is just an illusion, and the danger with an illusion is that it becomes possible to become disillusioned; for what else is disillusion than the realisation that what we thought was reality is all just smoke and mirrors.
Don't beat yourself up over this. Don't disappear into a pit of despair. The real reason you work is still there and has never changed. You work to earn money. For yourself. That's all. That's the real constant. Everything else is smoke & mirrors, and the next time something happens that brings out the screaming five year old inside yourself, and you hear yourself muttering the words "that's not fair", remember, there is no justice, there's just them.
14 March 2004