Alternately titled, "Adult Challenges in a Fucked Up World"
I received some disconcerting news at work today, which should come as no surprise considering the economic climate as a whole and what I know of my own organization's financial dynamics. Without getting into too many specifics, I'll be making ever-so-slightly less than what I was making.
The pill becomes difficult to swallow when one feels, as I do right now, as though they are performing better professionally than they ever have before. Leave it to a stubborn contrarian like me to produce like Japan in the eighties when my company and the rest of the economy is floundering like Guatemala in every decade. So I understand. I get it. It still sucks.
By nature and by nurture I've been raised on principles of social fairness, pacifism, and equality. By circumstance and-or genetics I've gravitated towards thought-by-profit, competitiveness, and justification via my main man Darwin for anything that can be justified through said main man.
So here I am, looking people dead in the eye, telling them they can't work for me anymore. It's a business decision, I say, and I ain't lying. But my inner-bleeding heart still can't help but fight the slightest sensation of nausea, knowing that I just took a chicken breast out of the freezer or an ounce of weed out of the bong (disclosure: I hire mostly college students, which mitigates the dire nature of my decision making... somewhat).
And I step away, knowing, er, thinking, um, hoping that these decisions pay off for the organization, and pay off for me, the new-aged capitalist with a soft spot for the afflicted and a genuine longing that all of this is justified in the end to meet some as-yet-to-be-determined end. But the doubt lingers.
What the hell am I getting at? In order for me to continue to have make money, I have to make less money, and I have to tell some people that they are done making money for me. Ouchie. But there is no other way, I tell myself, and I'm getting closer to believing it, as I brush off resentment like dandruff and swallow pride like it's ecstacy at a gay Austrian rave.
And I have to keep producing. I have to run my jobs. I can't let my original, years in the making, carefully crafted facade, that of the overgrown college kid that can be your friend but is still your boss, the dude with a mind for logistic creativity and an affinity for big words out of context that sometimes lands the big contract, I can't let that facade crumble. Even if the inside is screaming and crying and getting all passive-aggressive on that ass, the outside must remain steadfast and firm and funny. The paint job that is the three-day stubble and one-size-too-tight t-shirt must not chip or peel, revealing the conflicted mess within.
It would be unfair for me to cry foul now, not when my old bosses have been laid off and my co-workers had their hours and pay slashed and my higher-ups are dealing with my same set of challenges, yet to people with families and mortgages and all that jazz. What is fair is not what is necessary, what is necessary is certainly not always fair. It wasn't fair for me to make $800 a weekend five years ago when working in a similar capacity I mauled a company job based on inexperience and ineptitude. It probably wasn't necessary for a transportation company to hold on to a loose cannon with a DUI when his division went oh-for-ten on proposals last year. It might not be fair that I am looking at myself and some of my compadres treading water in the face of one of our largest, most prestigious, and profitable (in the micro-sense) gigs. But fuck it. I know it's necessary.
After all, I am a team player (ask my softball team after I slide head first into home just to tie the score against Kenilworth, ask the guys I play hoops with- the best YMCA game I played all season long I played the whole game, took two shots, and defended and rebounded and set picks- we won). And I'm a socialist, too.
Back in 1995, I only led my baseball team in one category: sacrifice bunts. I'm laying another one down, but this time I'm gonna try to beat it out. And maybe, just maybe, I'll be safe, score the winning run, and the team will win in the end.
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That might not have been pride you swallowed at the gay Austrian rave. Good post Matt. This move, and hopefully others like it in the future, will be history markers of business sustainability and continuation with the value system you find tested in the short term IN TACT.
ReplyDeleteIn 1977 the second generation owners of this company had to find a way to navigate through end of the steel industry in Youngstown while holding a Teamster labor agreement. National union leadership understood what the company owners were faced with, but the union membership didn't. A wildcat strike ended trucking operations and 200+ families went into varying stages of economic uncertainty. This could have been avoided with well placed sacrifice bunt.
Great blog, Matt, as always. Well said.
ReplyDeleteI read this posting while coincidently listening to "dont look back in anger" - Oasis on Pandora. The combo surfaced a sense of pride that you're my cousin and that you work for CMAC. Or maybe it was just the writing. Well done. It was, ironically, MOVING.
ReplyDeleteBen C.