work – Page 3 – Picking Up Roots

Success

I don’t profess to be the best at what I do. I’m not the worst either. I’m the old-school pitcher. I take the ball every fifth day and I get you six to eight innings. I give up a few runs, but the damage is never catastrophic. I keep you in the ballgame. I don’t get hurt. I show up. Nothing about me or my performance sets your hair on fire – unless you have a thing for steadiness.

These used to be valuable qualities. They used to matter. Now it’s all about the numbers and how we can make good ones even better. It’s not enough that we’ve dug a well that produces more water than we could ever need, we have to try and squeeze water from the rocks around it as well. as well. It doesn’t make any sense.

Harper – my 30-something boss – scheduled a meeting with me yesterday. Our cubicles are right next to one another and we speak no fewer than a million times each day. He reserved time in the conference room and everything.

After a couple of pleasantries, he got right into it, “Roy, what can I do to help you be successful?”

I don’t remember much of the rest of the meeting. My immediate reaction was to imagine various ways of throttling the little turd. Reactions 2-37 ranged from ‘go away’ to verbal encouragement on the insertion and/or removal of body parts from certain orifices.

Then I processed what he’d said, that I needed to be successful.

And that messed with my head. As I laid out above. I show up. I do the work. I’m not the best. I’m not the worst. My numbers are never below the goal, but they aren’t so high above it I stand out either. And now this little shit has the audacity to say to me that I’m not successful!

Never once has he come in and asked me for more or better. All I get are ‘good jobs’ and ‘attaboys.’ Half the office misses days of work as though they were required not to be there. Their results swing from missing the mark to above the line with no predictability and this young punk has the gall to imply I’m not successful.

I’m afraid I don’t understand the work-world (or the world at large) anymore. I’ve been in it longer than Harper’s been alive. If I’m being honest, I can’t say that I care to know any more about it. Hitting all my numbers and being told I’m not a success. Since when is that a thing?

I don’t want to be appreciated for showing up. We’re supposed to, it’s the job. But I show up, and produce steady, bankable results and it’s not enough.

I’ve never understood the business people who would surpass $100 tomorrow for $10 today. I don’t understand the current crop who prefer the possibility of $100 once a month to $10 every day.

Maybe I’m too old. I don’t know anymore. I still have the energy. I’m still up for the work, but maybe the times have passed me by. Maybe I don’t understand what success means anymore. Maybe I never did.

Carrying On

A thousand pinpricks of water punished his skin in the best way. Each drop growing into its own small river that traced an exploratory track down his body; soothing the aches of the road.

After a week of long hours in the car, sterile hotel rooms with their spineless beds, and days spent in all-consuming labor, shoring up the base of the company, this was necessary. Not for the first time, he stood beneath the spray of the shower and wondered why he kept on going.

It wasn’t the money that kept him tearing himself away from the home he loved – his family, his friends – every few weeks. The money wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t the driver.

Passion was a loaded word. The work was good. It wasn’t made up of empty consumptive calories. He believed in it, but passion? Passion invoked fire and he didn’t know that he felt a ‘fire.’ It was worthy, but lighting a fire? He hated the question. He wasn’t on fire about anything. He wasn’t apathetic either. He just was.

As the water wrapped warm fingers around his body, his mind alit on friendship and people. After 25 years, he had a great many deep friendships within the company. People who’d gone to bat for him over the years or shown up when he was reeling.

And then there were the new folks, the ones just starting out, who needed a kind word or guidance on which path to take in the ever-more corporate and sterile ways of the company. That’s why he kept answering the calls. He owed it to the people who’d helped him and those who were new, who deserved better.

All that was well and good, but his body was weary in the bones. The water had soothed, but now he began to think of the comfort of his bed.

Drying himself off he wondered how much longer he’d be able to keep doing this; throwing everything he had into the ever-widening breaches created by the broken corporate culture.

As his head hit the pillow, he tried to remember back to the point where it broke. Before he could close in on the time, his mind drifted to sleep.

Code

They offered him more money than he’d ever thought he’d earn in a year to stay. He was flattered and told them so. It was too late.

He hadn’t given them everything, but over the last 20 years he’d given them more than the majority of his peers. He would have given more, but no one had listened. Nobody was asking for ideas, there was no place to submit them, so he sat on his. He figured they were his biggest contribution to the company, but they didn’t come to light until it was too late.

After he’d submitted his resignation to his boss, he wrote a letter to the President and CEO. He’d explained his thoughts on the company’s future and thanked them for the opportunity. He was himself: polite, professional, non-descript. Neither responded.

On his second to last day, the President called and asked him if he’d be willing to expand upon his ideas. They had a pleasant chat that lasted two hours. He didn’t think anything more of it. He’d enjoyed the chance to share his ideas, but that was that.

The next morning the Vice President of HR called with an offer that would quintuple his pay and grant him a powerful new title. He was grateful, but declined. He’d made a commitment and he didn’t turn his back on those.

The President and CEO both called him in the afternoon begging him to stay. He was polite, but steadfast in his refusal. He had a code.

He spent a pleasant weekend with his family. The children laughed in the yard. The fading sunlight caught his wife’s hair and he fell in love with her all over again. There was no talk of work.

On Monday, he went to work at his old company’s largest competitor.