FEELING THE SQUEEZE

FEELING THE SQUEEZE

October 6, 2015

An officemate complained that when she asked another (one who submitted some documents to her for processing) about some impropriety in the attachments, she was not given a proper justification or reason, but instead the same AD-LIBBED (translated as: added insulting words to the effect that the one making the query felt made her look foolish for asking).

Why is it that some people could be so two-faced when dealing with others? These same people are so good and patronizing when answering questions by the bosses and acting all cool and in-control, but when asked by colleagues whom they felt are on their same or lower level, act all arrogant and snarky.  Another colleague said that these people do so because they felt a sense of entitlement to their jobs (meaning, belonging to the batch who got in the service because of powerful backers, and who stayed on the job and raised up the ladder through the same network), as compared to the rest of us who fought for a way in and still fighting for a way up.

When I was in the corporate world, I also encountered these types of people, and have come to the conclusion that everywhere (whether in the private or public sector), there really are people who throw their weight around.  I’d hate to call this crab mentality (because mom craved on crabs and seafood while being pregnant with me, and it—together with shrimps, lobsters, squids, eels, and octopuses—are really my all-time, all weather favourite food), since I felt it would be an insult to my royal crustacean and underwater invertebrate friends.  They who are of the noble profession of cleaning up the ocean floor and maintaining the healthy levels of oxygen in the sea so all other creatures can survive, definitely have much more sense working faithfully from when the sun’s rays reach down to them on the seabed at sunrise, to the time when its last rays disappear over the horizon at sunset, than these people who only know how to sweet-talk the bosses but actually shirk from their responsibilities and are very good with being bodily present but mentally absent at work.  (I actually get hurt when somebody uses the CM word because the action that they have observed the crabs are doing inside the fishwife’s pail does not mean that the crabs are envious of each other and are pulling each other down; but because there are no ladders or steps to use to escape from the pail, for one who is used primarily to moving sideways with all those appendages, trying to get out could only result in entangled arms and legs with all the rest of the other prisoners, resulting to everybody just staying in the fishwife’s pail until the time they are all blushing and turning red by being slowly boiled inside the pot in the kitchen).

Well, it may be that (as I can observe anywhere else in the working world--whether the service or the corporate), we all feel the squeeze between the old school of human resource management and the new.  Although it has been six decades on the academic radar, but still we are living with the day by day clash between those who entered the workforce armed with the mindset of the baby boomers (born in the late ‘40s to ‘50s), the hippie (and trying to be hippie, born in the ‘60s) generation, the generation X (where I belong—born in the ‘70s), the generation Y (born in the ‘80s) and that of the millennials (where the newbies and the kids at work belong—born in the ‘90s).  And from this insane mixture of personalities, there will always come out friction due to a certain sense of insecurity.

However, one must remember that no one is indispensable.  What we can do, as the Harvard Business School says, is to always arm ourselves with sufficient knowledge and the right attitude to get along well with others because only then can we be disciplined at work and make ourselves ready against the pressures that come our way, whether a change in administration, a change in people’s mindset due to the stresses of the modern world, and even a new world order.