When I talked about making a personal change for myself, carving out my own personal island, I had some people, knowing how I am, wondering why I didn’t decide to mount up and lead the charge to change the system. I have to say at first I was leaning towards that but as I looked out at the landscape I saw few people who might be willing to join. Its why, as I thought further about it, I realized any sort of fight working to change the system might end up with less than ideal results.

I was reminded about how defeated we have become by listening to the situation of a friend of mine. He works for a small company but the office politics sounds like the same issues I heard from any company I worked for. When you first start out, you’re introduced to people who are supposed to have your best interest at heart, so they say. Everyone is friendly and glad to have you aboard, and then you are taken to the heart of the operation, which isn’t the board room or the President’s office but the boiler room.

This is where you find out you’re a cog in a vast machine and the people you saw who were to take care of you are nothing more than mechanics who will replace you without hesitation if you question the status quo. In this economic environment, people are grateful just to have a job, so they are willing to put up with things and suffer just so they have some cash in their pockets.

My friend told me about all the infighting and broken assurances they have faced since getting the new job. I chuckled because I got the same thing at my former job. I can’t say it was all on their part with the ‘broken promises.’ I know when I get a new job I always hope it will be something that will last a long time and will afford me the ability to get some modest things. I don’t necessarily look to be overly loyal because businesses aren’t built on loyalty. Gone are the days when you can get a job and expect to grow and be with the company for ten or twenty years.

My friend told me about how there’s a disconnection between upper management and the grunts. That’s just par for the course. In my last job, while it was better than most, there was an air of ‘we know what it is like’ mentality. What I mean is if there was a complaint about an issue, many times you would get a heartfelt tale about how it was when the supervisor started on the job and got through it. The main issue would take time to get addressed because no matter how wrong it would seem to anyone on the outside, because they went through it and survived the logic was it couldn’t be that bad and you should tough it out. The underlying message was if you can’t take it, we’ve got many cogs waiting to replace you.

The conversation with my friend didn’t end well, because it’s not a situation where someone can just leave the job. In a better economy workers had some ability to migrate to other work. In this economy the employer has the power. In looking for work I come across jobs that can have tens to hundreds of people applying for one position. If you find something you can’t say no, even if the job doesn’t offer all the things you want.