humanism

I’m slowly approaching a full year under the employment of my employer, and my feelings towards the corporation are ever-changing. Some of you may recall my utter disgust with which I regarded Office Depot, and I went into this store with equally strong feelings. For the greater part of my employment, I responded by simply being a poor employee. I purposefully didn’t give a shit about my job, I did my best to avoid earning money towards our daily budget, I avoided opening up to or trusting my co-workers, and I convinced myself that I was the only competent person on the staff.

With time, however, I realized that I was consumed with a false idealism. I was determined to hate my surroundings because of how far it falls from what reality should be. I saw the depravity of my surroundings to be somehow unreal, or less real than what I might experience anywhere else in life. Furthermore, I was convinced that I was alone in my hatred of the system, and therefore ahead of the game, smarter than my foolish colleagues.

The first change of heart came simply in humbleness. I’m not actually as good at what I do as I think I am, and that my ego serves nothing but myself. I came also to recognize that people don’t submit to this system out of love or ignorance, but out of necessity. We’re all in this shit together, and it is more loving to work along side one another for something better than to try and sabotage the system. Additionally, I’ve also begun to understand that giant corporations aren’t necessarily large, faceless entities. Every store is not the same, because (at least for now) individuals are still running things. I’m not a machine, or a part of a machine, or any other lifeless metaphor. I’m a person, working for other people, to provide a service for people.

It is interesting to me, then, that I would make such a colossal mistake as to hand a person a laptop without asking for their identification first, the consequences of which I haven’t yet heard. Now, in my defense:

1) We probably process at least forty computers a week between the four or five of us. In the year I’ve worked there, hundreds and hundreds of computers come in and out.
2) This is a busy store. When people are waiting in line and the phone is ringing, people expect me to get shit done fast, and it’s not hard to forget the really important little things.
3) The woman walked up and asked for the specific computer by the name of the owner and the model, and she told me what work had been done on it. There was no mix-up – hers was the only computer of that brand we had.

So, I was pretty thunderstruck when another woman walks in an hour later asking for the same computer, and a phone call to her husband reveals no details about who might have just been in to pick the thing up. Thankfully, no personal information was on this thing (we’d restored it after replacing a bad hard drive). Had there been, I would almost certainly have been fired (although, like I said, my fate is still uncertain). The reason I find all this interesting is because I’ve finally come to a point where I can appreciate my job and the effort I put into it, and feel like I have come to a place where I can work my way up the promotion ladder and start building my resume. I don’t relish the thought of losing my job. I also don’t relish the ass-reaming I will most certainly experience tomorrow.