The Problem with People
I work in a job that requires regular phone contact with people. I have come to loathe and despise every single one of them. If every employee of the company I work for, outside of the people I work with directly and myself, would have died in their sleep last night, I would be overjoyed. I would dance through the empty hallways and laugh and laugh and laugh with an unbridled joy. The fact that the news this morning was not leading with a story about thousands of people found dead in their beds means that this did not happen, however, so that means I have eight hours of idiots and morons nattering and whining in my ear to look forward to.
I work in Human Resources. I have written about this before. Never has there been a department more reviled and yet so relied upon by ungrateful employees. Human Resources is the tangible embodiment, to most employees, of how the company is trying to screw them over. In general, every employee not in HR along with every retiree is convinced the company is trying to screw them over. We are always taking something away from them that was better before and we are never doing anything to make life better for them. So, they all hate us, but at the same time they need us and want us to do everything for them when it comes to their benefits. So, every since caller I get all day long is immediately irritated and angry.
The second problem with dealing with people, their benefits and the phone is that by the time they get to me they have usually worked up a head of steam and anger. Something has gone wrong and they want to take it out on somebody. Oh, you have a toll free number? Well, you will do nicely. No one ever calls HR to tell you how great their benefits are and how well their health insurance company has been paying their health insurance claims. They only call when everything has gone to hell. In short, this means every single person I talk to throughout the day is already angry and looking to take it out against someone when they get to me. Is it any wonder most days I just want to hide in a back room somewhere and not talk to anyone?
I took the job I had because the worst place to work on the entire planet, Aon Consulting, had fired me last January. The reason? Well, I think because my evil weasel of a boss (a man by the name of Minh Byers, by the way. If you meet him, knee him in the groin for me) had it in for me because I was unwilling to take it up the behind from the company anymore. I think the beginning of the end of my tenure at the twentieth level of hell came when I had an outburst at a team meeting. From that point forward Minh Byers was looking for a way to get rid of me. He found it when I muttered a bad word after an insane woman on the phone informed me I was supposed to drop everything and handle only her issue and then slammed her phone down. Well, the phone call recording software caught me muttering a certain word usually related towards what a female dog is called about this lovely woman and that was it for me.
See, that’s the other problem with working in HR these days. You are never alone. There are always people looking over your shoulder. Your phone calls are logged and recorded. Your phone calls are reviewed and analyzed. Every thing you type is reviewed, cataloged, reported and printed out in pretty little pie charts for people who have no clue what you actually do all day to analyze and make decisions about your job.
I am convinced that all managers are actually bred on an island somewhere. Probably an island like the one on the TV show “Lost” with underground hatches and medical experiments. At some point, either early in the embryonic stage or shortly after birth, I am not sure, the young future manager’s head is bent over and shoved up their ass. As the future manager grows, their head wedges ever-more firmly up their ass until, by the time they are out of college, they are ready for full-time management. Symptoms of head-up-the-ass disease are an obsession with numbers instead of people, the overuse of the word “metric,” insane decisions meant to save money without asking people directly affected by the decision, and the belief you actually know what your employees do all day long while you sit in your office thinking up insane rules for them to follow. If you find yourself suffering from any of these symptoms, I suggest you get yourself something tie-dyed and start following a rock group around the country. The Dave Matthews Band is a good example. If you find yourself following Barry Manilow, I suggest you just accept the fact you are a simpering, ass-kissing manager for life.
So, I took this job because they were the first who seemed to want to start paying me again on a regular basis. It’s an hour drive to and from work thanks to Chicago traffic. It’s a job where I have to talk on the phone all day, the same thing that got me in trouble at the other place. Still, I thought that I could get used to it. I thought it wouldn’t be so bad once everything got going. I was wrong.
I hate people more now than I did a year ago and I thought I hated everyone completely back then. People in general want everything done for them and want to take not responsibility for doing anything. They want the company they work for to take care of them for the rest of their lives. How do I know? Because I often find myself doing the same things. Oh yes, I am not excluding myself from the rest of humanity here. I am freely admitting I am as stupid, simpering and whiny as everyone else.
I don’t have a solution for it. I think people just need to start taking responsibility for their kids, their own lives, their benefits and everything around them in general. Stop looking for others to help or people in general to step in and do things for you. It shouldn’t “take a village” to do anything.
I am going to go back to working on my hunched back and cranky-old-man-voice now.
