Well Past the Expiry Date
In our consumer driven lifestyle we are used to things telling us when they are done. The sour cream container has a clearly marked best before date, and no matter how tempting it is to use it after that date on the tasty burrito you just nuked, some things are just better left alone. You’ll be happier, your stomach will be happier, your spouse, offspring and immediate circle of friends will be happier. Throw out the more than sour, sour cream and nobody gets hurt.
…the uneasy queasy feeling…
Why can’t jobs be like this? Why can’t I interview for a job, accept it, and then get a letter from a detached, yet evil, Human Resource Gnome that says the conditions of my employment and then in small print at the bottom it read “best before 2007”.
Unfortunately it doesn’t seem to work this way. Unfortunately it dawns on you well past the expiry date that the thing that you are doing is the wrong thing. It was while languishing into the wee hours of the morning waiting for the telco repair guys to splice together a line that had been taken out by a gravel truck that it became clear. The uneasy queasy feeling that no matter what you do, what you hope for, what anyone actually says, it is never going to get any better. It is always going to be a pain in the nether region, and it will always demand more time and attention from the things in our lives that really do matter.
When they write my epitaph, do I really want it to say “He was a team player”, or “He always managed to make the quotas.” I don’t think so…
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Very well said.
Thanks… but now I have to do something about it.