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| Where to hold could be the question? |
Loe and Behold! Greyhorn
still exists! Given the paranoid tone of my last articles I would assume some
of my readers (at the very least there being a pesky one who keeps reminding me
I should write something in my twitter inbox) that I had been arrested for some
of my more irreverent and let's say alarmist articles. Or I had been shot up
(sic) by Mossad.
Well, sorry I ain't dead. In
fact the reality behind my silence is rather drab . . . I got a job. Another necessary detour in my inordinately frenetic
and wildly vacillating life. Hopefully this time it will be a step closer to a
fancied short cut to my destiny i.e. to be rich, independent and thoroughly
impudent.
(Sorry poor people, you indeed are not in my future plans - am poor now myself, what would you have been doing as I work my neck off to get rich? Patiently sitting and waiting for me to get rich? If there were no handouts and poverty was equated to certain, speedy death am sure there wouldn't be so many poor people... at least that is what I think. Who would drink all of a meagre salary because of being sad and poor if one knew they would be instantly shot dead for being broke?)
I have had a few short
stints in the corporate world before. And I was not impressed. I just couldn't
figure out why I had to fit in to some shitty culture to survive besides having
to work my denuded butt off. This time
fate gave me some pretty compelling cards to play with.
First I finally had a chance to brush up on my
IT skills . . . an immensely gratifying thing for me. I would have literally
worked for free just to work in the rarefied world of high end IT... that is I
craved for a chance to play (and mess) with really, really, really expensive
servers, cutting edge equipment and software at somebody else's expense. Being
paid for it was a welcome bonus.
As if that was not good
enough I got a cool boss. Really am not trumpeting, our department is the envy
of the organization not so much because we are getting it easy in IT, but I can
say it's to a large extent to the laissez faire attitude of our lead. We are
often laughing and cracking jokes while under normal circumstances we would be
sweating and shivering for dear life to find solutions to the endless batteries
of mission-critical problems we are shot with in a single day.
Challenging it
is but pure ecstasy it has been for me, many a times the entire team has been
pushing to the verge of collapse yes (the hours occasionally do get crazy) but
when I go to 'die' in my bed it is often with a smile. Can you beat that, dying
happy everyday!!
Nonetheless despite this rosy picture the fundamental problems that made me hate so much the corporate world unfortunately (and to my growing chagrin) can also be found to a lesser extent in my new company.
I have been able to skirt them for this long because
luckily for me am on the night shift and I have been deluding myself very
convincingly that am practically bossless.
Oh what a wonderful lie this has been, if only I could un-invent emails and for sure I would have been self-employed. Imagine that, self-employed in somebody's company. Then my bosses would just be one or two amongst a number of important nagging clients that I have to deal with now and again.
What are these problems you
might wonder. First and foremost is the issue of meeting quantifiable objectives
and targets in a support role. In essence everybody wants to know how a useless
supporter you can be. And I can tell you from practical experience it is rather
difficult to prove you are actually not useless... even if you know... and they
know... that you must be doing something day to day worth your head in the
company.
For instance how do you
quantify crimping cables? (I crimped 1067 times successfully this month ... so?
Did any client sign a check or give an award for that?). Try having just a
single critical network cable not working properly and alas! you get wild calls
and menacing demented looks from your affected co-workers.
How about chasing down a
virus in the servers in an epic digital struggle and heroically killing it
before it did any harm? Everybody knows a virus can be disruptive when it hits
them but who cares if a crazy looking IT guy spends a whole night in the server
room fiddling with a keyboard? At this point you are as helpful to them as a
beautiful monkey on a magazine.
Then try to imagine when the
network goes down (which it often does and can for a bewildering number of
reasons) few would actually care that serious frantic work went to get it up
and running again... you would get angry feedback for taking that long!!
Seamless operations require consistent and vigilant effort ... but try and
quantify vigilant, consistent effort. Most of the time when asked what the heck
you do in the company anyway understandably what an IT guy can only give is a
dejected impish face and limp off to rile in some geek forum about why God
created non-techies so silly in the first place.
But these are clearly
operational issues that mainly occur due to the natural lack of understanding
about what the guys in the other departments do. (Forgive my language, the
other imbeciles in the other departments do ... it is -- after all-- my damn
blog). Every rational being somehow is inclined to think that no one else can
conceivably be doing much more than them. That is, until you get to wear the
"sluggard's" shoes
There are other more general
aspects of the corporate community that instinctively puts me off. For instance
it is a rule of thumb that you must be nice and endeavour to cultivate positive
productive relationships with people that you might and might not necessary be
working with on a day to day basis. Why? Am not anti-social but why the heck do
I have to make this awkward silly small talk so that everybody else does not
think am a tall snob?
Creating a conducive environment from my perspective does
not in any way include complementing my sharp elbows and me reciprocating by
decoding the ugly dress a colleague might be wearing into some wonderful thing.
It is utterly impossible for
everybody to like everybody else, then why do we have to keep pretending that
we are all good and nice to each other, if I won't deliver I would be fired
anyway whether or not I like somebody am supposed to work with or not.
Fortunately in my new
company (and job description) there isn't a dress code (phew! what a relief, I
wouldn't know a dress code even if I was hit with one on the head. I usually
dress to work as if am going to buy bread at the local kiosk). Nonetheless
people tend to notice that since you got employed you have never bought a new
pair of shoes. "Mmh, how many problems can this guy possibly have, he is already half-crazy ... but
he is so young."
Which is often the reason
why I 'remember' to make subtle, progressive changes . . . I do this really,
before somebody feels compelled to buy me some Chinese knock-off snickers out
of this weird thing called 'corporate social responsibility' . (By the way
isn't this CSR thing conceptually a bribe? Giving people things they don't
deserve so that some other people can view the company favourably, that sounds
like a bribe to me.)
There is nothing wrong in looking presentable only that
afterwards I feel like I have been bullied by the 'corporate culture' to buy
the damn shoes. Am a thinker not a peacock, I would gladly go to work naked
with a sandwich if I could.
In conclusion I have come to
realize despairingly that no matter how wonderful a company is working in a
corporate environment anywhere is like a mandatory chant in a Conga line. The
gorillas in the front are the bosses and the hierarchy cascades to the back of
the line.
You have no say but to sway and dance to the beat and growls of the
primates at the front, getting out of the line also means instantly being
clobbered back or being kicked out into the crocodile infested lake of
joblessness. So I have picked up my percussion rattles and Mexican hut, am
gonna chant, vigorously shake my tutu to the beat from the front and see where
that leads. Yeleleleeleiiiiiiiiiii !! Na-na! uu! na-na! uu!!
M. Wycliff,
Nairobi.
