I had planned on hammering with you one last sales letter for How To Be Rich and Happy today, but then I was overcome by a strange sense of pity. You’ve probably had enough of me trying to sell you stuff for the time being. Just because I have 9 kids a sick grandmother, a mountain of medical debt, 3 wives and a herd of sheep to look after, that isn’t really your problem, is it?
Of course that could be the truth, or it could be simply because I got sent this great guest post and the afternoon watching the football is more appealing than writing a post from scratch. After all the definition of being Rich and Happy is doing whatever you want, whenever you want even if that does involve watching the St Louis Rams get humiliated on a weekly basis.
Just in case you’re new around here and intrigued to know what the hell I’m blathering on about, read this.
The following is courtesy of the man called Andrew Caldwell. If you are one of those people who wants to work for yourself, but is cautiously waiting for Saturn to creep behind Uranus with Capricorn rising in the third quadrant of vasolene with kipper fillets for breakfast, he’s probably going to call you out. You have been warned.
Leaders of the Free World – Corporate Fluff
This article will not self-destruct in 5 seconds. You’re not Ethan Hunt and unfortunately your workplace isn’t Mission: Impossible. The corporate world and the office work model are too full of corporate fluff and their own bullshit that business, companies and you as an individual forget what it’s all about.
The end result for all of us should be – where can we provide the most effective value? Using our time to the best effect to get the desired result? And the knock on effect of this would be having more of our own time to enjoy.
Employee #4289
Sitting in your little cubicle, looking at your name placard, and waiting a good 5 minutes for your computer to turn on, being requested to re-enter your user name and password to log-on. A password? What? You’re an accountant, a data entry clerk, a desk jockey, who cares what’s on your computer? But no, make sure your password contains 6-8 characters, it must contain a number and also a capital letter, because the work you’re doing is top-secret and important, you’re not an employee #, you’re special!
Corporate manuals, excessive paper work, red tape, swipe cards, procedures; and all before you’ve actually ‘done’ your ‘job’…
Wearing a T-shirt with a slogan today? How dare you. Collared shirts and neat attire, we don’t want our clients & customers thinking we employ free thinking colourful individuals with their own sense of style, actually we’ll go one better, put this uniform on.
A more recent direction is for the ‘new rich’ and the next generation of innovators to be aiming for mobility and freedom – the ultimate goals. If you’ve been checked into the asylum for a while you’ve been conditioned, you have 8 or 9 hours a day to fill, send some emails, file some documents, drag that day out.
If someone dropped the bomb on you then you’d move into gear and get your work complete in no time. Your entire day is filled with corporate fluff, meetings, agenda’s, staff emails and all of those ‘important’ things.
Ego-Tripping at the Gates of … Work
The working environment is filled with people on power trips and more often than not, you’ll be on the receiving end of the power trip and office politics. It would make an interesting social study – Jerk bosses and whether they were picked on in school! But now, unfortunately for you, they have the power!
Have you ever bumped into a boss or someone higher up the work ladder than you outside of work hours? Feels a bit weird? Between the hours of 9 – 5 if they tell you to jump, you have to ask how high? But now… nothing? The working world creates a false sense of authority and respect. Why should you respect someone just because they’ve been doing the same mundane job for the last 20 years and have slowly crawled their way up a corporate hierarchy?
The working environment lets people wheel and deal, ‘talk’ about big sums of money, secure ‘that’ big deal, meet ‘associates’ and drive the company car. Squint your eyes a bit and it does seem like an opening scene from Mission: Impossible, fortunately not. The corporate environment encourages the small man syndrome, power struggles & politics and unfortunately you’re going to be another rung on the ladder for your boss to climb over.
Out with the old
So what am I proposing? We’re a new generation, out with the old school, in with the new school. We have the technology; emails, webinars, communications. Is your full-time presence in the office required for 8 hours today?
Enjoy the hour long meeting you’ll be trying not to fall asleep in. There are too many people doing work just for the sake of work. If we moved towards being effective, remembering what the end goal or result that we’re striving for then things would get done a lot quicker. We need to be working smarter, not harder, in everything we’re doing.
A short side note, I’ve been called into countless amounts of absolutely pointless meetings, so that some ‘manager’ can go over the same things and justify their position, again and again… If you want to start looking forward to your meetings like they’re Christmas morning, get a few co-workers involved and play wank-word bingo, a few of my favourite buzz words to look out for are; “Touch Base”, “Streamline”, “Strategic Fit”, “At the end of the Day” and “Take that on Board”.
Head over to here and print off your own bingo cards, here’s to finally having a reason to stay awake in meetings!
Call to Action
So are you sick of being told when you can head to the bathroom to take a pee? At what time during the day you’re allowed to snack for lunch? I’d probably go insane if I wasn’t allowed to make personal phone calls during the day, but I know some of you out there aren’t allowed to do that either!
Which is easier? Working for the weekly paycheck or taking a chance on life? Can you freelance, sub-contract or start a small business, providing YOUR value directly to the end user? If it goes arse over tit you can always come back to the safety of the office cubicle?
Our focus should be on providing the maximum value to the end user and cutting out the middle men along the way. You have options out there, once you open your mind and start looking you’ll find plenty of like-minded individuals and opportunities.
Your challenge – A minor level of discomfort permanently, versus a temporary stray out of the comfort zone for the possibility of limitless reward?
If you like the cut of Andrews jib, you can get more of it here or follow him on Twitter here.
Cool guest writings Andrew.
I particularly enjoyed the Flaming Lips reference. (It was a Flaming Lips reference, wasn’t it?)
Your comment about super-safe passwords made me chuckle. I used to work in a top secret government science lab. We had armed police at the gates (which we find scary in the U.K.), electric fences and our offices might well have been at the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying “beware of the leopard.”
The press thought we were doing alien autopsies. Crazy bespectacled folk in anoraks would crowd around the entrance in an attempt to see a the latest alien / goat hybrid we’d cooked up that morning in an oversized petri dish.
If only they’d have known the mundane nature of the activities within. They’d have stayed at home and watched X-files re-runs instead…
You’re right. I’ve been self-employed for many years now and have become much more effective because of it. The more influence we have on our work, the more efficient and effective we become.
I’ll be interested to see if our global financial crisis will help refashion employment models and the way businesses are run in general.
Boy, the way you describe corporate-fluff would make anybody want to turn his back on employment shackles and embrace self-employment and contract work. :-)
I started my own small education business a year ago after leaving public schools where I taught for years and years. The freedom is incredible and the satisfaction I get from my work leaves me yelling, “Woo Hoo!”. I linked my name to my website if you’re curious.
Since leaving public schools, I understand the school board for the district I worked for, is now trying to usurp 2nd amendment rights by not allowing teachers to have an on line presence through things like Facebook, twitter, and blogs. Yea, baby! Watch me stretch and giggle. I don’t have to deal with any of that nonsense!!!
@jj_jalopy – glad someone enjoyed the flaming lips reference!
I’ve got a glorious two days left of employment and I can’t wait to join all of you in the free world.
Andrew
[...] proud to say that Tim from The Discomfort Zone was nice enough to let me guest post for him! Read the rest of this article [...]
Ah, this made me smile remembering the days of my corporate office. (Yes. I had an office. No. An office is not better than a cubicle.)
Some days, it’s really fun to look back and remember what it was like then and how amazing it is now. That does make me smile.
Thanks for the entertaining post, Andrew!
All the best!
deb
Nice call to action,
I only entered the 9-5 a year ago and I am starting to get a little edgy with it.
My first realisation was that being paid a fixed(yearly) hourly rate(of fixed 40hrs) for my physical presence was pretty silly as there was very little incentive to be more efficient and do only the hard/important stuff.
But the real kicker is that it is just a 7 out of 10 job. It’s fun and the work is interesting but it is not fulfilling.
And I can’t see my future being truly fulfilled in any other way than through my own efforts to craft my own job.
So the planning begins… :)
Ha ha…you reminded me of the days in corporate world. Nice post. Collared shirts, sophisticated talks, organized attires…just felt like a noose around your neck suffocating you all the hours in your office.
Just thought I’d dive in and offer my sincere thanks to Andrew for a really cool post.
Best of luck for your last day mate, exciting times!
Ah! This is one of the best things I’ve read in awhile. You’ve really hit the nail on the head re: corporate America. I love it, bloody brilliant. You are absolutely right on all counts. It is about working smarter, not harder. And, yes, I am totally going to try out the bingo idea. :)
Thanks for the laugh, the wisdom, and the inspiration!
-Dena
Evolution
Great post! Sound like the book Maverick : The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace.
People can search for it on Google! ,
I got laid off a day ago and found this blog. ,