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Judge A Person By Their Questions Rather Than Their Answers. Or Just Fire Them And Be Done With It.

February 3, 2023

It’s been a bit of a week at my place of employment. Just finished up a “workforce reduction,” or “employee rebalancing,” or “rightsizing,” or whatever the euphemism du jour is for layoffs. And judging by my LinkedIn feed, so did everyone else. It’s been a helluva few months around these parts, and if you still have a job, congratulations. If you were one of those “impacted,” or “affected,” or “transitioned,” or whatever the euphemism du jour is for getting fired, you have my sincerest sympathy. It sucks. I’ve been there. And it sucks.

This stuff is cyclical, apparently, and necessary for the health of a company, and we’re just supposed to accept that, I guess. Every 4 or 5 or 6 years or so, people’s lives—hard-working, talented, dedicated people—are just going to have to suck it up, cross their fingers, tell their family not to worry, and hope its the coworker next to you whose number is up this time around and not you. And it sucks.

But I have questions. I don’t know, maybe I’m stupid (possible), or naive (likely), or crazy (certain), but I just don’t understand why this has to keep happening. If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again while expecting different results, we all must be mad. And it sucks.

So here, in no specific order, are the things I’m too stupid or naive or crazy enough to understand:

They fired that person? I’ve seen some shocking names in my feed telling the world that they’ve been laid off. People who I personally know and have worked with and have experienced firsthand the brilliance they bring to the table every day of their professional life. That’s the person they chose to let go? Why them? What’s the criteria? Is it random? Throwing darts at a bunch of names until some quota has been met? Sure, the PR folks put together a bunch of corporate speak sound bites about how “the business is realigning around new strategic initiatives” and the such, but that doesn’t mean anything. It’s a black box in many cases. In most cases. Which in turn causes me to wonder…

How can they be so terrible at messaging these things? The boilerplate platitudes from the creative writing experts over at legal are almost worse than if they said nothing. Obviously, they can’t say nothing, though. They have to position this stuff as sound business strategy. Sure, these are hard decisions, but running a company is hard. We regular folks don’t understand this. You’d have to have the immense brain power of a C-suite executive to even possibly comprehend how these things come to pass. Keeping the company’s stock price up isn’t easy. Which in turn causes me to wonder…

Would a temporary drop in stock price be the end of the world? Being profitable isn’t enough; profits have to grow. Constantly. That’s why CEOs get paid the big bucks. That’s why CEO compensation is tied to improvements in the stock price and has nothing to do with employee satisfaction or retention rates, or metrics that measure the internal health of a company.

How Do I Tweet That I Quit Twitter?

November 9, 2022

I closed my Twitter account the other day. I didn’t do it because it was the trendy thing to do in response to Elon Musk’s cartoonish takeover of the company. I didn’t do it because the discourse had degenerated to an intolerable level of mysoginistically racist profane stupidity. I didn’t do it because its intolerable cultural impact is something I can no longer even tacitly contribute to. No. I did it because fuck that.

I had been on Twitter for, geez, I actually don’t even know. Eight years? Ten? A fucking lifetime? There was a time when I enjoyed it, but more recently, it seemed like more of a chore than a sparkling cocktail party conversation with interesting people. I was forcing myself to tweet. Every time something happened in the real world that offended the personal Twitter brand I had cultivated, it seemed like my duty to respond in witty fashion. Well, fuck that.

I left Facebook long ago because it sucks. I was on Instagram very briefly, but I’m old and don’t photographically document every mundane life event nearly often enough to have been good at it. TikTok? Absolutely fuck that. Maybe I’m just not cut out for social media. Maybe no one is, or, more accurately, shouldn’t be. Maybe we should all offer up a collective and heartfelt fuck that and go back to discussing the day’s events in bars and barber shops and read newspapers and books instead.

I know, I know: fuck that.

I know that won’t ever happen. The bell has been rung and rung loudly. These are the interactions that people want instead of those olde tymey ones. We crave the attention, and the audience, and the clout. The constant affirmation is a drug driving an addiction that is not only socially acceptable, it is lauded. Follower counts, likes, and shares aren’t as physically toxic as fentanyl, but they do a doozy on you mentally anyway.

Long story short, I closed my Twitter account. Maybe I’ll join Mastodon. But on the other hand, fuck that.

Get Off My Lawn. But Turn Off The Lights First.

October 19, 2022

I hate my family. Not really. I actually love them—a lot. But Jesus Christ, why the hell can’t they turn the light off when they leave the goddamned room? Is it a case of collective amnesia where they’ve all somehow forgotten that light switches exist or where they are located? Have they simply gone insane and are of the delusional belief that the lights themselves have attained consciousness and are capable of extinguishing themselves when humans leave the room? Or, and this is the one my money is on, they just don’t give a shit.

Now, before you get all “OK, boomer” on me, know that I couldn’t care less about the money the ceaseless burning of every light in my house day and night costs me. I’m not a miser, nor am I one to place my burden as breadwinner on the backs of my family. That’s my job. I pay for the lights, fine. No, my problem is much simpler. Order. I demand it, and I cannot seem to get even a modicum of it anywhere in my own home.

Turning off the lights is the simplest thing in the world. In almost every conceivable instance, the light switches are located directly next to the door that these people walk in and out of constantly without ever once flipping the fucking switch that’s sitting right there on the goddamned wall. You can’t miss it! With practice (granted that none of these ingrates have mustered), you can even achieve a simultaneous room exit and light switch flip-off without even breaking stride. It’s almost harder to leave the room without turning off the freaking light!

So here I am, walking around my house, turning off lights as if it’s my hobby because no one else has figured out how electrical fixtures operate in a modern home. I’ve tried yelling and threatening and even pleading, but none of it works. Still, high noon comes on a cloudless Summer Solstice with the sun happily illuminating every square inch of the earth better than a trillion incandescent bulbs ever could, and someone in my house has decided that every light in every room needs to be on just to help the sun out a little.

I’m resigned to my fate. To endlessly wander the corridors of my home turning off lights that other people have thoughtlessly left on. Until one day, in the hopefully not-too-distant future, when I am old and alone and can finally live under the glare of a single light in an otherwise completely dark house. A guy can dream, right?

“No” Isn’t a 4-Letter Word

October 11, 2022

Everyone is busy, and we all take on too much stuff. It’s just the way society has evolved. We look up to the people who are always busy, running from meeting to meeting, taking on additional tasks, always finding time to help others out, yet still hitting all their deadlines. I hate those people. Not because they make the rest of us look bad (they don’t) but because they make the rest of us think that’s the norm (it’s not).

Nowhere does it say you have to do more than you initially promised. As a matter of fact, living up to your end of the bargain is the quintessential social contract. I say I’ll do this by this time in exchange for this, and voilá, the world continues to turn, and humanity marches forward into a bright future of shared progress.

Except for these other people for whom that’s not enough. No, they have to go above and beyond. And for what? To sleep less? To make a dollar more? So what?

Now, I’m not saying that you shouldn’t put in the effort, nor would I ever defend doing anything less than the best possible job you are capable of. All I’m saying is that there are other things in life beyond the extra mile. Or maybe more accurately, when you are always chasing that extra mile, you’d be surprised by all the interesting things you pass up along the way.

We have become allergic to the word “no.” As if every request is more important than the maintenance of our own sanity. Well, to that, I offer up a robust and resounding “Hell no!” Reclaim your time, and you just might be surprised by how few ramifications there are for not taking on that extra task. Because, after all, the odds that someone else will wind up doing it for you are pretty good.

Stupid Is As Stupid Sees Done On TikTok

September 23, 2022

I’ve read Darwin, and from what I remember (and was capable of understanding,) he is often misinterpreted to have defined natural selection as “the survival of the fittest.” Untrue (again, as I recall.) What he actually advocated for was an evolutionary process that favored species that were better at adapting to their environment than their competition. Meaning; even if you’re pretty badass, not being able to change up your game when conditions require is a pretty good indication that you’re screwed.

Humans tend to push the boundaries of this developmental maxim thanks to our almost unique ability to force the environment around us to adapt to our needs and wants as we see fit. Sometimes. At least before social media came around and weaponized human stupidity to a degree heretofore unknown in the history of humankind. Now, do not mistake me; human stupidity is as old as humanity and endemic to our species. However, it was often isolated, which meant that when stupid people did stupid things, the results kind of solved the problem itself by creating a genetic dead end as necessary. Then came TikTok.

And to be fair, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and I’m sure we could go all the way back to MySpace to find proportionally ancient social media-fueled outbreaks of stupidity that would curl the toes of old Darwin himself. But now, stupidity not only has a platform, it also has an audience of willing consumers more than happy to place aside any remnants of rational thought and logical reflection in pursuit of likes or clicks or whatever it is that drags forth endorphins by the bucket load from their feverishly atrophied brains.

I have children and have had to specifically tell them to not do any of the things they see other people doing on these social media sites because these things could very likely get them killed. The modern parent’s version of “if your friends all jumped off a bridge…” To their credit, they rolled their eyes, disregarding both what I said as well as myself as a whole in that affectionately condescending way only your offspring can. But I don’t know that means they won’t ingest household cleaning products at the behest of a person they’ve never met but who has hundreds of thousands of online followers, making them infinitely cooler and more believable than my kids will ever find me.

I’d like to think that, eventually, we as a species will grow out of this type of behavior. After all, the internet is still incredibly new in the timeline of humanity, so maybe we’ll come to properly contextualize its power and influence at some point soon. But if not, all I have to say is, “come on Darwin, do your stuff.”