Friday, November 20, 2009

Many People Suck

Many people suck. Some don’t, but many do. Certain groups of people have a higher likelihood of sucking, such as bosses, owners, politicians, lawyers and commission sales people. This is because they tend to have private agendas that often conflict with that of the rest of the population (who may or may not suck too).

It is important to give everyone a chance, even if they come from a group that elevates their personal likelihood of sucking. If you are open-minded when dealing with individuals, you can feel good about yourself—even if later you learn that they do indeed suck.

There are levels of sucking. For example, some bosses are incompetent. That sucks, because it makes it harder for everyone to do a good job. Still, that doesn’t mean that they are trying to suck. They may just suck and not know it.

In other cases, for example, a boss might actually try to make life miserable for employees. This is a malevolent boss, which is far worse than an incompetent boss. However, it is fairly common that an incompetent boss may assert themselves, in an effort to make it appear that the true cause of a problem lies with someone else. These, insecure bosses will try to limit communications and avoid following the recommendations of experts in the vicious cycle to assert their authority to hide their own suckiness. This is known as, someone who doubly-sucks.

The question gets down to, how does one function within the environment of someone who sucks—especially if that person is in a position of control? Obviously one can try to relocate to a new place, where the person who sucks has no authority. This is a good strategy, except that you may run into a new person, who also sucks.

A second choice is to try to work within the existing sucky realm. If you can exist in the realm of suck, without spending all of your time and energy avoiding the person who sucks, you might stick it out and wait to see if they eventually suck so bad that someone notices. This may or may not happen, and the chain-of-command may actually suck all the way to the top.

If you don’t understand this essay, it is quite possible that you suck as well. If you see yourself in the descriptions, I’m afraid I can’t help that. Hopefully, you enjoyed my commentary, and you didn’t think it sucked too much. If not, that probably sucks.

-Cutris

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