It always amazes me when I hear of companies who are looking for candidates, and they describe themselves as a “fast-paced environment.” Every company I’ve ever worked for who has made this claim seems to move at a snail’s pace. If a snail can out-run a fast-paced environment, what would it be like to work in a slow-paced environment? I am beginning to think that the pace of the environment relies heavily upon the employees, and what state of mental zombiness they are in. The older we get, the more likely we are to be mental zombies for longer periods of time. Our problems get more complex, and we get tired. We can’t binge-drink for two days and roll out of bed first thing Monday morning. Even if we could manage to get out of bed, we can’t afford to binge-drink anymore. We have to save our paycheck so we can pay the mortgage.
We all have moments where we are mental zombies. No one is immune. You can always tell, too, who is currently a mental zombie. He’s the guy you pass in the hall who has a 2-day shadow when normally he’s clean-shaven. Or she’s the woman wearing drab clothing with bags under her eyes because she didn’t bother putting on her make-up that morning. It makes me wonder what is going on in their personal lives. I try to avoid these scenarios by taking mental health days when I don’t feel up to dragging myself in to work. I wouldn’t get much accomplished anyhow.
We always try to deny our personal selves when we work in a corporate environment, but how, exactly, is one supposed to do that? How does one function when something is going awry in the life that takes place outside the office? In order to keep up the “fast-paced environment,” we are asked to leave our problems at home. Problems such as wondering when the doctor will call with the test results, or worrying about Billy’s sudden erratic behavior at school, or thinking of how we drank til we passed out the night before, the horrible, yet more-common-than-we’d-like-to-admit fight with our spouse, lustful thoughts towards a co-worker, feeling depressed and not able to find the right mix of medications and therapy, a sudden death or illness in the family, financial woes, divorce threats. The list goes on and on and on.
Work is a funny place. We exchange the usual pleasantries, “Hi, how are you? What’d you do this weekend?” And the answer is always, “I’m good, how are you? My weekend was good. I got caught up on the yardwork.” We never hear the truth, which would be more like, “I’m functioning. This weekened sucked. I got into a fight with the wife again about the same old subjects: no sex, no money, kids out of control, and she pissed me off so bad, I couldn’t see straight, so I went out and mowed the lawn, killed the weeds, and cut the shrubs back too short. That got her going again, and instead of hitting her, I kicked the dog. Then I had to take it to the vet. I’m thinking about getting a divorce.” Or maybe the answer would be, “Wow, I feel great! I’m tired, but it’s that good kind of tired. The yard looks like shit, because I’m so far behind on the lawn. I’m sure the neighbor hates us. The wife and I decided to check out this swinger’s club and it made us so hot for each other, we spent the rest of the weekend in bed together. You really ought to try it. You won’t be able to keep your hands off each other for a month!”
The truth is, we don’t really want to know that much about the person who occupies the cube next to us.
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