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I’ve been working lately. Wow. Culture shock.

I’ve been working with the public lately. Oh my — !

I’ve seen some unbelievable things recently, and I must recount them as I see them. Bear with me, please, as locations and situations are altered slightly to protect the innocent. I must warn you, in advance, that this might seem a little pessimistic, which would be entirely out of character for me.

It may be, but for as much of an optimist that I am, I also see reality: if I didn’t, I wouldn’t have gotten this far in life. So, with that in mind, let’s get started:

First of all, I’ve seen people — young people, mostly, but a few older folks as well — coming into the workplace to file job applications. You’d think, considering that our very public culture shows men wearing khakis or nice slacks, nice leather shoes, shirt and tie, that the applicants would do just about the same.

Not quite.

I’ve seen job applicants (and I’m not in HR, by the way) wearing Cavs jerseys, t-shirts, dirty sweatshirts, undersized suits, far too much cologne, ripped denim jeans worn with the waist at mid-thigh (held up by the hand, no less!), women with ripped denim jeans and bare-midriff tops that display a full, lace whale-tail, cruddy sneakers, unshaven faces, unwashed hair, shorts, severe body odor, and more.

I’ve seen applicants that have no clue. Give them simple directions to the application computer and they get lost within 5 feet — when they were 6 feet and within eyesight of the computer itself. I’ve seen people who don’t even know what a résumé is, let alone be able to create one on a computer for a computer company.

I’ve even seen people try to get a job with a computer company when their résumé was stuck on an old 5.25″ floppy drive ask how to get it off that drive so that they could submit it.

Oh-kay.

You’d think our schools are training our students how to create a proper résumé, how to submit it, and how to present oneself in a job application situation. Evidently, we’re failing here, folks.

Moving on, I’ve seen people try to put words in other people’s mouths, as if to get them in trouble — more likely so that they can get their way. In short, I’ve seen people lie viciously — lies heard repeatedly, phrased differently, driven at differently, but with the same intent — in order to get something for nothing.

Oh-kay.

I’ve seen people try to make things much harder than they need to in order to make themselves look like they know something, or to prevent looking like they don’t know something. Like they need a prop to make themselves an equal, rather than tell people that they aren’t sure what they need and risk looking like an idiot to people who already know that they aren’t totally aware of things in the first place.

Oh-kay.

I’ve seen countless people not read their EULAs or their purchase agreements and then think that policies and procedures do not apply to them, so they should get a break, or that the policies and procedures, regardless of the protections built into them, are inappropriate to their situation (especially when they’re not, by the way). After all, they’re special, no?

I’ll agree here that they are special, but not that special.

Oh-kay.

So then I see this guy on Larry King Live tonight — you know, that guy with resistant tuberculosis that flew transatlantic and put everyone into a panic — decry that he was never presented with the facts about his disease when he was diagnosed, or how he should proceed with his disease, how to protect others, etc.

Yeah, right. Like I believe you.

I noticed that his father even says he made a tape at the time of the diagnosis — but I have yet to hear the tape or read any transcripts — or even see that anyone else has validated the tape in the first place.

Yeah, right. I also believe that pigs can fly. They can, too — that is, if you’re on the right drugs (which I am not, fortunately).

Beyond this, people use the latest and greatest offering from Microsoft — Vista — because everyone else is, supposedly, yet we have better alternatives in Linux and Macintosh OS X. My experience with others using Vista is that they all hate it.

My complicated, limited experience with Vista makes me so ecstatic that I switched to the Macintosh when I did that they’ll have to pry my Mac from my cold, dead fingers.

So, I have to wonder.

I have to wonder what people think they can get away with today, if people think that everyone else around them is merely a simple, naïve, uneducated dolt that they can push around just because they can, or just because they think they can get money (or something else material) out of the situation.

I have to wonder what kind of denial the American public lives in (I know, the State of Denial — but Calvin & Hobbes notwithstanding, I’d have to say that it doesn’t exist, so try again).

I have to wonder how long people think we, as a country, can survive by giving away everything and not making a profit. It’s almost as if we wish everyone went out of business (without acknowledging our own part in the process) so that we can decry how bad customer service has become.

I have to wonder how, with all that I have wondered about so far, that we can allow good jobs to go overseas and then complain that we don’t get everything we deserve when we pay for a product, even when we all know that the adage, “you get what you pay for” is the absolute truth — it just doesn’t apply to us.

I have to wonder if we haven’t all become thieves — and if the rest of the world rightly (or wrongly) thinks that we are — because of our own state of denial.

These days, we make no sense. I have no doubt that Ayn Rand would have a huge following today, if she was still alive.

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1 Comment

• by Nike SB 15 Dec 2007 at 4:21 am

  

  Haha this article makes me laugh … Its all true!

  I have seen this behavior myself… What are these people thinking!?

  “I’ve seen job applicants (and I’m not in HR, by the way) wearing Cavs jerseys, t-shirts, dirty sweatshirts, undersized suits, far too much cologne, ripped denim jeans worn with the waist at mid-thigh (held up by the hand, no less!), women with ripped denim jeans and bare-midriff tops that display a full, lace whale-tail, cruddy sneakers, unshaven faces, unwashed hair, shorts, severe body odor, and more.”