Working Hard? Or Just Showing Up For The Love?

In this, our working life, which one of these things is the most important for job security?
a) Working hard
b) Doing a good job
c) Being real, real popular

I think we all know which answer here is the correct one. But because we’re Minnesotans with this all-important Work Ethic fused into our DNA, we don’t want to actually admit how powerful likeability in the workplace really is. So I’ll make it easier for all of us. I’ll make the bitter pill of reality easier to swallow by sharing this true story -- another personal mini-saga ripped from the pages of my real-life adventures.

You might be too tired to cry any more tears over your own troubles, but there’s always enough time and energy to laugh at the misfortunes of others (i.e., mine). That’s what blogs are for:
to share that petty schadenfreude and spread it around. So get ready to laugh and learn more about Corporate America than you ever really wanted to know.

Get ready for the “Dilbert” comic strip that was my life to come alive again before your very eyes.

Years ago, while I was employed at a profitable and well-regarded communications firm, I survived a terrible car accident.

If not for my split-second reactions and adept maneuvering of my vehicle, I would have become another highway fatality. Thanks to my cat-like reflexes, I lived. Fortunately, I suffered no broken bones, head injuries, or ruptured spleen. Unfortunately, I suffered the worst kind of injuries; muscular- skeletal stretching and tearing and (gasp!) WHIPLASH.

Not only do muscular injuries take forever to heal, they’re also invisible to the naked eye. So no one can see how bad your injuries are or how much they hurt. There’s no cast or splint or blood to show anyone how bad it is. Without that evidence to red flag your ordeal, most onlookers will believe no ordeal ever took place.

So if you’re not hospitalized and if your injuries aren’t visibly apparent, everyone thinks you’re fine. But you’re not fine. You’re hurt. You’re injured. You’re in pain and unable to function in your usual pre-accident way.

Then there’s WHIPLASH. Don’t let me get started on WHIPLASH. For the past 50 years or more, pop culture has been invalidating this injury so much that no one even considers it a legitimate complaint anymore. No, WHIPLASH is just another means to another greedy end. It’s a way to con insurance companies and the court system into awarding you big money for being in a car accident.

Almost every television sitcom or drama has featured a tale about someone faking injuries from a car accident so he (or she) can get rich quick. From “Friends” to “Family Guy,” to “The Beverly Hillbillies,” the pervasive wisdom is one of WHIPLASH = NONEXISTENT PAIN AND INJURY TO ILLEGALLY & UNETHICALLY OBTAIN MONEY.

And when this familiar story gets in the hands of Alfred Hitchcock or Rod Serling, the Karma behind the con can become more sinister than humorous...

Anyway, with everyone at work buying into these TV and movie plot lines about phony accident injuries, I didn’t stand a chance. Pretty soon, my co-workers began to doubt the very seriousness of my injuries. So did management. All the initial kudos for my great defensive driving soon evaporated as my employer began hounding me to return to work earlier than was physically possible for me.

So I did. I came back to work when I shouldn’t have.

Then new problems arose when my doctor prescribed new accommodations for sitting at my cubicle.

I now needed an ergonomically comfortable yet supportive chair to sit in -- not that cheap, rickety thing I’d been using before my car accident.

I also needed to have freedom of movement -- the ability to move freely and unrestrained, as my condition required. In other words, my physical health demanded that I not be sentenced to only one seated, immovable position at work.

Bad news for a company that expected me to glue my ass to an uncomfortable, non-ergonomic chair 5 days a week, 50 weeks a year, for the next 30 or so years. Bad news for me, too.
In that corporate landscape, if you weren’t forever sedentary, you had a “bad back.” And “bad backs” were NOT allowed -- unless, of course, they belonged to managers or vice presidents.

Needless to say, I lost my entry-level job and had to return home as the prodigal gristle with no job, no job prospects, no real hope for the future. Hello, more and more and more pain.

Now contrast my story with that of Good Ol’ Bob, the blind guy venerated by everyone in the downtown office. Bob wasn’t always blind, but he always was a team player, yah ya betcha.

Bob was one of those guys who always came in early and went home late. But no one ever knew what he actually did at the company. He had one of those long, innocuous job titles that didn’t make any sense. You know, something like “Executive Coordinator for Auxiliary Office Management Team Support.” That must have been code for “drinks a lot of coffee in special mug but doesn’t do a damned thing.” He never coordinated anything at work that anybody knew about, anyway.

He did have a real nice office on the top floor, though, that was impressive enough to make people think he was on the fast track to the “winner’s circle.” (The man had cherrywood and rosewood veneers long before they were cool.) He also spent a lot of time talking on his speaker phone and going to all-day meetings and attending business luncheons and weekend seminars.

Any manager with those office accessories and that busy schedule HAD to be pretty important. So everyone treated him like an important business celebrity, a regular Zig Ziglar with the best “successories” around.

Then, about a year before his retirement and benefits kicked in, Bob went blind. Just woke up one morning and couldn’t see. Illustrious doctors at the Mayo Clinic couldn’t make up their minds on a diagnosis. Bob had either suffered a stroke or a seizure or maybe something like Bette Davis had in “Dark Victory.” (And that, people, is why it’s called a “practice.”) Anyway, he couldn’t see at all, and it was about a year until he was supposed to retire...So, of course, the firm kept him employed and “working” at the office, with no official medical disability listed on his record.

But, of course, Bob couldn’t “work.” He couldn’t even find the right button on the speaker phone. He never learned Braille or got a seeing eye dog, either. He didn’t have to, though. All he had to do was keep showing up at his office every day and keep doing nothing -- just as he’d been doing for the past three or four decades.

Only this time nothing really did mean nothing. No day-long meetings. No weekend seminars. No long business luncheons. Nothing like that. His wife just brought him up to his office every morning and plopped him in his chair. If he had to go to the bathroom or get something to eat, an escort would accompany him to the restroom or cafeteria. Then he was taken back to his desk where he answered phones the old-fashioned way and talked to anyone who came over to his desk.

Then his wife would show up to take him home: another day of nothingness completed by Good Ol’ Bob.

If Bob had been another grunt in a cubicle like me or almost anyone else in the workforce, he would have been unceremoniously discharged, laid-off, let-go, terminated, fired.

But since Bob was a beloved member of upper-level management in the firm, he had none of the usual worries that a typical non-management employee might have had. After all, he was Bob. He was upper-level management. He was loved by all.

How wonderful the workplace can be when bosses and grunts alike simply love you so much they can’t get rid of you!

For Bob, The Manager of Nothing Much, his employer retained him in the workplace -- as though he actually was working -- just so he could receive a full pension and full benefits.

Sometimes productivity is truly in the eye of the beholder, even if it is a blind one.