|
17th March, 2010
NO IDEA how things had reached this state. The whole office is full of hateful, tiresome people. But in the eyes of the people who work with us, colleagues another words, we probably are the most hateful.
We have no sense of obedience, clearly no respect for authority. The idea is for others, superiors included, to trust us, leave us to our own devices.
We may love our own species but we simply hate crowds. And yet, as far as we are concerned, colleagues can be downright hateful species. We even reason that when the cutest friends became colleagues, they would turn hateful too. Not only living together is difficult, being colleagues more so.
We function from our own cubicle at the office, a total of eight hours a day.
There’s an overweight lady who screams as she talks. There must also be a middle-age man who whispers into the office phone, exchanging sweet nothing with his sweetheart and giggling, sending goose pimples up our arms.
He carries on until his wife calls, shouting, Get him to call home.
And is it so necessary for that mousy dirty old man who finds the first chance to sit so close to the prettiest typist? The other married man is just so concerned about our pay slips, constantly harassing us, with the fiery secretary who while talking down on us never addresses us properly.
Then there must also be a pretty, young thing who is the fiancée of the head. That makes our hearts pound for fear she would report our wrongdoing. And we never know when we are stabbed from the back.
Someone finally loses his cool and whatever grievances would land in the papers.
How to believe in the goodness of people? After the age of 13, we ceased to believe there are still good people around.
We just wanted to go home … we are so afraid of people. We worry about how we have to come back to face all these. We are losing courage obviously.
So, we try our best changing job, moving on. Probably there’s nothing wrong with the job per se. There’s something wrong with us.
Whether too heavy a load or not, work doesn’t matter. But just don’t involve us in human relations. The idea is far beyond us. It’s too late to start learning now. How to please the boss, how to pressure, bully or talking down to our fellow colleagues, means Greek to us. We don’t understand or don’t want to do so.
As stubborn as mules, we have emerged and fated to suffer.
Actually being someone’s wife also has no peace. She must have a complete diplomacy overhaul. Why, the relationship with the sister-in-law or brother-in-law, that with the ever meddling mother-in-law, her husband’s girlfriends or other friends both before and after marriage is really complicated.
There’s neither weekend nor free or private time for wives. Even time for rest is difficult to get.
Of course there are lucky people who are happy wives. Or there are blessed people who find good jobs straight away, working their way up with no obstacles.
Say, we started sitting in the office at age 20. It will take years to grow old there. We might need a respite or two. When we are old enough to really work for a living, we would be so set in our ways.
Not only we can’t mix with crowds, we judge these people sitting in the cubicles and we think how boring it is. Exactly like sitting in the jail serving terms.
A long life might mean 70 or 80. A shorter life is better as we heave a sigh of relief and then release.
|
