Working My Ass Off

I was raised to believe that your work ethic is central to who you are.  That's it's right to go above and beyond. To not simply perform a task but to excel at it. That working your fingers to the bone was the way a person proved their worth to society. That to be successful meant you moved politely up a corporate ladder, you put in your 40 (or 60 or 80) hours per week and then, at the end of your working life, you were rewarded.

Those who didn't take this path were Dirty Fucking Hippies. Flaky, whack-job artists. Writers. No one ever made money pursuing what they loved. You had to pay your dues, or The Man would be displeased. We wouldn't want to upset The Man.

Or, they were just plain lazy. Welfare queens. Parasites whose thirst for a handout was quenched by the sweat of the righteous, hard-working everyman. 

Very Ayn Rand. Very, very right wing. Very much my Dad's philosophy.

I wholly rejected most of his philosophy. In fact, I'm basically a socialist. I went to a tiny liberal arts college where I had the absolute gall to major in (gasp) English Literature and minor in Journalism. 

Oh, the screaming fights. Oh, the threats and the ultimatums. But that's another story.

What I did accept from my father's worldview was the belief in hard work. In knowing how to fulfill obligations completely and exceed expectations. In short, I work my ass off. I am not the best at what I do, quite honestly. There are writers and editors far more talented and prolific than I -- and I know this.

But what I lack in talent I make up for with sheer will and dedication. Which is why I'm always surprised to discover incompetence in people I have to work with. 

Employees that manage to hold onto their full-time, salaried, benefits-laden jobs in spite of the fact that they don't show up for meetings. Or they consistently 'forget' to e-mail important background information. Or, despite my detailed requests to speak to specific executives or subjects I need to interview, do not follow through, or schedule meetings with folks who have knowledge that's completely irrelevant to what I'm working on.  

And yes, all of these things have happened to me this week with various clients for whom I'm supposedly writing Hugely Incredibly Massively Important Pieces Without Which Their Business Will Fail. But they can't get their shit together enough to hire a competent administrative assistant? Sales and marketing coordinator? WTF?!

How is it that these folks can fail so blatantly and do so repeatedly, without apparent consequence? 

I've seen it my entire career, actually, people that 'fail up,' being promoted instead of fired to mitigate the damage they could cause were they left to continue on their current trajectory of ineptitude. 

I'm as much of a slacker and a procrastinator as anyone. There are absolutely days when I reschedule all my appointments, feign sickness and spend the day in front of the TV watching Law & Order reruns and badly dubbed Kung-Fu movies on TV while inhaling Doritos. But I've seen so much incompetence this week, and I'm thoroughly disgusted. Ugh.

It's reason I'm quite happy to work for myself. At least I trust my boss to do the right thing.