Originally Posted by
adrianh
Openness is only appropriate if you more or less agree with what the boss has to say.
Lets be honest, you can't phone in in the morning and say that you're not coming in to work because you have a hangover, you think up some other excuse because you know that being that open will get you in trouble.
You can't tell the boss that his wonderfully thought out new idea is total crap.
You can't tell the boss that he knows perfectly well that he is taking credit for your work.
You can't tell the boss over lunch that he doesn't know what he is talking about when you are discussing something as senseless as the workings of an internal combustion engine or whatever, you have to grin and bear whatever $hit he speaks otherwise you make yourself the bad guy by calling him out on something that everybody knows he knows nothing about.
I don't think that it is double standards, I think that it goes much deeper. It goes to fundamental character traits. Many people try to separate work and home. At home they are one person and at work another. When they are at work they act a part the way one would in a movie. They write the script as they see fit and that is where the problems start. Their script may require them to be firm and fair, but in reality they are not equipped to do so. You end up with confused mixed messages because on the one hand the guy says one thing but acts totally out of character. The truth is that psychopaths are the best at playing this game because they are able to stick to one script in one instance and another script in another instance. The boss will be your big buddy when he speaks to you but when he speaks to his boss you are the total idiot who doesn't know what you are doing. This duality of personality was also difficult for me to deal with in the workplace. I always believed that a person is either my friend or my enemy but that they can't be both. I could not deal with the fact that the boss would treat me like his big buddy after work yet mess me around at work. It took me a long time...long after quitting IT to realize that the only way for me to be is indifferent, which of course creates its own problems because you are supposed to show the appropriate emotion. You have to be sad when the boss crashes his car and you have to be happy when he gets a free ticket. My motto eventually became "I don't give a $h1t one way or another" it is your life and I have mine, just as much as you don't care about me and my life I don't care about you and yours.
@JanChris, when the whole IT thing went down it took me by surprise because I considered my boss to be my friend. We went through thick and thin together and I supported him when he became the branch manager. He tossed me out like the garbage and stuffed up my chances to work in the industry. I got extremely depressed and nearly went over a mental cliff. I didn't know how to deal with my entire world being swept from under my feet by somebody whom I regarded as a friend. It's taken me a very very long time to regain mental stability and the only way I found to do so was to insulate myself from being hurt by people. I will never put my own wellbeing in the hands of another person, I will not let them have the power over how I choose to live my life, how I choose to deal with people or anything at all. My wife and I run our little business together in our own little world, yes we have our ups and downs but at least we can talk about and get on with it.
My wife worked for Eskom for 17 years. She's a heavy current technician and she worked in finance in distribution. We both just saw too many good people get screwed over by poor management and retrenchment (oh sorry "restructuring") to have any regard for being employees. This is not a BEE, black and white, Afrikaans vs English problem, it is far bigger. All I can say again, as usual is "F*ck Em!"
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