“i knowwwww”

you know you’re caught in the corporate world when you don’t think about how a person feels and just think about how to move up the proverbial ladder. you know you’re still at the bottom when you’re being ordered to do stuff that you don’t want. and you know you’ve hit rock bottom if you’re actually doing that you’ve been told even though it violates every moral, ethical value that you hold to keep your dignity!

we all start at the bottom. we all know how it feels like to be ‘degraded’ into doing work for those in higher positions. even if we do not agree with their methods, something at the back of our mind tells us to do it. the rebel in us would just want to speak out and let them have a piece of our mind. but seamlessly, like lambs, we still do it anyway. i think it’s called ‘mother-hit-me-once-too-many-when-i-was-bad’ syndrome. or could it be the ‘because-i’m-your-dad-and-i-say-so-so-do-it’ epidemia.

i remember in the movie, school of rock, jack black was explaining the history of rock to a bunch of kids. rock was about rebellion… about standing up… against ‘the man’. and ‘the man’ was anyone giving you a hard time. or maybe so i remember. when we were kids, ‘the man’ were our parents. come to think of it, even up to now. guess it’s still caused by the two psychosis that i mentioned above. when we were in school, ‘the man’ was either any of the school personnel or the school bully whose daily workout is beating the crap out of you. then when you get out school… or your parent’s house, you thank god that you have finally grown out of that childish control from ‘the man’. but think again, when you get a job – ‘the man’ lives!

you sigh to yourself. well, when i get up that ladder… i will never be like ‘the man’. i will treat my subordinates as how i want to be treated when i was down there myself. wishful thinking. i think it’s the same sentiment that we tell ourselves when our parents tell us to quit playing with the family computer and insist on finishing our homework – “i will never be like my parents.” but years after that, when we do have our own kids… we’d be telling them to quit playing with playstation 2-thousand and insist on finishing their homework.

so what does happen to a person that turns them into ‘the man’? power corrupts. absolute power corrupts absolutely. could that be it? can a person really be drunk with power and forget their humanity? well, i know people just drunk with alcohol and forget their humanity. and i think alcohol is not even half the potency of power. maybe they should start putting ‘proof’ in the amount of power a person would be holding. at least we’d actually have some rationale behind stupid management decisions that the ‘man’ might make. “well, yeah he had 100 proof of power, so it was likely to have him steer the company to bankruptcy. typical if you had that much power.”



as they say: “ours is not to reason why… ours is to do and die.” so give me a rifle and point where to shoot. hopefully, it’s towards ‘the man’. anyways, me… i promised myself the same thing most of us have told ourselves… i will not be like that when i’m a parent/boss… hopefully, my future kids and/or subordinates will never get to read this article.