Corporations are requiring and pushing us to give the one resource that we cannot give without losing our life. What is that resource and why does the reward for ten years’ service bring it home personally to me.
Modern day corporations will in fact value more the employee who puts in the more hours.
The last time I worked in a company I spent several years pushing the limits of what I was capable of. I have on several occasions worked three full days without sleep, many times two days with no sleep and most of that time worked out of hours either at the premises or at home. I would be the one taking the PC home at nights and weekends to push forward both for myself and for the needs of the people in the company I worked for. In fact I was proud of it. I became at times indispensible because of it for my tenaciousness and getting the tough stuff worked out and working.
Sadly I learned later that I was fooling myself and really only just killing my health and my time.
What do you think happens when life changes and a time comes when you need more time for yourself.
Do you think a corporation has a long memory?
Do you think it will remember you merits when you have slowed down?
I don’t know why it did but one occasion brought so much reality back to me and it really hurt. It was after I had been at the company for ten years and I received a gift. It was a ten (maybe twenty – I cannot remember that bit) voucher. I was given it by the person who had been made my manager in the low end of the corporation. Not that I didn’t respect this person, I really quite liked him, but he was the one that handed over the voucher and I gave a speech. I don’t think anyone knew how much my words were sticking in my throat but I went along with the occasion in the normal office finesse expected and got out of there as soon as I could.
Did I expect more money? No not at all. I didn’t care for that.
I just knew that I started in the company when it was only fifteen people and I did everything I could to make sure that it grew.
It was my life.
I cared for this entity and wanted it and everyone in it to be successful. I pushed and worked hard and developed teams as best I was able and we won awards, we had prestige. At the time I received my reward the company had grown to one and a half thousand people, it had become a public limited company, it had achieved quite a bit of success.
Now I didn’t think that was all down to me in any way, there were many brilliant people that came and sadly went along the way, but the thing was I had given everything to it I could.
Nobody of the original team was there though to give me any recognition for it!
The time was wasted, I realised that a lot later. New people came in and I felt scorned for any of the work that I did and I fell into despondency – though that is just my story.
It was all a waste of time.
How I wished during the last days at this company that I thought of myself and took up any of the many offers that I had, for more money, for higher title, bigger teams, but I was loyal to an entity that didn’t exist.
My voucher was spent on nothing I can remember and I didn’t care about it. Nobody in the room knew of all the work I had put into making it a success and probably wouldn’t have cared. The result of those years had a tremendous effect on me for a long time. For a while they just haunted me and I fell into a deep depression. Nowadays they inspire me strangely.
It is part of my mission to remove that tragedy from anyone who sees the possibility of a global community without corporation and to kill it off once and for all. People should either be responsible to themselves, their conscience, their family and their global colleagues, not to any non-existent entities.
Strangely, that line makes me think of the religious stories of not believing in idols.