There was a time when your priorities were my priorities, when our concerns meshed. By dint of single-minded perseverance, by lack of a substantial personal life, by willingness to sacrifice in order to be useful, I was able to climb somewhat and achieve some small recognition within your culture. Perhaps I attained some measure of your respect by my unfailing resolve to get the job done, and get it done right, at any and all costs to myself. Perhaps I won admirers by my ability to gain the respect of those who worked for me as well as those for whom I worked. But our priorities have now diverged, as I find myself staring blankly into the soulless face of management for management’s sake, and human resources be damned. This I cannot abide.
For in all the times when our priorities did match, you were perhaps unaware that mine were tempered by empathy, by compassion, by a concern for the people being managed. Your concerns were never more than bottom line. I understand that now, and I believe I understood it even then as well. I could deal with the petty office politics, the backstabbing, the gossip, the unwillingness or inability to back me in some conflict, even when you knew I was right. Perhaps I entertained some fantasy of being a manager who could make a difference, who could pay attention to people and performance, even given your craven perspective. After all, you’re all going to retire soon, right? But now, in these terrible times, it has become much more readily apparent – your lack of care, your casual inattention to detail, your callous disregard.
You, my managerial role models, are unwilling and unfit to manage. In a crisis situation, your first reaction beyond shock was a studied pretense of normalcy. As if there wasn’t and had never been any reason to expect any reaction other than, “OK, let’s get back to work.” You marvels of cranio-rectal infarction.
You, and by extrapolation your company (for I can no longer identify it as mine), are no longer worthy of my sweat, my stress, my leadership, or my problem-solving ability. You have proven yourselves worthy only of my undying contempt, and my never-ending revulsion. You have my services while I consider my next move, but you no longer have my heart. And I truly did love my job. May you rot in all the festering hells all religion has imagined for eternity.