The dark is rising
The stench of sulfur engulfed my town last night. A full moon shone brightly in the night. Evil was ascendant.
The only good manager at my office was removed from power yesterday. The two that remain are egomaniacal, power-hungry, brown-nosing types that have finally succeeded in seizing complete control of the office. Critical thinking and/or rational thought are not among their strengths.
The only one who has any sway with the Big Boss is, sadly enough, me. I certainly don't have enough to change the situation, so pragmatism would dictate that I keep my head down.
Principle would say that I should go down fighting. What good is a person if he/she doesn't stand for anything? Then there's the fact that, given past behavior, I suspect that I'm currently the subject of a nickel-and-diming smear campaign to chisel away at what influence I do have.
I break with many of my liberal friends in believing that there are absolutes in this world; that in this sea of grays you need to draw a line that you are unwilling to cross. "Everything is relative" doesn't cut it for me.
Where I break with my conservative friends is that I don't believe that there are Absolute absolutes for everything. If you can live in a way that doesn't offend your sensibilities and I can live in a way that doesn't offend mine, then cool—it doesn't bother me that the way you live might offend me, were I you, or vice versa. Of course, things become less clean when one's actions affect the other... but I suspect this laissez-faire take on morality is a tenable one.
But the question now is: where do I draw this line? What do I stand for? (How dumb am I?) Time is running out for me to make a decision; taking no action is still taking action.
On the up side, I suppose this has jolted me out of my vacation from blogging.
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GreyDuckFri 4 May 2007 ⁄⁄ 2:37 PM
It's a tough call. How much does your livelihood and/or sanity depend on taking a stand? What are the odds that your stand will accomplish a meaningful result (no matter how small, mind you)?
I don't know anything about the situation so my ability to offer advice is limited. Just about all I can suggest is to never lose sight of your own critical thinking skills and (especially) your ethics.
BrentWed 16 May 2007 ⁄⁄ 1:24 AM
Yeah, there's a complex calculation involved in such decisions. I don't think I could save the decent manager who's been demoted, so the best I could hope for would be to remove one or both of the others... and, no matter how bad they are, there aren't many in my office who could fill their shoes. Frankly (and I really hate self-aggrandizing), I'd have the best shot at it.
I've never been interested in getting *that* involved in my office.
With that out, there's little practical good I can do. There's also the fact that The Boss has been conveniently out of the office the last week--so now his decision is old news.
In short, this sucks.