Let the Healing Begin

I look around at some of the people I work with some days and I’m so tempted to stop them as they do their best speed walker impression on their way to their next meeting and ask them “What’s the point?” I know they make a lot of money doing whatever it is they do during the twenty hours a day they spend at work making up pointless powerpoint presentations and elaborate excel spreadsheets and working through their lunch while their nanny raises their children. They must do it for a reason right? Part of me really wants somebody to give me a convincing answer to that question but the other part of me sort of knows there probably isn’t one, at least not one that would mean that much to me.

I’m well aware of the fact that this level of cynicism isn’t exactly a recipe for the career fast track. In fact, it’s probably not even a recipe for a job as a janitor and I do my best to hide it. Some days this is definitely harder than others. Days like today are a good example. At the end of our daily department meeting our boss began this very heartfelt (for him anyway) speech about putting an end to inter-departmental conflict. You see, there’s been this whole turf war that’s been slowly building between our department and another one and it had reached a bit of a fever pitch over the last couple of weeks . The problem has been that both departments have a shared role in achieving a pretty critical target. Unfortunately each department thinks the other department is the weak link which results in overstepping of bounds, finger pointing, blame storming, and all around ineffectiveness. This would all be totally fine if we were actually achieving the goal we were responsible for. Unfortunately, as the year winds down we’re starting to realize that our inability to get results may result in all of us (and many others) not getting our annual bonus. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that pretty much anything will be tolerated in the work place as long as it gets results but when people’s bad behaviour starts to affect results (or more importantly someone’s pocketbook) it’s just not kosher anymore. So my boss is giving us this heartfelt speech which is almost convincing until he ends it by saying “So I think it’s time to let the healing begin.” At which point I looked around to see if I had been transplanted into Dr. Phil’s studio audience.

So my boss’ speech was humorous for a couple of reasons least of which being the fact that he is the most divisive person I’ve ever met. I haven’t met Hitler but based on what I’ve heard he would be a close second to my boss. I really believe that if given the opportunity my boss could have turned Gandhi into a serial killer. So you can understand why I may have had a hard time taking him seriously. The other funny part was afterwards one of the guys in my department stopped by and asked “So what did you think of that ‘Come to Jesus’ speech we got this morning?” I hadn’t really thought of it as a religious experience per se but I did find his characterization of the meeting amusing. I was also glad that I wasn’t the only one in the room who found the whole thing a bit melodramatic. I don’t know, sometimes I think that some of the people I work with forget that we’re not curing cancer. To be honest, I thank the good Lord everyday that none of the people I work with have anything to do with finding a cure for cancer or even athlete’s foot for that matter. There would definitely be no healing in sight.