Where's the love? I used to believe that people are basically good and from time to time fall into problems caused by their own weaknesses. Now I believe that people are basically selfish and any good they do is an anomaly.

We had a person work at the center a couple of years ago that really illustrated this well. They would rack up incredible numbers of calls and sales. But we would get calls from customers and suppliers complaining that they did everything half-ass and that they were rude. So some of us tried to help this person, tried to point them in the right direction, humbly corrected them and encouraged them to do things right. They wouldn't listen. They continued to do things half-ass. But not only that, they did not care, if a customer waited on hold for twenty minutes, it did not matter. If a customer did not get what they wanted, or had to pay a huge bill, it didn't matter, all that mattered was the needs of this asshole.

I really tried to reconcile that this person was just trying to do the best job they could, and was just going in the wrong direction. Nope... they did not care about anyone, anything, except themselves.

What really irritated us was how this person could do no wrong, even when they caught them dead to rights. Complaints from customers, losing sales, making people mad, wasting money, nothing seemed to affect management, to get rid of this blood-sucker.

I won't go into more detail...(you do realize I have to be vague to keep everything hidden about my job.)

When this person left, it was almost like a holiday. We all hate our jobs, but at least we all mostly want to help the people who call in, and we also can count on the other people we work with not to really screw things up.

People talk about evil in the world, like Hitler, or Saddam-Hussein. I don't think that this type of malignant, repugnant evil can exist in the world without people like the employee I just described. Selfish, uncaring, half-ass shirkers make great stormtroopers and torturers.


  ¶ 1:23 AM