ONE with ethics and personal passion to succeed in what one does, in most cases will resolve to do the job as well as the situation demands it and to their limit of his or her abilities (of course everyone's entitled to have a full bull-crap day once in a while, to be down on the boondocks). So it comes as a surprise and the wild amazement of people, who continuously think about their future when they come into a new place of work and discover a species of work people (if you could call them that, they're more like fixtures or furniture or non-action hero figures) that are the anti-thesis of the work-people at large.
Work-people generally work to make a living and want to make a living because they have a future to think about and they don't want to put unnecessary burden on fellow workers. Enter the enigmatic species called 'The Donkey."
Donkeys or asses (scientific name Equus asinus) are actually, members of the Equidae or horse family...But at least these gentle creatures are useful beasts of burden, even if they do bray a lot. Donkeys, in the workplace context can be technically competent people and might in fact seem impressive in terms of the wealth of knowledge they seem to possess. Of course at the rate of the hot air and technical specs that they blow out, they can get very annoying in the first 5 minutes of the initial meeting.
Workplace donkeys can spew out a lot during those brainstorming meetings when discussing on projects. In one scenario at a technology-centric institution, assignment or project ideas are pitched by a head-honcho, with no one taking up the offer to take on the assignment. The lurking, silent Donkey then pounces into action! Lying innate at first, it then spews out an unstoppable flow of technical jargon, terminologies and a 20 minute pre-amble in the technologies involved. Hence, the terrible bray of the Donkey!
He or she then gloats proudly and rejoices how he has impressed everyone. Upon which the head-honcho will appoint the proud Donkey to take on the project (which actually wasn't Donkey's intention, he just wanted to prove how smart he is - and everyone hates a show-off Smart Ass). With no real sincere inclination whatsoever to actually do any work, this important assignment will just drift away into oblivion. The Donkey will get Scott Free on all charges.
Why is that? Well, the Donkey is notorious for having a supposed short-term memory capacity. He or she will conveniently 'forget' what the assignment was at the eleventh hour when the work is to be due. This puts the head-honcho under undue stress. So what does he do? He passes the burden and stress to an unsuspecting co-worker! The co-worker has not much choice. He or she hates the extra workload but thinking of the entire team and company reputation, he or she will slog through and scrape up something usable for the assignment's purposes. A backup if you please- of course this will lead to a downward spiral which will affect work quality since it is not done with proper resources and within a very limited amount of time. Eventually, if nothing is done the team will shrink, since co-workers will be disappointed and will think that they are not being appreciated for all their good efforts so far- given the sort of punishment they have to take.
In harsher environments, the Donkey will face very unforgiving farmers that will probably make donkey-sausages at the third time of being annoyed. Team members would have given the Donkey a good flogging. Too bad in some situations, people are just too nice and Donkeys tend to not have a belief system like Karma- what comes around goes around. They oddly enough, sort off believe that they're privileged.
While this is happening, the braying Donkey continues to bray a lot (impressing further other people not in his group of how cool and knowledgeable he or she is) and grazes around to find greener pastures and females but never succeeding to make marked improvement towards those objectives. Perhaps it is confidence. Perhaps he knows that he is merely a Donkey, not capable of doing real work or sustaining a long-term relationship. Or maybe he was just simply deprived as a child. Or he or she is just someone who is evil enough to think that people will tolerate his or her shortcomings because he or she is Top Donkey.
Everyone will probably notice that every place of work has a Donkey out grazing in the fields- or some subspecies of. The Donkey would do well to change himself, to become someone useful to society at large instead of being a pompous burden to others who are carrying him every time- not because they want to, but because they have no choice: slavery by proxy by Donkeys is a fate worse then death. Luck will run out and Donkeys will find that they'll be put to pasture soon enough if they don't make amends (probably turned into glue). Take note: people are people, they will not put up with Donkey crap for a very long time- it's just too stinking bad.
No comments:
Post a Comment