A week of Serenity - NOT
Last Saturday I came up with a new Serenity prayer. I repeated it multiple times during the day this week at work, but alas, my prayers were not answered. Blue Witch commented, "But don't you think that's WHY things are as they are today, because everyone who once cared has had the crap kicked out of them by The Stupid System?" I suspected that she was right and my co-workers and managers did care at one time, but had given that up before I met them. Gee, I used to think they were just lazy, but now I had to give them the benefit of the doubt.

And I tried really hard this week to stop caring, to stop noticing where things could be improved and to stop bringing those observations to people who could do something about it. I failed miserably at all three. I did, however, make some progress on an idea that notification was my only obligation. So today, when we were ridiculously short-staffed (as we have been on Saturdays for months and months in a row), I reminded myself that I had already repeatedly notified everyone that could possibly do something about it. Of course, that didn't change the fact that it was still a horrible day with one supervisor call after another and three more holding at any one given time. Nor does it help that I can't really dismiss this as "not my problem" completely because I'm the one the customer yells at when they have to hold a ridiculous length of time to speak with a supervisor or can't be called back in a timely manner. And then later I'm yelled at by the service providers and the team leaders who happen to be the very people who actually could do something about it, but don't. In my consideration of this one issue, I came to realize that it is the exact same scenario for all of the issues at work that frustrate me so deeply.

It's a classic formula for stress to be given responsibility with no direct control and that thought led me to consider that maybe the reason my coworkers and managers don't seem to care isn't because they are "burned out", but instead because they are so much younger and from a completely different generation, a generation where many don't seem to really grasp the concept of responsibility, or at least not in the same way that I do. After all, you can't be frustrated by a lack of control if you don't feel any sense of responsibility in the first place.

So perhaps the answer to this problem isn't to stop caring (which I think is going to be impossible for me to do), but rather to minimize the sense of responsibility I feel towards the customer, the job and the company. That too will be a hard nut to crack, but it might be the easier path to take. I'll take up this little experiment again on Monday, but for now it's the weekend (or at least my version of it) so I'm planning on a little beer drinking, a bit of cooking on the grill and some general goofing off over the next 30 hours or so.