What's he on about now?

In case the articles, essays and opinions throughtout this site just weren't enough for you, here's my online diary (a.k.a. 'blog'). It's as close as you'll come to the inside of my head, so don't say I didn't warn you
(and remember, you can always e-mail me if you love or loathe anything you're about to read)...


   Wednesday, August 20, 2003

MY GLASS HOUSE IS SO COMFORTABLE

Mikey doesn't like me. He's the twenty-year-old punk kid at the record store with the wild hair and the patch of hair hanging off his chin. He's liked by everyone at the store but not respected by anyone at the store, because he just does so little work. As Gabe the manager jokes, "There's lazy, and then there's Mike D."

For a long time, I just shrugged at this. "He's a twenty-year-old punk kid," I'd say, "He'll grow out of it." Soon, however, we hired A.J. and -- just recently -- Adam, two other guys in their very-early twenties, and discovered that they are really good at what they do. They're the perfect record store employees and Mike D ends up looking like, well, Mike D. He just continues to do as little as possible while clowning around to stay on our ever-shrinking good sides.

I began to realize that Mike D really bothers me that way because I'm reminded of how little work I ended up doing in my office job days, when I was left with no responsibilities, no supervision, no human contact and no reason to care. Despite being very well-liked around the office, my contract was never renewed because, frankly, there was very little for me to do and it was very obvious that I'd stopped looking for more. I had allowed myself to become useless and I cringe to think back on that.

Some time ago, unwittingly at first, I started picking on Mike D. While everyone else disparaged his lack of work ethic behind his back, I started openly making fun of him whenever his clowning interfered with my own work, which is often. Tough love, or just some passive-aggressive revenge? Perhaps a bit of both. I just figure that, if he can't develop a work ethic in our store (hardly a sweatshop), he'll be eaten alive in 'the real world.'

Of course, that just begs the question why I'm not devoting such energy to fixing my own life but, wow, look at the time! We'll do this again soon...