Raising a follow on ... You can’t do enough for a good company! 04.01.13

The last rant I completed was “The Fine Line”.  Whilst I was writing it, I almost dipped into a related, but different set of thoughts.  In my line of work, when one job is finished but has brought up a related issue, you “Raise a follow on”.  So this is my follow on thought.

When working overtime with a colleague the other night – No, that isn’t a euphemism; she’s female and... No! – A shift worker walked into our office, collected a box and parted on this comment:

“You can’t do enough for a good company.”  The sentence itself was riddled with sarcasm; that much was evident.

When I was thinking about the difference between walking and crossing the line, I started to wander down the thought of what is the difference between a good and bad company to work for?  Is there even a difference, or does it really just depend who you are and much you are willing to put up with in the capitalist workplace?  I think you can tell from the tone of the question where my loyalty lies on that one:  it’s the age old question of ‘how much is too much?’  Some people can just put up and shut up and others just cannot/will not do that; they fight and object.

There is a lot to be said for the age old difference and political persuasion of those willing to put up with difficulties within their business and those who aren’t; sweeping generalisation from my personal experience to follow.  Brace yourself:

·         If you’re a working class, Labour supporting man, you’re going to put up with less than the below…

·         A middle class, Conservative female.

That is based on personal observations in the workplace.  The middle aged men voting Labour are ALL members of a trade union and fight for their rights as workers for better conditions.  The conditions the trade unionists find themselves in were caused by the likes of the second bullet point above.  Need I say more?

But when debating the ‘less is more’ when it comes to good will betwixt employee and employer, where is the line?  When does your employer ask for you to work outside of your job specification to fulfil “demands of the business” and when are they just extracting the urine?  Worth pointing out the sarcastic-comment-making-shift-worker I mentioned earlier fits the category 1 employee.

Sadly, the point I’m going to make here doesn’t change really from the “parent” rant.  It all comes down to the individual and what they are prepared to tolerate.   However, in the workplace setting, whilst I do believe in good will, there is no limitation on it; it must be kept in check by the employees to ensure there is no abuse from anyone.  And when you perceive an imbalance, the company needs to be reminded. Just an opinon here, dear reader and entirely personal.

The fine Line. 04.01.13

Famous words of my mother: You’re walking a very fine line with me, Sunshine!

I always liked it when she called me Sunshine, but never in that context; I’m sure you can imagine why.  Since my adolescence became a part of my selective amnesia, I haven’t heard these words uttered to me since.  In the office today, I overheard someone use the phrase “It’s a fine line” in reference to something completely different (An Excel spreadsheet cell border, just in case you wanted to know!).  When I made a joke, ignoring the context, I was completely ignored, but it set me thinking:  A fine line between what and what?

I was rereading one of my old undergraduate essays earlier this week and one of the themes was to do with Differeancé explained by Derrida.  Briefly – I don’t want to kill you off with boredom – he said that the only way you are able to see separate entities is on account of the space between them.  So when you’re sat looking at a cell border in excel, you know that that it isn’t a full line due to the spaces between the dashes.

But when you start talking about the fine line between things, it almost implies that there isn’t a separation; it’s a sliding scale.  So when a child is cheeky, you have cheeky at one end and rudeness on the other and they work their way along the sliding scale. They start “walking a fine line” with you when they edge too close into the naughty sector.  

Is there a fine line on a sliding scale?

Yeah, sure!  Look at a ruler, you can measure in millimetres, centimetres, metres and so on.  It’s like walking in a straight line – you move one notch at a time towards “naughty”.

I wasn’t happy though.  I was still stuck on the fine line between pondering and satisfied.  I was sat completing a mundane task at work and I “pondered” my way to content: most of the time the fine line is drawn between extremes of the positive and the negative.

Cheeky, in and of itself is not the opposite thing to naughtiness or rudeness.  Its only when you hold cheek in a positive regard and rudeness in a negative one that you get a fine line to draw and cross or toe, depending on your rebellious nature...

Thinking I had solved me own little self-inflicted-problem in thoughts, I picked up my tea cup to make a brew... When I realised... I wasn’t happy yet.  Another thought struck me: why do some people toe the line and others choose to cross it?  Not satisfied with that, my brain conjured up another one: Who makes the lines and decides where we cross them or not?

I had stopped typing some time ago and due for my tea break so was running on low batteries.  At this point, I decided to go for brew, fag and piss – not necessarily in that order mind you!  While I was fagging it up (save it for the Frog and Bucket!) I gave my brain a bit more scope to ponder: The question of who draws lines and why is simple: Everyone does it to depending on their personality and boundaries.  You can get on one man’s nerves in two seconds doing the same thing that another person lasted through two hours of.  It’s completely individual.  

So, who crosses the line? We all do. And Why? Considering my assessment of the moodiness of one man versus another, I think it’s fair to say that we all do it sometimes totally by accident.  There are those sadistic beasts that will cross lines for their own personal amusement and just to get on the wick of someone else, but I think, mostly, we do it as a whoopsy.  We’re being naughty when we don’t care that we crossed the line.

Now, here’s another point to leave you to ponder on: Do you actually care when you cross a line? Does it depend who you cross it with or what you did to cross it?  And with that, dear reader, I shall leave you to your thoughts.