Dear Stanley,
A co-worker recently requested to go part time due to daycare/family needs. She gave 7 weeks advance notice and was approved for part-time status. The co-worker started her first day in part-time status and got a email from her immediate boss saying that she was disappointed in her for letting down the team and that she would be required to perform the same amount of work as full-time employees because her decision left the team in the lurch. The clincher is that this email was sent from the boss’s personal email to the employee’s personal email. Later it was revealed that the boss was due to receive a hiring bonus for bringing on this full-time employee. Apparently she was denied the payout because the employee switched to part-time status. This boss routinely insults everybody, by the way, and the whole environment is verbally abusive. Suggestions?
Signed,
Outraged
Dear Charmingly Naive One,
Now there’s a heartwarming story. Here’s where I give you one of the most important suggestions I can offer you to ensure a lifetime of happiness in whatever dysfunctional workplace you may happen to inhabit. Here it is: Don’t get your panties in a twist. This is a somewhat impolite way of saying that a detached, Zen attitude to the pain and suffering that attends working life is often more productive than active emotional engagement in the ongoing pageant of madness, sadness, and frail humanity.
What are the enemies of happiness? Crazy bosses? Buttheads like this one, who make a person feel guilty because they put family over business for a while? Numbnuts who put their bonuses ahead of the well-being of the folks they manage? Yes, indeed. These people are indeed carriers of the virus of misery. Now imagine that very same entity — a mean, punitive, abusive executive — as a tiny little insect trapped under an inverted drinking glass. You can see him. He seems to be screaming and waving his arms around, but oh so far away. You can barely hear him! Who could possibly be bothered by this tiny thing and its inconsequential buzzing?
How does one establish that level of emotional detachment and distance from the problem? It begins by focusing not on the feelings and demands of the neurotic individual who controls the workflow, but on the work itself. People who spend 99 percent of their concentration working hard on the things at which they can make a difference are a lot happier than people who invest their hearts and souls into pleasing insane, self-centered parent figures. Next, it’s important to create boundaries between your Self and the Other that is the Boss, the Company, the Job. Finally (and this is really a crash course here) you have to realize that the pursuit of happiness is the precise thing that confers misery. He or she who is without hopes and expectations is very often a whole lot happier in an unpleasant or demanding environment than the individual whose heart is easily punctured.
Get a book on Zen. Alan Watts wrote a bunch of good ones for beginners. Most self-help books you read right now are a rip-off of ancient Zen ideas, actually. I even wrote one of those myself. I have no hope you will run right out and purchase it, of course. No hope at all. This makes me a whole lot happier than if I imagined you were going to. Instead, I believe I’ll have a banana now. Nature’s perfect fruit!
