Appreciation

Rollo Tomassi is big on this in terms of inter-gender dynamics. And that is has hit me hard. Well, that and my job.

For a few days now I am just experiencing what every salaried person on the planet must have felt often and probably something some people live their entire sorry lives with.

I felt the need to be.. . A P P R E C I A T E D. ..yyiiiieeekkss.

Just two days back a colleague of mine got the ax after her occassional fuckups were getting to be regular instead of one in a million. But when you look at her choice of words on why it happened, you could sense how much she wanted to be appreciated i.e. that is when she wasn’t eat your ears about how unjust and conspiratorial the whole deal was.

To cut her some slack, her job was pretty hectic even when it was just basic. She was just a human form of OSTicket. Just had to keep a log of all tech support activities between the tech guys and the client’s tech trouble tickets. The fuck up was she had to do it in a giant 10 column excel sheet and that must have been an awful horrible experience.

But let’s not go all awwwwieee for her. If she had cut down on her facebooking and whatsapping and phone calls with her hubby darling (both just married last month) it was all doable. I mean after all . … .

The interesting part in this is even with all the fuckups she wanted to be appreciated. She wanted to be appreciated for "so much she did" and because she "travelled so far for her work".

And then came my turn.

For someone really big on link i have my fuckups too. I was sent to configure vlans for a client of ours on their 10-15 cisco switches and I fucked the whole thing up and then my boss had to pay an external consultant to come with and get the job done. Now to cut me some slack as well, I was just 4 months into the job and never had much experience with vlans and networking gear being used and so I blew the whole thing in a huge embarrassment.

But let’s not go all awwwwieee for me. If I had cut down facebooking and whatsapping and daydreaming, reading a lot of redpill and living in my fucking head so much it was all doable. I mean after all . … .

I did redeem myself—not by much but i did. I had another vlan project much much smaller and i did well there, not a big deal. And you'd never guess what i felt like afterward. I fucking wanted to be A P P R     . I bloody expected the boss to hug me the next day on what a marvellous job I did and how proud he felt. If not that I at least expected him to bring up my last VLAN fuck up and at least make some small talk with me just to ask me if i finally understand vlans, just some small talk like that, but the ruthless bastard won't even bring it up.

And that's probably why he has a million dollar IT firm with 50+ employees in a country where everybody is just waiting for a fucking festival bonus and tea at work.

You see my configuring the vlans after fucking it up once was nothing to be appreciated, it was nothing for someone else to make me feel good about, although i felt that i did it. Because that was and is my damn job. Isn't it? I absolutely didn't do anything special there at all, and it took some time to get this, now I do. Just like brushing your teeth and showering it's nothing to be praised for, it's the bare minimum you fucking do in society to get by. Imagine everyone giving you compliments and patting you on the back for showering.

And so dear reader, appreciation is a dirty bitch. It's the dessert your parents taught you to crave every night after dinner because "kids love ice cream" and that's because their parents taught them that. It's too much sugar, releases your insulin and is killing you. My simple theory now is appreciation is a game passed on by parents to the kids. Because all parents keep wanting their kids to appreciate the sacrifices they make for them and all and they keep signalling the kid mostly covertly and at times overtly to appreciate their efforts as parents, they end up teaching the kids to crave appreciation for minutest things like brushing their teeth later in life. Hate to tell you, your boss doesn't care.

So the final takeaway is just don't wait for any kind words, gestures of appreciation and pat on the backs, especially not in your professional life because doing your absolute best is just your fucking job. And circling back to the start about appreciation in relationships, I think the same stands true, the truth being no one, not your wife, kids*, gfs are ever going to appreciate you maybe one of you will have someone who will but most of you won't get any of it. Over there it'll be good to have some ground rules and principles of conduct for the people you deal with. And when lines are crossed you do what you must.

* you don’t exactly even want kids you appreciate you till they’re in their 20s, I mean it easily takes that much time to just figure things out. But even after that don’t be sure about anything.