Yesterday I was at a management offsite for my company. We were trying to “clarify and address” some of the problems we are having with roles and responsibilities, and how to make our department work. I was being my usual restless self, one mental foot there and the other out the door, threatening in my constant mental dialog to leave as I have done many times in the past (and judging from the past, I’ll probably not leave for now; but I will at some point, when all my hope supply is exhausted and the scary unknown future will look better than the known hopeless present). I was looking at the faces of the 26 people that shared the classroom-like place with me, and I had a kind of revelation.
As much as the impossible problem-solving exercise we were doing intrigued me–at least the overdeveloped cerebral, intellectual part of me–what I was really drawn to, what kept at least a part of myself there, was the human individuality of each of those faces. The messy story behind the proper business appearance. The feelings, the emotions, the struggles. The only reason I could bear the extremely appropriate behaviors, the smart discussion, the polite and not-so polite jokes (ever noticed how the less polite and PC a joke, the funnier? At the end of the day, when everybody was too tired to be so proper, we had so much more fun) was because I had a glimpse of the life behind the facade. How was Ann [not her real name] as a child? What brought all these people there? Why did Sarah [not her real name] look always so worried?
Boy, I’m never going to have a career in corporate America.