Relevant Tangent: Environment
“It’s remarkable she’s stayed this long.”
--The Field Mice
I hope it’s not too shocking to say that people are strongly affected, perhaps even shaped, by their environments. I think it’s truly the elephant in the room when it comes to success in a workplace. And I’ve come to realize that unless I want to have a heart attack by 40, my work environment is very important. However, as usual, the question is: Will having any standards whatsoever make it impossible for me to get a job?
My current job definitely has the worst environment I’ve ever experienced, which inspired these thoughts. Before you even get to the front door, you’re confronted by the strong smell of human excrement, all matter of garbage flying around in the wind, and the sight of people peeing in the street. There is nowhere in the vicinity, not even a park bench, where you can go for a minute to sit by yourself. You get through the lobby with a security badge. Once inside the main building, you are again confronted by the stench of sweat and the ghosts of a thousand microwaved leftovers. You quickly escape this area with security badge access to the main office space. There, you are met with a labyrinth of cubicles. The only color you see is beige in various degrees of dirtiness. There are windows somewhere, but you can’t see them from where you sit. In 90% of the office, there is no natural light whatsoever. You can hear radios, people typing, laughing, yelling, etc. No one ever took the trouble to paint or put artwork on the walls, and the workers follow suit-most people have not done anything to personalize or decorate their spaces. Your desk is covered in duct tape for a reason you can’t determine, and your cubicle is full of fileboxes and back issues of “HR Magazine” that don’t belong to you. While every other office will offer you some free item, such as Advil or crappy tea, here, there are no amenities whatsoever. Water cooler? No, here you have a water fountain, which is impossible to make witty banter around. Because of all this, you are constantly faced with the idea that you don’t matter. And this is the place to which I have to drag my tired body 5 days a week.
Let’s face it. After I finish this job, I don’t want to see another place like this for as long as I live. For the rest of my lifetime, I’ll try to live in a morally correct way so that after I die, I don’t see the lost circle of hell that will definitely resemble this office. And my religion doesn’t even HAVE hell. Unemployment be damned. Give me standards.