Well-informed, well-educated people capable of critical thinking...or obedient workers?

[lrainey]

  I am moderately successful in the business world.  I don’t make a great deal of money, but I make a good reasonable wage that puts me firmly in the middle-class range.  I have never received anything but stellar praise from an employer, and I am always given the maximum raises that my bosses are able to give me within the limits set by the company I work for.  I need to feel valued as a member of a team and as the individual that I am.  When I start to feel like I am just a warm body in the office chair, it is time for me to seek a new position.  I have been asked more than once when my employer was hiring another person, “Do you know anyone who is just like you who would want this job?”  I would not want to work with someone else who was “just like me”.  Our diversity is what keeps us strong and what makes me feel needed and a useful member of society.  Are these feelings and opinions holding me back in the business world?  Should I suppress my individuality to better fit into someone’s ideal of the “corporate mold?”.  Would it be worth it if I did?  Most of us spend more time at work than anywhere else in our lives.  Of course, there are aspects of all of us that do not belong in the workplace, but should we set all of the things that make us an individual aside when we walk through the doors of “corporate America?”  And why would we want to?

In case you are wondering where my title came from...the answer is George Carlin.  I was having this conversation with my husband when he received an e-mail in his inbox from a friend with the following video from George regarding this very thing.
http://vids.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=vids.individual&videoid=935607276