Work

I was thinking about the time when I would enter the workforce. Somehow it seems like a very superficial place to me. I wonder if anyone can be part of the labor group without succumbing to the office politics or without saying things they don’t really mean. There probably are people like this, the same people who are still in their initial positions on the corporate hierarchy.

A quick poll around revealed that most of my friends share my sentiments: we have had lofty ideals about “making it on our own”, but we now realize the world doesn’t work that way. You need to network, to socialize, to get contacts just so you get some strings to pull. Even at the top, it’s all about meeting the right people, being seen at the right parties, wearing the right stuff and saying the right things. Blatant lies are crossing the line because how do you compliment something the sight of which makes you feel like puking? But I guess there are people who do that.

I went to visit a few of my friends while they were working and I felt that I was seeing a whole new side of them. Better or worse is not the issue; they were aliens. This was not the Ah Ba I know who had not qualms about throwing his head back and engaging in a “Laugh the loudest” competition with me and that was not the Ah Han who enjoyed digging her nose and was not afraid to recommend the activity to everyone else around. Instead both were so homogenized by the working world that they would murmur niceties to their colleagues at appropriate times and laugh at jokes we would have rolled our eyes at. They were being sucked into the corporate black hole! Somewhere along the way from secondary school to undergraduate life, I realized that my laughter had gone done by several decibels, my heels gone up a few inches and my command of compliments expanded by numerous words.

So now, our new rationale is to pull whatever strings we can find because you do not get ahead by being “nice” and “proper”. And to make friends whom we find really funny now. It would help if they have a large social circle for us to leech onto.

*I realize that I have painted a rather bleak picture of the corporate world and I am sure that it is not all like that. This is just me waking up hours before I have to and being unable to get back to sleep. +_+