Consequences #5 — Tom

This time it’s per­sonal. It just has to be. It’s the third time, with remark­ably sim­ilar vague reas­ons. And once again, every­one is pre­tend­ing it isn’t.

The latest trend in man­age­ment is a thing called ‘Emo­tional Intel­li­gence’. Basic­ally, your boss is now allowed to draw on his own exper­i­ences, and under­stand his feel­ings, and use that as a way of get­ting to the bot­tom of how best to motiv­ate you. As a res­ult, both you and he will feel more ful­filled and involved with your work.

Except I’d kind of jumped the gun on this. What I did was some­thing I loved and believed in. I’d fought hard to get my little team to where they were. People could see the pas­sion in what I was doing, and that I was try­ing to change things. The right things. Stuff that needed to be done, not because it was astute, cun­ning, or would get you on the back page of the Media Guard­ian, but because that pas­sion felt viral. Once you had it, you wanted other people to have it. As many people as pos­sible. It was a great feel­ing, know­ing that we were all going to cre­ate some­thing new and fab and actu­ally worthwhile.

I (heart) my job.

Or rather (heart)ed my job.

Hav­ing wound the machine up to the point where the fly­wheel felt like it was about to come out of its mount­ings, I’ve been taken away from all this. ‘Restruc­tured’ is, I believe, the polite jargon.

So I’m sit­ting writ­ing this in my living-room, because I can’t bring myself to go into work and watch every­one else get­ting on with things without me. And I can’t bring myself to be part of the “Do we invite him to meet­ings?” embar­rass­ment. I have moments where I have to go and have a few deep breaths out­side because all that pas­sion has got nowhere to go, and I’m try­ing to res­ist fun­nel­ling it into anger.

Tonight is the office round­ers match. I’m not going. Not because I don’t like round­ers (which is true), but because I can’t face hav­ing to act all pro­fes­sional about this stuff. Ah, you see, this is the catch.

I’ve now got to find myself a new job. I’ve got to be whiter than white. I’ve got to be a grown-up. I’ve got to rise above it. I’ve got to look to the future. I’ve got to show this doesn’t get me down. I’ve got to stay focussed on the future. I’ve got to be ready to seize new oppor­tun­it­ies. Not to do so might hinder those same future opportunities.

So, while every­one below me is allowed to be dis­traught and upset and embar­rassed, and while every­one above me is allowed to get all touchy-feely with their own emo­tions about what I must be going through, I’m not allowed to do anything.

Everyone’s allowed to care except me.