While listening to the radio during the morning commute to work the broadcaster brought up something that had me stop and think. He was reading an article from the National Enquirer (you know the big gossip rag here in the US) which had some article on the front page about Patrick Swayze and his fight with cancer. Basically the headline under the picture of Patrick said something like, “The End”.
The broadcaster continued to comment about how sad it was that the Enquirer would do such a piece and use a headline that is so blatantly depressing and in overly cruel towards Mr. Swayze. He then had some quote from Swayze about the article where Patrick said he was sadden that people would read this article and not see the positive side of this disease he was fighting. In essence see that how he himself was a fighter, believed that life was still good and that despite his illness there is still hope.
It was then that the broadcaster made the [paraphrased] comment, ‘I guess this is how magazine’s like these make their money.’ And that just made me stop and realize that he was right – that is how these rags continue. WE allow them to do this, we purchase the dirt, we make the National Enquirer popular and we make them their loads of money, we allow them to write articles like this, we are simply – no better than the National Enquirer. And before you say it, I can already hear it; you’d never purchase a rag like that! Well, when was the last time you stopped your family, your friend, that person in line in front of you, from getting the rag? If you haven’t then yes, you might as well have bought it yourself.
The other day a co-worker walked up to me around 2:30 in the afternoon and asked me if anyone had told us [the IT Department] that the printer was dead. I looked at him and said no, he was the first. He then said, ‘well, it’s been dead since 9 this morning.’ Which had me stop and stare at him, ‘9am?!?!? How could a printer be dead all day and no one tell IT [the computer department]?’ I then examined the queue for that printer and sure enough – 9:22am had a print job that was stuck with about 20 other jobs behind it, each waiting to go with approximately fifteen different people who had not bothered to say anything to anyone in IT to get it fixed.
Being me, I asked each of those 15 people why they didn’t tell anyone in my department about the printer and these highly trained and educated persons each replied, “I thought someone else told you?” All day the printer sat their idle with a stuck job, nothing printing and no one person said anything – each assuming the other had said something.
Now this might seem a small sampling of people but this is what is going on in the world, especially in the United States of America. Everyone just assumes someone else is saying, doing or working on it when in fact, NO ONE IS! When was the last time you walked up to someone and said, drop that rag, that’s just crap! When did you last write to your congress person or representative both good and bad? When was the last time you confronted your family and friends about something you know wasn’t correct or right. WHEN was the last time you created the drama in life that makes people stop and think twice, that makes a person take off their rose colored glasses?
A semi-friend and I went to lunch the other day. We got to talking about work and I told her, the problem with employee’s now days is no one wants to rock the boat, no one wants to stand up and say something is wrong. We all struggle through miserable days because why? We don’t want to create any drama. Which in fact is just creating internal drama that is slowly killing us, we need drama to provide and create change. Drama is the spice of life and we can’t just sit idle assuming that someone else will take care of it. Because why? You, me and the person next to you are the someone else….