Being decent on the job - is that still possible today?
At first glance, Pia has the cleanest job in the world. She builds school kitchens. Shiny steel and ceramic, easy-care wood and plastic surfaces. A medium-sized craft business, just like a large family. But Pia feels dirty. The schools in their area have to switch to full-time operation, all need kitchens. Pias boss is bad in business, the company has too many accounts receivable, too high material costs, too few staff. He covers the running costs with far too many new orders he accepts, although he and everyone in the company know that they can not handle them in time. "The kitchen has to be ready for work after the summer holidays," says the headmistress. "Of course," says Pia, who is mostly alone at the construction site. And in between more or less secretly care for and care for two other schools.
"Be cynical, burn out or shut down?"
She knows that this kitchen will definitely not finish here before October, November. "Starting in September, there are 360 children waiting for their food every day," says the Headmistress. Pia goes out to the van, puts on a cigarette and stares at her cell phone. What should she do? If it's up to her boss she should keep the balls in the air. So far, he says, they've got away with a black eye every time: a small lawsuit here, a bit of shouting, but most are just happy when the kitchen is up. But if it's up to Pia herself, would not she have to try and stay decent? The question is up-to-date, because the current economic recovery takes place in a gray area. While we hear everywhere from recovering economic growth, record profits and declining unemployment, the feeling that things are going well and pressures are easing does not materialize in many companies and businesses. Because the economic successes are bought by the austerity of the last years, by renouncement, downsizing, job fear and compromises in the everyday life.
While many companies have committed themselves to ethical commitments, the many trade-offs in day-to-day business run parallel: unpaid overtime, price hikes, informal collusion, pressure on older women to retire early, and to get the unpaid intern first. All this has created a gray area of latent indecency. Of course, there are minor and major ethical issues in this gray area. A school kitchen is a school kitchen. But when you have a bad feeling about making PR for an oil company or controlling for a mechanical engineer who has an armaments division, a whole worldview is at stake. When you, as an overburdened social worker, teacher or doctor, suffer from no longer being able to do justice to people, is it all about: Cynicism, burning out or quitting? And when faced with the choice of stealing the shy colleague's idea or passing on the cost pressure to those who are the least uplifting, then one is faced with the question: Can I set myself up in the gray area or not? In this gray area, a majority of the generation works for which work should actually be more than: I just do something and get paid for it, the end of the announcement.
"Can look in the mirror, not bend"
We've learned that working is too much of a life to just tear it down. Instead, we wanted to do something meaningful, something that makes us happy, we wanted to achieve an ideal picture of ourselves in the work. And that included: staying decent. The whole seemingly cheesy stuff we believe in: can still look in the mirror. Do not let yourself be bent. Pia feels very bent. But what should she do? She needs the job. The temptation is great to repress the moral dilemma or to justify it to oneself. Out of fear for the workplace. Because you feel alone: No one says anything about the others. Moreover, there is always this Karriereding that we have internalized: You want to get on somehow, and you just keep on, even if you are sometimes ruthless or looks away. For a while, Pia wondered if she would not be happier and more successful if she simply understood cheating and comforting as part of her job description. But then her self-realization got in the way again: I'm not, she thought.
Maybe you can stay decent on the job, if you ask yourself this question: Who am I and what do I want? If it causes me abdominal pain to knock out my colleague, who is often sick, although that benefits the company in an objective way, then I seem to be someone who defines loyalty differently, more personally.If I suffer from telling customers fairy tales, then I obviously put more emphasis on honesty and the core of my work than on quarterly sales. So the equation is simple: if you're suffering from your job requiring you to turn crooked things - it's the wrong job for you. Because you really wanted to be happy. Or at least satisfied. Of course you can try to get into the slightly resigned employee nirvana whose motto is "It's just a job, it's just a job". Or you can question the whole system of career, consumerism and capitalism: get off to stay decent. But you can also look for role models. Is there an older colleague at work who has been around a long time, who is still working well and with a certain cheerfulness, in whose presence one feels comfortable? Which obviously has found a way to stay decent while earning money? Rule of thumb: If not, then it's time to think about a career change. If you do, then you will be able to learn something from this colleague.
"The art of compromise can be learned."
Namely the art of compromise. One day, when she saw them on the verge of despair, one such colleague from the planning department said to Pia, "I used to have small car park calls every now and then." So Pia waited next to her van at a kitchen-craving school for the next initial visit, until the Headmistress came out. Parking is less formal, unofficial. And told her, "I'm not allowed to tell you that, my boss would fire me, but: We can not handle that with the kitchen, it definitely takes three months longer." That's what she did twice now. The first time, the headmistress was angry, but without telling the boss what, looking for another provider. The result: less pressure for Pia. The second time, the headmaster said after a moment, "You know what, good that you tell me that, we can improvise for three to four months, but I would still like to do it with you." Staying decent does not just feel better, it may also make you successful.
