What is particularly revolting about this picture?
I’m sure you’ve gathered that this is a very ugly, very large fish swimming with a basketball stuffed in its mouth. But what really flips my entrails is that this fish, a flathead catfish, thrives by being the bottom feeder. It skulks about at the bottom of muddy rivers and stagnant, trash-infested pools and slurps up whatever it bumps into.
It takes whatever is in its immediate path and attempts to slurp it down without any sort of consideration about the consequences. But of course, this dumb fat fish hasn’t the brains to understand consequences. It only knows, in some deep primordial way, that in order to survive it must gorge and imbibe. To keep on keeping on, it takes whatever it is presented with, without question.
I have to say, for quite a long time, I felt like that dumb fat fish lolling about in the cesspool of the workplace, compelled to swallow whatever crap was rammed down my mouth.
And I wonder, in demeaning myself so willingly, just so I could survive – so that I could bring home a paycheck and keep myself employed- how many others viewed me as no more than a bottom-feeder, biting off more than I could possibly swallow, shoving more on my plate than I was realistically capable of digesting.
To be frank, at the end of some workdays, I wanted to vomit.
For a generation now, the careerists have been overworked and underpaid, all to the point of decreased job security, increased under and unemployability, and unfulfilled lives. This reality has much less to do with wages, and more with the concept of control. Indeed, the definition of class in our post-industrial, pseudo-technological society comes down to who really has control, and who does not.
Who is a bottom feeder, and who swims at the surface?
I don’t pretend to have ready answers for breaking the mold. But that’s what it’s about: recognizing, first of all, that you may be the silt-and-sludge devouring ‘careerist’ who has to break to the surface. That may be as simple as getting up out of your cube more often and forcing yourself to talk with someone. Or, God forbid, requesting an informal one on one with your boss, assuming he (or she) is the type of person with whom you can have a productive discussion. (see the Bosses post category)
Or it may very well come down to walking away from your cube, your job, your career, even some or all aspects of your life. I’m sure that some people would respond that we all have to make a living. I would reply that gorging on the trash that is rammed down your gullet everyday is not a living - it is a harsh imposition.
We owe it to ourselves, to our loved ones, and to society, to not become mindless bottom feeders.
Thoughts anyone?
Jake desJardins