Saturday, July 24, 2010

Cheap Respect

There is a huge amount of respect flowing between myself, my co-workers and my bosses these days.

However, it has become very obvious, very quickly that this respect is cheap and hollow. It is all well and good to shower praise on someone in an effort to make them feel wanted and respected. Converting this into something tangible seems to be nigh on impossible for a capitalist corporation like the one that I am temporarily working for. When it comes down to it, how much do they respect us if they do not back it up with something real.

Perhaps I am doing a gross disservice to head office. After all, what kind of person or worker would I be if I was only looking for tangible rewards for my efforts? For that to be acceptable, we would need to live in an economic society that has put a tangible value on all products and services, forcing people to gain this value by sacrificing their time. So capitalism then.

But even putting aside my anti-capitalism angst there is a very simple equation going on here. If someone or a group of people put value on something (e.g. money, time, words) then it seems only right that they show their appreciation using the same 'currency'. Otherwise it is just hollow pandering that has absolutely no meaning whatsoever.

Until our economy runs on words, they can keep their hypocritical nonsense.

-The English Student

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