There was a time when I was much younger and I wonder why adults behave the way they do. They sometimes say things like ‘the world is always like that’ or tell us to ‘mind our own business’. They think being concerned about other’s matters is being ‘busybody’ and that a kid who keeps asking question is not being ‘smart’. As I grow up, I discovered why; it is the nature of workplaces, perhaps asian workplaces and work ethics. The apathy that adults demonstrate, their interest in knowing the stuff in the newspaper and not exactly what reality is all stems from the work culture.
Saying ‘the world is always like that’ is a generalization that results from their observations of patterns in the society, due to the routine nature of most of their work. Routine in work makes things easier because those people who does something are ‘specialized’ in doing that but they are also ‘specialized’ because they know how to make things look like they are done and they know how to pretend they are doing that particular work. In other words they may not only have mastered the technique involved in their work but also that of pretending that they are busy with that work. At the same time the line reflects their apathy; in their haste to generalize the world, they fail to appreciate subtle changes that improves their lives. Being positive in this sad reality is some sort of a taboo.
Apathy or a lack of concern for things around them as a general feature of adults is caused by the fact that they are always given extra work when they show concern for someone else’s undone work or when they complain about something, they fear that they’d be asked to make changes to the status quo. As we all go into all sorts of work, we see strange behaviors at play: doing and undoing stuff to pretend we are busy so that we don’t get new work to do, or pretending to do work when boss comes around instead of spending time fruitfully by working on something that you have to do next but can submit much later. There are logical explanations for all these phenomena and they all stem from rationality but they are results of poor principles and work attitudes. This is especially typical of the civil service or public sector.
There’s perhaps a need to design newer reward systems for work and review work culture at these places somehow – though I don’t have ideas to propose yet at the moment.
