Man With A Mission

Wanna know what’s wrong with us, collectively, as a nation of workers? Let me give you a quick story of the ‘elevator’ incident recently.

I work in the home office of a large financial firm. The ‘campus’ has 4 towers. In each tower, there are employee elevators and service elevators. It’s pretty obvious which ones are which. In my tower specifically, there are 4 employee elevators and 1 service elevator.

Recently, the building management had to put signs up next to the door of the service elevator (on each floor, no less), explaining the purpose of the elevator, and reminding employees that they are supposed to use the regular elevators. Mind you, they aren’t that far away from each other. But the general laziness of people caused them to save themselves the extra 15-20 feet of walking by using the service elevator, thus causing the people that actually needed it to be constantly delayed.

So the signs went up. And the people, seeing these signs, got pissed off! This is a true quote, heard with my own little ears: “I can’t believe they put that up there. Those service guys are a**holes”. Obviously, it was the fault of the service personnel wanting to get their jobs done, not our laziness.

I will say that I used that elevator occasionally. Usually, at the end of the day when there was a group going down, or I knew the regular elevators were out that day. It’s even closer to my office, so I would be saving some time (at least in my mind). But for the most part, I didn’t use it, for that very reason. I respect and appreciate the jobs of the service people, and didn’t want my lack of motivation or laziness to get in the way of them doing their jobs. But most people took it as an insult, as though they were being inconvenienced in some way.

How often do we do that? We, as a people, are self-centered to the core. If it helps me, then it’s important. If it doesn’t, who cares. It’s that mentality that keeps us where we are. Doesn’t matter what generation you’re in. We all take for granted the amount of services, devices, or other items that allow us to be self-centered and, dare I say it, juvenile. Toddlers whine and complain when they don’t get what they want. And we do it, too. Fast food isn’t fast enough. Broadband isn’t fast enough. The list goes on.