Back in the day, I worked at a place that, while educational, was terrible to work at in a first world sort of way. I wasn’t getting paid my due, the atmosphere wasn’t what one would call supportive, and the management was… well that’s where this story comes in. I won’t name the company, though why I’m protecting them is beyond me. Anyone with a bit of investigative skills can figure out where this was. I’ll even give you a clue: It wasn’t a school.
Anyways, I was a developer at a smaller web development company that was run more through fear and unreasonable expectations than through proper management savvy. This place also had a habit of paying its female employees lower than the males, despite experience and obvious credentials. I don’t want to draw any correlation here, but I’m sure your mind can work something out on its own.
Before we get into the story, I should point out that in work environments, I tend to be fairly outspoken, and chatty. This doesn’t seem to hinder my work or the work of those around me. This is just how i work; I am a surprisingly social creature at my workplace. People tend to know what I think about what I’m working on, situations at work, and most topics that get discussed around me. Its a good working model for me. Sadly this model didn’t work so well with management at my old job.
The Story
So it was annual review time. A week prior to our expected meetings with our manager I, like everyone else, was given a sheet for a self-analysis review. We were to outline our strengths, weaknesses, goals etc. It was all very open-ended. Well, I thought it was, apparently there was a correct way to fill it out, and I had just missed something. There was a section at the end for goals I wanted to achieve; personally, professionally, etc. I had no real problem coming up with some answers for the professional section, but I was reluctant to list any personal goals. I came up with some answers, submitted my paperwork, and continued on working.
A week later my meeting with management arrives. I step into his uniform, unadorned, clinically sterile office. This was a man about efficiency; he didn’t take bullshit, he felt he didn’t deal in it (this is suspect) and was generally quite boring; well boring except for the fact he could dead lift 300 pounds. Seriously, he worked out like Arnold. He was, however as anal as the boss from The Incredibles. That whole scene with him lining up the pencils on his desk calendar?
That’s a real thing.
He sits me down and we stare at each other in silence for roughly a minute; him with a frown, me with what was probably a bored look on my face. I couldn’t help it; this was not something i wanted to be doing considering the timelines they liked to throw at me. Frankly I had more important things to do with my time than what I considered a formality. Had I known what was to come, I’d have been a bit more on my A game.
He opened with the easy compliments, and then went after my behavior (and his distaste for it), and then said “but the real problem i have today is with your goals.”
“My goals?” I responded. “what about my goals?”
“Well Corey, when i set a goal, i give myself a clear timeframe in which to achieve it by. Say I wanted to read a book, I’d set a goal that I will read that book by March 21, 2007. Your goals,” he says as he motions to my self-analysis paper, “are too vague. You’ll never really achieve them with goals like that. You didn’t even write that many down. You can’t tell me you don’t have goals.”
I tried to hide a smile. My reasoning for vague goals is that I had absolutely no intention of sharing any of my legitimate goals, work, personal, or other to them. I didn’t like working there, and i didn’t like how it was run, and to be honest i didn’t really like them. So yes, my goals were vague and not really defined, which was by design. Apparently my manager took notice of this, and than took the completely wrong impression from it.
Now, not noticing my smirk or utterly unfazed by it, he went on: “we really want you to get some more focus Corey, so here’s what were going to do: we’re going to split your raise for now. You’ll get half now, and we’ll have another chat in a little while and see about that second half.”
Yes, apparently the best way to motivate me into having better goals was to punish my financially.
“Uh, okay.” I responded, not because I was offended (though I should have been), but because their tactic honestly confused me. Did they honestly think this was going to make me more motivated? Apparently so, but they wanted to give me that extra push: ”Something else i want you to do Corey… There’s a movie id like you to watch. Its all about setting goals and keeping focused, despite what comes your way. That’s something else you need to work on: focus.”
As an aside, let it be known that by this point my projects where the only ones that managed to hit any sort of timelines, and I had worked 50 hour work days to make sure i hit those deadlines. Lack of focus my left gingery testicle.
At this point I was honestly trying not to laugh. A movie. Seriously? You’ve just robbed me of half my wage increase, and now you want me to go watch a movie?
“It’s called Rudy. Its a fantastic film, I really think you’ll get a lot out of it. Have you seen it before?” he said, smiling at me in what I assume was his best fatherly smile.
“Nope” said I, still totally blind-sided by the situation, “can’t say that I have.”
“You go home and watch it tonight, then come talk to me tomorrow. I really think you’ll learn a lot.”
“Y..yeah, sure” I muttered. I sat there for a moment longer, before the awkwardness of the moment hit the ’14 year old male doing a presentation in front of his class for sex ed.’ level of uncomfortableness.
I went back to my desk and sat down, and explained to my neighbor (one of the female employees who had similar opinions to my own about the company) and explained what had just gone down in our managers office.. She laughed when I mentioned the video, but refused to tell me what I was in for.
I know why now, and my revenge on her will be devastating.
Before we get to the review…
I am sure a great many number of people love Rudy. It really is a soul-stirrer. Underprivileged guy makes his way into school despite all odds, studies hard, makes it onto the team, and in the end he finally get to achieve his life-long dream of playing for … Whatever the hell football team he adored. I obviously paid close attention.
My problem was probably the fact that I went in watching this movie, I was cynical due to the context in which I was told to watch it; that is, I only got half my raise because of vague goals and an apparent lack of focus. You are going to have to forgive me a bit for my inability to appreciate what may very well be a decent movie. I don’t think any suggested movie can really be appreciated in a similar situation.
Anyways, lets see what I took from Rudy, given the context.
My curt, somewhat biased review of the movie ‘Rudy’
A slow, small, un-athletic teenager from a lower middle class family has a dream of playing for a college football team. He makes sure everyone knows about this dream, and refuses to listen to their pointing out the obvious; namely that he is slow, short, and poor. He starts working at the steel mill with his father, where he continues to tell everyone about his goal in life. Everyone laughs. Rudy is resentful and becomes more determined to prove them wrong.
Rudy heads off to the college and weasels his way into campus life by begging a preacher to sponsor him and then living off of the charity of the groundskeeper. I will give him credit: he is resourceful. He basically lives in the shed in the football stadium.
Fast forward through a montage of Rudy studying hard, applying for the main school and getting rejected every semesters’ end until we have Rudy’s first big (and obvious) break: he gets into the big school. He does, of course continue to study hard, because hell, why not.
So now that Rudy has made it to college, he starts begging to get onto the team. He is obviously denied. It takes more than grades to get onto the team. You need things like skill, strength, and to be roughly 7 inches taller. No matter, obvious job requirements matter not to Rudy. He keeps pestering until he gets onto the maintenance crew for the team and starts befriending the team members. After months of this, he manages to get onto the reserve team. Once again this is due the charity of those in better positions.
Game season starts, and of course he is begging to get onto the team. He’s got moxy! Once again the coach points out that he is too small, slow, and unskilled to ever make it onto the team. Moxy or not, he’s just not a decent fit into a line-up of skilled players. He is almost literally the short, fat kid in the red rover line.
Que another montage. This one involves loads of training, more befriending, and i think there is some sort of half-baked romance in there too. I’m pretty sure his training revolves around a tackle or some such thing. My memory in this is mercifully vague.
About 40 minutes of sappy, endearing crap happens now. It’s just one long ‘everyone against Rudy’s dream’ train, and you are stuck watching it crash and burn. I think he gets to kiss a girl, and there was probably a bar fight. I know that at some point in here, he ends up being super-friends with the main football lineup.
Game day; literally the climax of the film.
It’s the last game of the season.
Rudy hasn’t managed to get onto the main team yet. He is crushed. Luckily, all of the guys on the team love Rudy so damned much by this point in the film, that they threaten to turn in their jerseys to the coach if he doesn’t put Rudy on the team. Once again the coach says no, calling their bluff because Rudy is too small, slow, and unskilled to be an effective team member. Never mind that he montaged his way to probably successful tackle or whatever.
The team follows through, and start to hand over their jerseys until the coach caves and puts Rudy on the team. Success for our poor little beta male! Note that this is the third major example of depending on others to get him where he needs to be. Other than being lovable and studying like a med student on meth, Rudy hasn’t really done that much.
Rudy has made it onto the field, but the coach hasn’t played him; nothing but bench for poor, small Rudy. That is until the team starts chanting “Rudy” or something, and the crowd picks up on this and runs with it. This is supposed to be the emotional build-up that make grown men suddenly have something in their eye. The sap-o-metre is dialed up to 11 for the end of this movie.
There are 4 seconds (I could be wrong here, but I am pretty sure there were less than 10 seconds left) left on the clock. The final play. Team Rudy is up 7-24 (once again this is a guess but there was at lest a 2 down difference). The coach cracks under the pressure of the crowd and puts Rudy in. The coach is a bit of a bitch for peer pressure.
The whistle blows, and rudy performs his singular tackle, enabling him to fulfill his life-long dream at the age of 23 or so, and be carried off the field by his team mates. Fade to black. or Sepia… or… something.
What I learned from being forced to watch ‘Rudy’
By the end of the movie, I was angry. I was also bored, but mostly I was angry. Here’s what I took away from that movie was this:
- It doesn’t matter whether you can or can’t do the job; work hard and suck up and you can make it on the kindness of others.
- Your life-long goal is actually very short0sighted, and after you achieve it, you wont have anything to look forward to. You peaked at 23. Also, your life goal is kind of weak.
- Nothing you contribute to the team actually matters, nor will it actually make a difference or change the outcome of anything you are involved in.
- You are stupid.
So what my manager was telling me (in my eyes) was that I was stupid, got by on the sympathies and kindnesses of others, that nothing I do actually matters, nor do I contribute anything to the team other than some sort of mascot status. Oh, and my goals are shallow and unimportant. I don’t even know if focus was really brought up in the film.
I made sure to tell my manager this the next day. I did make sure to outline that i knew what he expected me to take from it, but I wanted him to know that he should be very careful about what he suggests people to watch. He didn’t seem too pleased with the fact that I basically shat all over his most favouritist movie. I did however manage to leave him utterly speechless.
What happened after this second chat really is a testament to a lack of employee understanding, and what happens when you use 1950s management styles in the new world. That is, a style of management that induces a fear of losing your job if you don’t work harder, as opposed to a method where support your employees.
The day I told my manager my about my take on Rudy was also the day I had signed the jobs death certificate in my head. I stopped talking to people, I stopped being a social person, and worst of all I stopped caring. My work became sloppier and I just didn’t care. Why should I? They already explained that I wasn’t that important, held back half of my raise, and didn’t like how I worked anyways. Oh, and apparently lacked focus, despite evidence to the contrary.
They saw my new, depressingly altered work style and actually attributed it to me focusing more on my work. It was actually quite the opposite; I didn’t care, but they couldn’t tell because they never actually bothered to talk to me about anything.
The end result
Watching Rudy (and the attitude shift that happened after) did drive me to make a rather specific goal: I applied to college for Graphic Design. Right in the height of my “fuck this place I am leaving and I don’t care” phase, they gave me the rest of my raise because I seemed to have a lot more focus. That night, I went home and applied for graphic design school.
That gave me a rather solid deadline in which to achieve a couple more specific goals; pay off my new car, save up as much as possible for school (made easier by the rest of my raise), and quit the job that had robbed me in more ways than my raise.
I guess they were right about the focus, but wrong about the subject.
The lesson?
There are many lessons to take away from here: Don’t make people watch Rudy, don’t withhold raises for terrible reasons; don’t make your life goal to play for a college football team; don’t be afraid to quit your horrible, horrible job; the list goes on and on.
The most important one is actually for the manager: don’t run your shop through fear and doublespeak. Instead of punishing someone for not fitting into your mould, see what they are contributing, and find a way to augment that to the benefit of the company.
Also, don’t be a dick.
P.S. If you’re wondering why this is called Rudy 2, I can field that one. There was at one point a one line blog post on this website that stated ‘Rudy, rudy, rudy, rudaayyyy.’ That’s it. The reason was that I was still working at my former job and feared they’d find my actual thoughts on the subject and sodomize me. It was also a hat tip to the then popular song ‘Ruby’ by the Kaiser Chiefs. Some time down’ the road, I deleted this post due to its utter irrelevance.
Leave a Reply