Ugh. It might well have been one too many.
Autopilot. You insist you wake up on time—you never wanted to go to office late just because you have a hangover. Not even after what happened yesterday. Just one of those little rules you set for yourself.
Routine. A quick brush up and a shower wake you up a little bit more. You know you should have drunk more water because it’s really the dehydration that makes you feel so bad the next day. However, as with most things in life, knowing is one thing, committing yourself to doing it is another.
Denial. Nonetheless, you still know exactly what to wear. Shirt, suit and tie. You can tie a tie in your sleep. Every tie is different but you sure know how to tie one perfectly. Practice indeed makes perfect. After all, you have tied a lot of different ties in the last 20 years.
You do it so often you actually never really bother to stop and ask—why a suit and tie in the first place? It’s not that you object to it. With a “uniform,” it’s far easier to pick what you need to wear than if the dress code were casual wear everyday. But you don’t understand it. Yes, it’s supposed to look more formal–but by tying a knot around your own neck?
Tailored shirts and suits tell people a lot about your style. The fit, the details. Even the colours. Colour is in fact the most important. Go for white, light blue or pink for shirts, and not greens, yellows or browns. That has to then match with your tie.
What really separates people who dress well are their shoes and belt. Well-polished, elegant shoes really set people apart. It’s amusing when people wear tuxedo shoes and think they don’t need to polish them. How silly! But there are a lot of silly people in this world. Another one is people wearing black tie to a black tie party. They just don’t know any better.
And then there’s the humble belt. People who buy a belt with a big designer logo, just like with ties, are saying a lot about their character. That they’re as deep as a puddle. You don’t want designer logos on you, you’re not a walking billboard.
You have to pay attention to the details. Here’s a key tip to really make a key difference: wear really, really good socks. How often do people wear the wrong colour socks, or ones that are simply too short or too worn-out? If someone’s willing to invest in socks, then nothing else on them is ever likely to be bad.
All these efforts—not because you have a terrific fashion sense, but because you understand that the business world runs on appearances. Smoke and mirrors.
Of course it makes you feel good too. You try to make yourself feel good every morning before going to work. Maybe this is what you need today, the perfect way to kick this hangover and the courage the face the reality, the next step in your performance improvement plan. (That said, it’s always painful to go to work.)
***
Today, you decide to drive. But, as with any metropolitan city, driving to work is not the smartest choice. You get stuck in traffic, you pay crazy parking fees at the office and most importantly, you can’t go for happy hour after work! So for most workdays, you get squeezed in the cattle-class public transport to get to work. And you only drive on (some) weekends. Not that you need a car for the weekends anyway. But it just feels right for someone of your status to own a car.
After parking your car, you go straight to Starbucks. You don’t really like coffee that much. In fact, what you really want right now is a nice Bloody Mary. Nevertheless, you wouldn’t dare besmirch the ritual of the morning coffee. It’s that little luxury you enjoy. Starbucks is supposed to be the “best” (expensive?) coffee around, so drinking that makes you feel you are entitled to the best. Just like everyone else in the queue. That’s the reason why people love iPhones too, right? Celebrity status. You might not be able to afford their Ferraris, but you owe it to yourself to at least have their phones!
As you walk to the lift lobby, you see people (mostly junior people in your company) quietly nodding to greet you. You know this is a sign of success. You start to have people in the company who know you, but you don’t quite know them.
In the elevator, stand tall. Keep your head up. Never look down at your mobile phone or at the ground. The second you arrive in the proximity of your office area, you need to have that game face about you. You’re building perception around you, that confident you, all the time. Not just when you talk to people, but every moment that you’re on display. Besides, you never know where rumours start. And even when you are down and hurt like you are now, you never show it. Just like in the wild, hurt animals are easy prey. Vultures are everywhere.
“Good morning,” your secretary greets you.
Secretary and private corner office: signs of a successful career.
Despite the news of your imminent dismissal, you’re on auto-pilot. Imagine today to be just like any other day. You spend most of your time in the office checking emails. At your level, you ignore about 50% of the emails, forward the other 30%, take about 10% seriously and actually reply to the remaining 10% (typically your key stakeholders in the company or your friends outside). Still, it takes time.
Ignoring email is an art. You want to do it as quickly as possible without missing the really important ones. Sometimes you do deliberately miss some emails, but that’s a different story. Even responding to emails is an acquired skill. You don’t want to reply too quickly—that may show you have nothing much on hand. You also don’t want to commit anything in email, you want to talk (you’re old school like that) because that’s when you can be really vague. You never want to take a clear position—at least not all the time. You also avoid writing and responding to angry emails. You know people who write aggressively in emails are quite often the opposite in real life. Barking dogs seldom bite.
The headache is really starting to come on strong.
So you take a little longer to read your emails. You really don’t want to let your team see you in such a state. You know that by now people know you had a counselling session yesterday, and when they see you hangover the very next day, imaginations will run wild. Rumours will start. No, no, you can’t have that. Especially when this time, the rumours will prove true.
You read through many of the emails you are going to ignore, including junk emails that somehow sneak through the corporate firewall and filters onto your mailbox. And today one of these junk mails caught your attention—“Call for volunteers!”
As a socially successful person, you believe it’s your duty (and privilege) to give back. You want to give back. You are just too lazy to do so. You say that you’re too busy with something that’s taking up all your time, and palm it off. You feel hesitant about giving donations to large charities—you know most of the money goes to administrative charges. At least, that’s the excuse you stick to.
“Maybe I should do some charity work?”
But you wonder what you actually can do. You’re no doctor, dentist, teacher or skilled professional where your skills would directly benefit the people in need. You are not even strong, dedicated or caring! You’re just a (senior) manager who is “skilled” at being in a big corporation. You might have solid management skills, but how’s that going to benefit anyone outside these four walls?
What value do I have in this society?
Ouch. The headache is going from bad to worse. You start to regret what you did last night. It’s one thing to regret a night of over-indulgence in alcohol. But what if you have bigger regrets in life—such as never accomplishing anything meaningful?
It’s a question you’ve been thinking quite a lot about lately, even before the counselling session. Being a young father, you always wonder how you’re going to interact with your son as he grows up. There are so many things you want to tell him. You want to share with him all the challenges you had when you went to school, going to work, girls—the list goes on and on. But sometimes you wonder what if your son were to ask:
“Dad, what is the biggest accomplishment in your life?”
Simple, naive questions are often the most difficult to answer. What would your immediate reaction to that be?
“Well, the biggest accomplishment in my life is raising you up. You know how expensive it is these days to bring up a child?”
As true as it is, it’s probably not the answer your son is looking for. Nor is it an answer you want. And more importantly—not achieving something important sounds bad, but not knowing what to achieve is probably worse. That seems to be your problem. You don’t know what you want to do! All your life, you’ve lived a good, “standard” life. You’ve followed what your parents, or society, tell you to do. And you’ve done a great job at that. Everything’s gone according to plan.
But sometimes you ask, “What plan?” You really don’t have any big ambitions. In fact, you don’t really have many interests. In anything. Sure, you’ve got some hobbies—watching golf, having a good meal—but nothing you’d really want to dedicate your life to.
Same goes with your soon-to-be ex-job. People say it’s important to do something you love. That’s easy to say. But there is one assumption that is fundamentally flawed. It implies you will be good at something if you love it. No, you don’t. You love golf but there is no chance you can play it professionally. No matter how many light years you practice. What’s more? Your problem is that you don’t even know what you love to do. Writing and replying to emails that you have been doing for the last 20 years?
You’re still relatively young. At least twenty years before retirement. You ask yourself, “Do I want to stay in a room like this for the next twenty years of my life doing something that I can’t even tell my son is my biggest achievement?”
Or hanging on until you are mercilessly ‘asked’ to leave.
“I need to do something with my life.”
You only have three months before that becomes a reality.
The urge of walking up to your boss and resigning, and this time before they get the chance to escort you out of the building, gives you an immediate sense of unique pleasure and relief. It’s not the first time you’ve had that thought either. You know everyone’s had that thought at some time, it’s almost a necessary part of surviving in any position of employment.
These sorts of internal debates have become a lot more frequent for you lately anyway. Somehow you know you need to start over to really find out what it is that you want to do. But you haven’t.
All this time, you know not making a decision is a decision in itself. Everyday you made a conscious decision to not make a change. Even a change that might let you find what you want to do in your life. You don’t need to be a billionaire, climb Mount Everest or set all sorts of world records. You just want something you can tell your son you’ve accomplished, something that you’re really happy about.
“What can I do?”
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