I gotta do some serious introspection.
Just the other day, i was complaining to 贝 (yet again) about how i'm taking on more work than i should because the others aren't doing their job to perfection. Our own support team couldn't care less about the financial users and expected the job to fall on me because i'm the only one in the department (other than my boss) who's well-versed in finance. The consultants couldn't care less about the urgency in our problems and kept painting us into a corner with their take-it-or-leave-it kind of solutions.
While i'm supposed to be concentrating on the second phase of the project, i still gotta help the users and wrestle with the consultants. I started to become impatient with the users calling me for every little things. I began sounding nastier and nastier with the consultants. And i haven't even started the work that i'm supposed to be doing for phase two. So in the end, instead of delivering perfection for the work within my job scope, i'm producing mediocre results to everything that i take on simply because of my principle of not accepting half-arsed job.
I could have told the users that providing support is not part of my job, but i couldn't bring myself to not helping the users when they seek for help. I could have just accepted whatever crap the consultants do as long as it solves the problems now even when i know that the solutions may bring forth more problems in the long run. I could have just done my own work and not bothered with anything else.
The lady manager said to me that as long as we've raised our concerns, the rest is up to our boss. She said that in the end, it's our boss who's answerable to the company and we just do what we can.
But is that the right attitude? Is everything we do at work just for making sure we cover our own ass and not held responsible if things go wrong? What happens to doing the right things and making things right? Is it wrong to strive for zero defect? Is it stupid to go the extra mile if i know that it will make things better? Is it not right to aim for perfection so that even if we fall short of what we strive for, we are still not too far away from being perfect?
贝 said that this happens everywhere. He said i have been working for almost ten years already and i should know that's how we survive in the real world. He said if i'm the one who wanna do more than i should, then i shouldn't whine about it.
Sigh, i guess he's right. I'm over 30 years old and yet i'm still behaving like a disgruntled kid. I really need to grow up.
There are lots of things in this world that are beyond our control, no matter how hard we try to change it. I'm just a single person with minimal power and ability. There are so much that i can change, but there are even more that i simply can't. I just gotta accept this as a fact of life, instead of having all these pent up anger in me that's making me a whiny person that i come to hate.
Yes, if i can't change the world, then the only way is to change myself.
Labels: introspection, rant, work
