{"id":548,"date":"2004-10-05T10:08:56","date_gmt":"2004-10-05T17:08:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/?p=548"},"modified":"2012-05-08T10:36:22","modified_gmt":"2012-05-08T17:36:22","slug":"really-whos-the-loser","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2004\/10\/really-whos-the-loser\/","title":{"rendered":"Really, who&#8217;s the loser?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>So, I&#8217;m trying to be part of a team here at work.<\/p>\n<p>Actually, I&#8217;m resenting the fact that I am NOT part of a team. This should not be so hard.<\/p>\n<p>Ever remember those group projects that were required in school? That&#8217;s where you had to form a group to do a project or a presentation, and it was some fat percentage of your grade.<\/p>\n<p>What always happened with me is that I <em>cared<\/em> about my grade. I wanted the project done well and I wanted to get an A. SO we would all get together and talk about what needed done and who would do it.<\/p>\n<p>There was the person that called the meetings. There was the person who just agreed with whatever everyone else said. There was usually one or maybe two people who didn&#8217;t do a darn thing.<\/p>\n<p>Now. That hold true through life. This really had nothing to do with whatever subject we were learning. It was all about &#8216;Who&#8217;s the loser?&#8217;<\/p>\n<p>I used to think that the people who didn&#8217;t do anything were the losers. But you know, I didn&#8217;t pay enough attention.<\/p>\n<p>Who&#8217;s really the loser? The one who doesn&#8217;t have to do any work? Or the one who does all the work for other people?<\/p>\n<p>What harm does a low grade do anyway?<\/p>\n<p>If we are playing that game, the one where it doesn&#8217;t matter who shows up as long as the work gets done, then why must I be the one to show up?<\/p>\n<p>I am the loser.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.murphyhorner.com\/archives\/000781.html\">See previous post<\/a><\/p>\n<p>So&#8230;I basically have to have some kind of faith that the loser is NOT the one that does the work. In a purely temporal world, how could it be otherwise?<\/p>\n<p>The sucker is the one who gets stuck with the hard stuff.<\/p>\n<p>Except I do not believe that this is a purely temporal world. I believe in higher things, like higher standards. Pride of accomplishment, a job well done, knowing that I did my best.<\/p>\n<p>Boy, do I ever believe in knowing I did my best. I cannot sleep at night if I even think there is a chance I didn&#8217;t do my best.<\/p>\n<p>That means i see beyond the moment, beyond the short term. I have a larger context within which I place the choices I make.<\/p>\n<p>So. What is the context that the not-doers place their choices? Do they feel there is another consequence beyond getting out of doing stuff?<\/p>\n<p>Let me tell you, there may not be. If this work environment does not dish out a consequence, then there isn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>So how does teamwork happen?<br \/>\nIn my case, it doesn&#8217;t.<\/p>\n<p>In my opinion, consequences are important. But not everyone sees it that way. Some people seem to want to avoid consequences and protect one another from them.<br \/>\n<a href=\"http:\/\/www.murphyhorner.com\/archives\/000643.html\"><br \/>\nSee this post.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>This sort of thing rolls around in my head, and I wonder if I really am clinging to outmoded rules of the universe.<\/p>\n<p>Maybe I need to have a talk with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/exec\/obidos\/tg\/detail\/-\/0553212788\/qid=1096996982\/sr=8-1\/ref=pd_csp_1\/102-2695165-9489728?v=glance&amp;s=books&amp;n=507846\">ol&#8217; Nick<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You can&#8217;t fight the way things are. You can only work with it. Maybe you can work with it to improve it, but working with it is the only way.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>So, I&#8217;m trying to be part of a team here at work. Actually, I&#8217;m resenting the fact that I am NOT part of a team. This should not be so hard. Ever remember those group projects that were required in &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/2004\/10\/really-whos-the-loser\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[22,10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-548","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookworthy","category-my-day-job"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/548\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/writtenbymurphy.com\/wonderblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}