The first page handed to me was a duplicated address from the city postmaster.
It began like this:
I am very sorry that you are ending your work with the postal service and… etc., etc.
How can he be sorry? He doesn’t even know me.
Then came a list of questions.
Did you find understanding in your supervisors? Were you able to exchange opinions with them?
Yes, I answered.
Did you not find the supervisors in any way prejudiced against race, religion, education, or any factor related to these?
No, I answered.
There was this one too: Would you advise your friends to look for work in the postal service?
Of course, I answered.
If you have any unresolved labor disputes or complaints against the postal service, please list them on the back of this sheet.
No complaints, I wrote.
Charles Bukowski, Post Office
It’s unlikely you’ve ever found anything dumber than filling out questionnaires like these, when the person who pays you asks for your personal opinion on how things work at the company. Does he actually want to improve something on the basis of that opinion of yours, or what? Or does he want confirmation that he picked the right direction and that everyone is behind him? Or, when the chance comes, to rub a disgruntled employee’s nose in it: like, hey, you agreed to this yourself. Oh right, it’s anonymous. Well, anonymous in a manner of speaking: they will, of course, ask a heap of details in the questionnaire, and by those that very anonymity will vanish in a second if it has to. But these are “little secrets” nobody suspects, right? After all, they taught this in personnel-management courses, and ordinary employees don’t go to those courses — how would they know the nuances. Naive megalomania.
The veil is torn away, but in fact nobody gives a damn, it’s just theater: you play the part and forget. How so? Don’t you want to improve the processes? I do. More than that, I know exactly what needs improving, and every employee knows and could even say so, but that would run against the interests of the one in whose hands the improvement of these processes lies, so we’ll go on filling out the questionnaires “correctly” and playing at politesse.
Bukowski doesn’t say what he really thinks, even when he quits. Strange? Many of us pile it up and pile it up, and keep threatening to pour it out on the day we leave and, so to speak, slam the door, stage a revolt against the boss we couldn’t stand all these years but were forced to put up with. And why? Do you think he wants to go back to the post office? I’m sure he doesn’t. He does it not with the foresight of a swindler who, just in case, quarrels with nobody: what if the person comes in handy, and you’re on good terms with him. Bukowski’s motive is very simple: he doesn’t even try to spend any strength on it, he is at ease with lies and flattery, he knows what is expected of him before the exchange even begins.
And here’s what matters: he isn’t faking it when he answers the way they want him to — he simply isn’t there at the moment of the answer, Bukowski himself is absent, and He doesn’t even work this job. It’s, you know, like the thing that used to be fashionable and then became an embarrassment: “We in this company are all one family.” Now the trend is different. Oh, you have something bigger than work? Well, fine, we’ll give you a chance to succeed at your hobby: get together after work and, say, play Dota, and so on. What other hobbies are there, anyway?
A person doesn’t come down to a mechanism that does a job — he is much wider than that. Yes, not everyone, of course, understands this. But even if you take a person as a worker plus a hobby, that still won’t cover his personality — it is far wider. And why fight for him — soon enough AI will replace everyone anyway. We think narrowly. Breadth will show up when consumption starts to fall and unpopular measures have to be taken: raise the benefit and shorten the working day. But that’s another tale, and about that later.