80 | June 2013 www.womanthismonth.com Colleagues shared the same sentiment when I recounted my recent ‘adventure’, with one close friend stating how they were tired of the pretence of remaining permanently positive! Personally, I’d rather just be me than to be positive all the time. Being positive is one thing; but, like most things, Newton’s law of physics stands firm — what goes up must come down. Anything positive must go negative otherwise the world would never work; our atoms and particles would fall apart if rules were not followed. I found it funny that those within the corporate wheel were all dying to be viewed as positive, all the time! I can think of a few reasons not to be; pregnancy and HIV, two positives I don’t really wish to achieve. Back in the 90s I moved continents, moving half a planet from home and working for ‘big corporation’ USA. The first interview I went for, they gave me seven pages of something called a psychological examination for ‘compliance with corporate standards’. A psych test, it appeared to me, to see if I was of the mental brain trust they wanted of corporate employees. The test amused me with stupid questions which were full of what ifs and what would you do scenarios? If you were a brick in a wall of bricks which brick would you be? I’m a writer not a brick layer? If I where a brick, I’d be the one lobbed at the wall to break it down. Proof, to me, of my anarchist tendencies and not the corporate ‘take one for the team’ mentality the potential employer would have preferred! In tests where every participant gives a different answer I have no idea how they could ever score such an examination. The corporate head of human resources WoMentality I returned to ‘big corporation’ USA recently; I had once before as well. Short time, long story; let’s just say I have seen the light and won’t be going there again. Not in this life time anyway! Staying Positive! By Hard-headed Woman stated that I was indeed correct, but that each person that wanted my position would answer similarly — a ‘corporate sheep’, so to speak. Apparently, potential managers would answer in conformity of the corporation, not with the arrogance of the individual. So, I answered their spaced-out questions true to my life’s work, with absolute blunt honesty, as arrogant an individual as I could be and, somehow, I still got the job. What makes me laugh, though, is that those who conducted the tests deceived the company and bankrupted it the following year. Three hundred employees and thousands of shareholders lied to by those who dared test us, for our corporate conformity! We should have been psych testing our employers, not the other way around. Now, years later, I tried again to return to ‘big corporation USA’ with a positive attitude. I told myself it would be different this time. It was not. In many ways it was worse; I was positive and yet ‘big corporation’ brought me down again. And there you have it, and this month’s point. With all the dishonesty in the world, the corporate shenanigans and the financial ripoffs, why do we stand by and allow others to judge us? It’s just a job for cash to send home after all, a means to an end. Our employers are so worried about trusting us that we forget to ask if we can actually trust them! We try so hard to think that it is us who need to feel positive and, yet, there comes a time when you have to just see the world for what it is — a corrupt, ‘dog eat dog’ fight to the finish. Seven billion of us are fighting to survive; for every positive there has to be a negative, and so the war rages on. Being permanently positive is a lie unto ourselves; being true to ourselves and seeing the world for the way that it is, rather than the eyes of sceptics, has to be a better way to live a life. So, I’ve concluded that being positive and being happy is not one and the same thing. I am sceptical, I am negative about a few things and I have doubts. But within myself, I am the happiest woman alive, for I depend upon no one for my daily dose of reality. I believe what I see with my own eyes and I draw my own conclusions. These may not be the mainstream norms and I know that ‘big corporation’ USA is not for me. I am, though, content and happy in my world. In the words of Oscar Wilde, “Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” And, the next time I hear someone tell me that they are positive, I’ll just tell them how sorry I am. None of us, after all, really want to catch what they have!
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy Mjk0MTkxMQ==