I don’t believe it’s wise to be 100% yourself to everyone. It’s not always helpful to let your freak flag fly around people you can’t trust. Letting your honest thoughts and feelings be known to the general public, your local community, and especially coworkers is not advised whatsoever.
Why? Because we live in a world where selfish people will do anything to protect the little chunk of space and time they have. If someone doesn’t like what you’re saying, they might fight against it because they can’t stand to live in a world where those ideas exist. If a person is using foul language in public, or they’re smoking indoors, or they’re walking around naked, many people don’t take kindly to those things and will go to the furthest extent to stop people from doing them.
When a person stands for something, they are also encouraged to be equally against their opposition. Republicans vs democrats, Christians vs any other religion, NY vs LA – – it’s all the same. Rival factions will always do whatever they can to bring down the other side, so it’s important for all of us to never claim a side publicly because there’s probably someone out there that has the ability to bring us down, simply because they can.
Recently, I worked at a large company. Over 6 months, I made it clear that I loved Halloween, I’ve got skulls everywhere, and dark, creepy stuff all over my house. Around Christmastime, I even made a joke, saying, “This time of year has something to do with a baby…? I think…?” One of the folks that I worked closely with, who happened to be a Christian asked, “Do you mean JESUS?!?” Of course I meant Jesus. It’s obvious I meant Jesus. It was a joke. I even showed my team the illustration of Krampus I did with my wife to the horror of many of them. I’m fairly certain there were members of the team that didn’t appreciate my personality.
I was told there was no more funding for my role, plus the roles of the other two contractors on the team. A few days ago, I spoke with one of those contractors and she said funding was found to keep her and the other contractor for at least one more quarter of the year. 3 were let go, but only 2 returned. Well… isn’t that a surprise? And whose decision was it to keep this inexperienced junior designer instead of me? The Christian guy that was most likely offended by my personality and life choices.
Don’t ever let them know who you really are. Don’t give them one fucking morsel of personal information. Don’t make bad jokes that show your true colors. Don’t speak your mind. Don’t share your true feelings, perceptions or beliefs. Don’t say shit!
Shut the fuck up and do your job. That’s it. Put on the mask, wear the fake plastic smile, be generally courteous, even lie if you have to, but never show your true colors. We can’t be real with people we don’t trust. And when it comes to people from work, you can’t trust any of them. If you want to keep your job, pay your bills, live in your house, drive your car, eat at restaurants, take vacations, pay your alimony, cover your insurance and all the other things you need a job for, then you, me and all of us need to be the soulless, heartless, bland, vanilla, khaki-wearing, plain, boring, plastic robots that our companies and our society is ordering us to be.
