Why is Teamwork UnCool?

Somewhere between third grade field day, and your first leadership class in college, people lose interest in working together for a common goal.

Is it the lack of sight into the profitability of the larger goal?

World War 2 was a larger goal, and everyone was behind it, and totally into doing tiny tasks, each individual a cog, in order to get behind our government and win their war. The goal there was pretty obvious. Nazis were bad guys, they were doing easily understandable bad things.

When CEO wants the leaders of our company to cooperate, though, working collaboratively, is uncool -- When asked, cajoled, nudged, dictated to do so... nothing happens. All they have to do is tell one another what they're doing, and ask each other to do a thing or two. This thing or two will then be taken off the first party's plate. Working together actually makes their workloads lighter.

This leads me to believe they are masochists.

If they are not simple masochists, then obvious motivators are just not applicable. Being paid is not enough of a motivator. Nor pride in work. Nor good-natured helpery. Nor fear of unemployment.

Even in this job market.

At least, these are the things that spur me into overdrive, anyway. But sticking electrical rods into these ports of the brains of these employees is no good. Invoking things like your swollen pay check, the current job market, the happiness of others as a positive, self-pride, these things don't spark anything.

If the happiness of others as a positive is the opposite motivator, they must be sadists. Don't we jail sadists in this country?

Perhaps their ports, like the left side USB on my laptop, is bruised enough they no longer accept signals?  So, what is it that motivates them?

Kiddo, personally, does not want to stoop to threatening children. It is not the fault of the child the parent or grandparent is useless.

Maybe these people are nihilists.

How do you cajole a nihilist into caring? Are they aware they're nihilists? To conciously care about nothing, and conciously do nothing would be more admirable, certainly, but then they should go the Lebowski route and date porn stars, not work for the US Government.

This begs the obvious question: Are we finally decadent enough to open state-sponsored vomitoriums? It may cut down on the research needed into obesity.

Even before you realize they may be nihilists, though, you gotta wonder where the hell all these nihilists came from? How did they meet and decide to confer here?

I sure don't know, but I'm sure that just my sparky, spunky little email, and CEO's sparky, reassuring encouragement sure ain't going to solve it.

Compartmentalization

In taking the federally required training in how to be ethical I have learned that people do no naturally see their lives as touching other larger things.

When a fish swims through a river, does it see the rocks and feel the eddy pools as distinct entities or does it just swim normally and not see or feel them as different experiences from a stagnant pool?

Work is a part of your life. When you're a workaholic it's a substantially larger part, but still only a part. Within work are other sections -- HR vs. Finance for example, and so on. Each part is a rock or pool in the river while you swim, and each demands a different sort of behavior or set of speech patterns, places to sign signatures and how much energy you want to put into finding out what you're signing.

State and National Politics are usually  separate parts of your life. So why would it suddenly occur to people-- to such an extent that I have to waste time learning about it-- that work money, the money your office and engine of industry creates is ok for you to spend on your own State and National Politics section of life.

Granted, my fish metaphor falls apart here, but it is no more cool to donate to this or that party with company dollars than it is to buy a hooker with them or buy your goldfish a castle? The company has, by its nature, already allocated you a pocket of money to do these things. Why is my time being wasted because of other people's very silly mistakes?

Is this another sign that Kiddo is falling into Curdmugeon zone? Curdmudgeon-o just doesn't have the same ring to it. What's a girl to do?

Dissolution / Disillusion

Warning: declarative statements from the overly emphatic ahead.

The difference between writers and the forgotten observers of the world is the physical discipline of making your thoughts appear in the real world.

Pro-longed readers of Kiddo will notice, then, that she is not at all a writer, for she has very little of this discipline. 

Take a survey of writers and you'll find there are actually as many types of writers as there are people so described. Little declarative statements like the one above often turning into the small graspings of a small person trying to drive a little spike into the world on which to hang a flag and claim something for their own existential fulfillment. 

In which case, Kiddo could very well be a writer, but a very bad one. 

Here is drawn another line in the mind dunes: Is it preferable to be a bad thing or not to be the thing at all? 

The lack of response that will surely deafen me will not convince me one way or the other, but will cerainly reaffirm both points of view of Kiddo's status as writer. Which fact of bothness negates the whole thing.