Drama in Society

LAKE MACBRIDE— The conventional wisdom is that people leave a job because of the relationship with their manager. At my temporary job across the lake, people almost never talk about their manager. They talk about drama.

“I don’t need the drama,” said a colleague who started the same day I did. He was frustrated by someone with whom he shared a work station. Wage earners come to work, perform their job, and seek to leave workplace worries when they punch out. Unless conflict is directly related to the work, who needs it? We all have our reasons for taking a job, and workplace drama is not usually one of them. It is also a sorry substitute for the real thing.

My trainer said, “I work on first shift, so I don’t know the drama on second.” It is a focus on colleagues, their attitudes and personality projections. The usage is a derivative of reality television shows like Survivor and Big Brother. As if the whole world was watching as petty problems, ambitions and peccadilloes play out in real time. Society mimicking the media.

We are forced to deal with popular culture as it influences our interaction with others. Should we participate in the drama, or observe? The media reinforces our role as an observer.

If life in society is a construct, then we hold the power to make it how we would. Emphasis on “we.” Going forward, I’ll take my drama from actors treading the boards, and not based on a perspective influenced by answering the question, “who will be the biggest loser?” Society may be better off if I do.