Friday, December 17, 2010

A Rant about Personality types called Limiters

The other day I’m looking at the 2pm lunch special at Sbarro’s. There’s no one around, business is slow and has been slow since the 30,000 students left on winter break. I kindly ask the cashier to give me the 2pm special at the 1pm time. She says she can’t. Really?? I tell her that I won’t be hungry in an hour and that I’m here, ready to buy. No. I asked if she could ask the manager to override this rule and to give me the 2pm special price. She finally acquiesces. Was it the threat of asking the manager or just the threat of retribution of corporate policies on her?

This cashier had a limiter response to my request. This transaction was by a limiter, someone who obeys the rules of his clan or corporation. This is one of those things, a microcosm of the larger problem of our society. We’ve trained people to uphold stupid rules in the name of capitalism and economics and like the Fear of God, the fear of losing your job is the threat held over one’s head. This process allows so little leeway and flexibility in adapting to a new situation or just a change in the rules of an interaction. This is the same thing when a “robot” human checks your twenty dollar bill. Really?? We train people to ensure our currency is real? Why not check my singles and fives too? Who placed them in charge of the monetary supply and to enforce its rules? Checking for fake money is what banks do.

If you expand these events to the macrocosm, we have the attitudes and behaviors behind totalitarianism. Yes, those kindly German kids during WWII espoused hatred and took arms against the evil doers. Or how we inculcate ten year old boys after they’re taken hostage or kidnapped to fight wars in the Republic of the Congo. The latter by force and the former by cultural desensitization. We’re never far enough away from our past because the chain has always repaired itself after being destroyed.

Down the chain of command, this cashier at Sbarro’s or even your demurrer office colleague can’t take initiative because he or she has been guided by insipid rules. Those regulations have disregarded imagination and stifled customer service. And, me, almost begging for Sbarro’s 2pm discount price just to save $2.00 on overpriced pizza. That’s sick. And the kid, who’s in charge of her little link in the chain holds it together like a good soldier. She finally approved of the discount price after I explained how ridiculous this whole interaction and transaction is. Fuck it!

In the bureaucratic world of higher education, people like her are limiters too. They find ways of doing less at the expense and harm to those who want to do more. The limiters do as little as possible and don’t want to produce work for others. They no longer say it’s not my job. They just don’t act upon requests because their actions are dictated from above. If you don’t cc their supervisor in an email, they won’t do anything to help you unless they perceive some benefit to themselves. For those whose temperament like mine is to create (hopefully abundance), these types of people hinder drive and ambition. Instead of thinking creatively to solve problems and think of solutions, the limiters are injected into the process because we have to ask them about the rules and money and other things that are at odds with the functionality of creativity and thinking.

The limiters are just responders to another limiter above him so that the chain of command isn’t broken but kept welded together like a heavy chain. Even pointing out their folly doesn’t change the structure. The main limiter, the padlock, will eventually rust and break but another will replace it because the structure is built around that lock and we haven’t created another structure that’s independent. In a monotheistic society we have one God, and at the university, we have one lock as in monolimitism. (Sorry, I’m trying to create a new lexicon which will be quoted elsewhere by pseudo-intellectuals to make a name for myself or I will perish from the world of publishing; which I’ve never published before) People are scared to disobey the rules created by the corporations and organizations so they protect their status and jobs by upholding the rules and the processes. Otherwise, they’re jobless. They are the chain and gain strength from its size. They have no other imagination than what is allowed or supplied down that steel link from above. And once you destroy the chain, another appears.

The part that bothers me is that after the chain breaks, the structure repairs itself and replicates elsewhere. When a poor immigrant obtains part of the American dream, like a buying his or her first home, he will hire some low skill worker/s at a the same pay rate he got when he entered the country. We blame the limiters which they should be blamed but we need to change the padlock and chain by inventing something else. What then, you smugly ask?

Nothing. That’s right. We can’t be peaceful and happy in our society. Our differences create obstructions. All our systems have created rules of unhappiness. There’s nothing more to do. We can’t have a system where the rewards are knowledge and peace because there’s too many individuals who want power; there’s always someone with the need to collect things (cars, houses, vacations, money), to desire objects (partners, toys) and some others need to obey just like the church wants you to and has programmed you to do. Obey the rules and you’ll get rewarded in heaven. There’s no heaven. On the outside chance there is, there’ll be more rules, perhaps worse ones than here. How do you know there’s not? Maybe there’s lots of sex and violence too. I wouldn’t want to give up the sex part just because I don’t have a body though I wouldn’t mind not using the toilet.

Is this a cop out? Naw. If you really cared about starving children in your city, you’d ask the government to stop directing money into banal things and give it to the kids. Or we all should quit our jobs, grow and barter food and give it to people for free. Right? Nope. We’re greedy and self-centered, the way our systems have trained us. Go on Sbarro girl and be your righteous corporate self. I think the corporation can become a liable and legal identity (like a person) now and the courts will still continue protecting its legal, non-physical body status and identity.