Gifts for grads: a cubicle and a grumpy boss
DEAR graduates,
It is with great honor I address you here today, knowing that many of you are wearing flannel pajamas under those polyester gowns, if that. You made it through four years at this demanding institution wearing the same clothes you wore to bed the night before -- eating pizza for breakfast, drinking lattes for lunch. Congratulations.
All that is about to change.
Let me assure you that you are about to step out into what can be a very lonely planet. Remember those 8 o’clock classes you quit taking after freshman year? You are about to start 45 years of them. You will arrive at your desk to face a grumpy boss who arrived an hour before you and will stay an hour after you go home. Be nice to him. This psych case controls your future.
Why listen to him when Coldplay and Weezer have so much more to offer? Here is why: Because he is paying you. Not much. But he’s paying you.
Be assured that this cretin does not give a hoot about your self-esteem. He does not care that your dog has herpes, or that your boyfriend just had a brain transplant. He doesn’t care that the Dodgers are playing the Padres this afternoon and you have third-row tickets. He doesn’t care that you are sick. Or dead. Or resurrected. Or of another, better world. He really doesn’t care.
This boss cares only what his immediate boss thinks, a person you will probably never meet. Consider yourself lucky. She eats young employees like you for sushi.
When you lose this job, don’t worry. There are plenty more out there just like it. More bosses. More cubicles. More clients. More deadlines.
Little by little you will rise within an organization. You will learn to eat lunch at your desk. You will begin to forsake personal calls and reduce the time you spend answering personal e-mail to four hours a day. It’ll be difficult, but you’ll do it.
You will show great discipline and drive, till one day someone less qualified than you will get the promotion you thought should obviously be yours. You will need to smile then. Shake that person’s hand. The world is filled with such little pranks.
But eventually cream rises to the top, and so will you. In your limited free time, you will meet someone special and spend too much on a wedding. On the honeymoon, you’ll get pregnant.
Child-care is a killer, but you’ll find a way to make it work. You will buy a house you can’t afford and lease a little coupe you really shouldn’t. Just as you’re adding that extra bedroom, you’ll get laid off. You’ll find another job. You’ll get pregnant again. The kids will make a mess of the furniture. Your company will merge. They’ll take away your retiree medical.
One day, you’ll be blowing out a birthday cake and count 40 candles. Forty? Where’d they all come from? Forty?! Where’d the years go? Why are these jeans suddenly so tight?
A short time later, you’ll be blowing out another cake. It’ll have 50 candles. You’ll get laid off. You’ll find another job. It won’t be easy, but cream rises to the top, remember? So will you -- again.
And before long you’ll be sitting in a big college hall just like this one, wondering where the years went and how your baby grew up so darned fast.
“I wonder if she ate a decent breakfast,” you’ll wonder. “I wonder if she’s wearing shoes.” You’ll look up at a lectern, where some clown like me will be giving your son or daughter a few priceless pieces of advice. Which are -- and always will be -- along the lines of:
1. Be relentless about the things you love.
2. Leave behind the things you don’t.
3. Never lease when you can buy. Never rent when you can own. Never hug when you can kiss. Never kiss when you can ... well, you get the idea.
Finally, regarding those upcoming job interviews, he’ll tell them the most important thing of all: Just be themselves.
Please be yourselves -- in your interviews and in your life. It’s so much simpler. It’s so much easier.
Your prospective new boss may turn out to be the biggest idiot you’ve ever met. Most first bosses are. But in this country, you don’t get to be an idiot for no reason. In fact, we have some of the very best idiots in the entire world, many of them based right here in L.A.
Indeed, the person who interviews you may have a few glaring weaknesses, as a boss and as a human being. But chances are he or she can smell a con artist from a mile away. So in job interviews, don’t be one of those Trump-inspired pretenders. Just be yourself. And face the consequences.
Here’s lookin’ at you, kids. As they say on the playground: You’ve got next.
Chris Erskine can be reached at chris.erskine@latimes.com.
