Workplaces can sometimes be like the dentist’s fish tank in Finding Nemo. Your cast of characters is made up of the most outlandish specimens, each with such unique stories of how they got there. There is a comradeship in their shared incarceration. The cast includes some favorite most likely to get ahead (Nemo), a lurking mindless menace (girl with braces), and (the subject of this post) a complicated, isolated, touchy, fiercely possessive and territorial type or two (a composite of the crab and the yellow tang in Nemo’s tank). It is striking how many managers so wantonly display such “my bubbles” behavior, pouting when something or someone they arrogate for themselves as a symbol of their suzerainty should signal that it has a mind of its own, or should omit to pay homage to their status as overlords. Like clockwork, one can expect either a tantrum, a fit of surliness, of touchy aggressiveness, or of sabotage. It is astonishing how sharp and immediate the transformation can be from an urbane, professional, seasoned, objective leader to a petulant, crass, insecure and destructive one.
It reminds one of Joseph’s Conrad’s theme that the distinctions between civilized London and the “heart of darkness” – inhuman savagery – collapse quickly in extreme circumstances. The drama that unfolds in pathological and politicized workplaces can often provoke the same kind of accelerated degeneration into a primitive and vicious state. Honest, well-intentioned, self-respecting folks can easily fall in the trap of indulging the warped appetites of such individuals as the most convenient and painless way of keeping their destructive tendencies at bay. Confronting their shortfalls without the safety net of a culture that puts human dignity and fair play above all else runs the risk of getting oneself sucked into a war of attrition. How rare it is to find leaders who are selfless in their motives, and are driven by a higher purpose. Mahogany row often reeks of mediocrity.
Notes to Self 
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