This is a story about key performance indicators...
Most of us have salaried jobs and most of us have line managers. We sit down once or twice a year with our manager - the boss - and we agree some performance objectives for us to try and meet. When we have an appraisal of how well things have been going at work, we look at whether or not we managed to achieve what we were supposed to do.
I hate to have to break it to you, but what you're doing is complete and utter bollocks.
In hierarchical organisations, your pay rise and promotion prospects are decided by somebody who's been promoted into a position of total incompetence. Intrinsic to their very existence, organisations have a pyramid structure, where there are vast numbers of people trying to reach the next rung on the ladder; the next layer of middle-management.
You would hope that hard work and rhetoric about meritocratic culture would help you get ahead in life, but you've been playing the game by the wrong rules.
Work is a popularity contest. If you want to get the best pay rise and the best promotion, you have to be liked by people who are more senior than you are, and you have to make your boss look good: those are the only two rules.
If you are not liked by your boss and you didn't do any of the things that you were supposed to do, it doesn't matter at all, so long as you did things that make your boss look like he or she is 'managing' you effectively. If you are liked by multiple senior people, then your boss will not be able to block any ambitions you have for promotion, which is pretty much all your boss is trying to do - bosses are promoted until they can no longer be promoted, and then they block their subordinates from progressing in their careers.
Being liked by your peers and/or your subordinates is completely unimportant. Nobody gives a shit about the underlings' opinions. Nobody is ever going to ask your peer group what they think about you. Therefore, to be popular amongst people at the same level as you - or below - is only to waste precious time that you could spend impressing more senior people.
It is notable, that at no point have I mentioned doing any work. This is because doing work is a complete waste of time. Nobody ever got a pay rise or a promotion for doing actual work. If you're busy doing work, then how are you going to have any time to make yourself popular or do things that make your boss look good? If you do the things that you agreed with your boss, how can your boss take any credit for doing anything other than just doing their basic job?
Thus, organisations have disincentivised work and incentivised spending time kissing asses and yelling loudly about how great we are, while we attempt to get promoted into positions of incompetence.
Seriously, if you think you're good at your job, you're stuck at a dead-end - you're going nowhere.
Pictured above is a plastic crate full of empty wine bottles, beer bottles and beer cans. When the plastic crate is full, I can count the empty containers, read the ABV (Alcohol By Volume) off each one, and total up the aggregate amount of alcohol that I have consumed in a given time period. This gives me a data point, which I can record in a spreadsheet.
You might assume that there would be an inverse correlation between my alcohol consumption and my monthly take-home pay, but in fact, the very opposite is true - the more I drink, the more I earn.
I'm not going to argue with the data. The facts are the facts. My consumption of alcohol is the best predictor of my income. I can't tell you what the causality is, but I can tell you for certain that there is a correlation. However, I will tell you what my hypothesis is though.
Drinking is a social lubricant. I'm prone to saying and doing regrettable things while under the affluence of incahol, but the lunchtime 'sesh' or the after-work beers are not subject to any organisational hierarchies - we are all equals when inebriated. Being drinking buddies with the bosses never did any harm to anybody's career, provided you are not sick on anybody's shoes.
Being hungover compromises your ability to function, forcing you to find creative excuses for your lack of productivity. Hanging around the water-cooler or coffee machine - nursing a sore head - you often encounter your partners in crime from the previous night's drinking escapades, many of whom will be senior managers. When later questioned "what the f**k have you been doing all day?" you have a absolute watertight excuse that you have been talking to some highly respected member(s) of your organisation.
Over time, the objective of achieving tangible productive output is replaced by the skill of being drunk or hungover for most of the time that you're at work, while also looking busy and making influential friends.
If we consider a hypothetical scenario. Subject A works hard and drinks very little, but subject B works very little and drinks very hard. We then plot the salaries and alcohol consumption onto a comparative graph. When we do this, we can see that subject A is badly paid, whereas subject B's wages are significantly higher and climb steadily - well above the rate of inflation.
Furthermore, if we measure our hourly wage, based on the amount of sober and productive time that we give to our employers, we can see that the heavy drinkers - at least in my own case - are paid an astonishing amount of money for their work.
One caveat: drinking a bottle of vodka every night alone at home, is out of proportion with the amount of alcohol being consumed with members of your organisation. When social drinking metamorphosises into pure alcoholism, your hourly sober wage becomes infinite. You are swigging from a bottle hidden in your desk or your gym bag, in order to maintain your state of intoxication throughout the working day... you are not making your boss look good or increasing your popularity with senior managers. In short, your days are numbered.
Great companies are built on the foundations of alcohol & coffee. Some of the most amazing people I've ever met are 'functional alcoholics' but the pejorative term seems to be an oxymoron. It's impossible to decide whether alcohol gives us the 'Dutch courage' to tackle horribly stressful things, or whether people who shoulder great responsibility, are reaching for the bottle to salve their anxiety.
Of course, I am not encouraging you to drink intoxicating liquor, but it would be dishonest of me to deny the facts contained in the data and perpetuate the myth that sobriety and productivity are virtuous, in the amoral world of business.
One must question one's motives for continuing existence. Are you here to pass on your genes - to rear your progeny - and if so then why are you not having unprotected sex at every opportunity? Are you here to maximise the amount of time that you are drunk or high, and if so then why are you not drinking morning, noon and night?
Some of the more conceited individuals who walk amongst us - including myself - talk about leaving their "mark" on the world. I imagine leaving a fucking great big smoking crater, like the one from that huge asteroid that struck the Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs. That's not to say I want to commit mass murder, but simply that I'm on a trajectory travelling at high speed, and I have absolutely no idea what I'm going to smash into and what damage I'm going to cause.
To avoid the difficult questions and the certainty that you will die and leave a hole in people's lives, is folly.
Why is it that I gravitate towards brilliant individuals, who are never teetotal vegans who abstain from sex, masturbation and everything else that might be vaguely enjoyable? Why is it that when you scratch the surface of anything that glitters like gold, there's a strangely alluring stench of debauchery?
If I wanted to die in obscurity, written off as an addict and an alcoholic, would I not have just allowed society to label me and blame me for everything that's fucked up and has no other convenient scapegoat? How can we hold William S. Burroughs and Ernest Hemingway in such high regard, when they epitomise alcoholism, heroin addiction and suicide?
To say I'll die a meaningless death is apparently untrue ("you'd be missed") but to say that my death will have repercussions - like ripples in a pond - is conceited and a dreadful cliché... many suicides are motivated by the idea that it's the grandest of gestures.
We must all confront our own mortality, and every day that you spend 'doing your job' is just a waste of fucking time.
