by Shay519
I am a college graduate. I have an Associates Degree in Business Management and a Bachelors Degree in Organizational Management. If I were looking for a new job, I could feel confident in replying to any advertisements that listed a "four year degree" as a requirement. Why do companies prefer a four-year degree? To prove that you have what it takes to spend 90% of your waking hours working on papers and projects, that when all is said and done, will have absolutely no impact on the rest of your life. In addition, it lets the HR person know that you have at least $20,000 worth of student loans to pay back, thereby giving you a reason to stay at even the most mind-numbing job.
And really, what did you learn in college that pertains to your everyday job? (Excluding the obvious, lawyer, doctor, dentist, etc.) I still have several textbooks from college on Business Management (because the bookstore always had some bizarre new reason not to buy them back) and in paging through them, I ran across some familiar sounding topics. Topics that I needed to analyze in a 10-page, single-spaced paper to be rewarded with a passing grade. In the years since I have finished college, not once have I been able to say to anyone at my office, "Relax everyone, I know what to do. I wrote a paper on that!"
For example, one book spends an entire chapter on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. (Come on, you know this sounds familiar) Abraham Maslow hypothesized that within every human being is a hierarchy of five needs:
1. Physiological needs: food, drink, shelter, sex, blah blah blah.
2. Safety needs: security and protection from physical and emotional harm as well as assurance that physical needs will continue to be met.
3. Social needs: affection, belongingness, acceptance and friendship.
4. Esteem needs: internal esteem factors such as self-respect, autonomy, and achievement; and external esteem factors such as status, recognition, and attention.
5. Self-actualization needs: growth, achieving one's potential, and self-fulfillment; the drive to become what one is capable of becoming.
What Utopian world was Maslow living in, and did he ever have to work in an office, much less one where your yearly raises appeared in the form of the owner’s new BMW? With all due respect to Mr. Maslow, I would like to modify these needs to reflect what is going on in today's offices.
1. Physiological needs: food, caffeine, aspirin, shelter, and having the temperature in the office reflect the season of the year. In the winter, it would be warm instead of tropical and in the summer it would be cool as opposed to arctic. This would eliminate the need to keep an extra short sleeve shirt and a down parka in the office at all times.
2. Safety needs: Security and protection from an insane supervisor who does not understand the concept of "lead time." The freedom to explain that you cannot make a vendor ship a product that has not yet been manufactured. It is extremely difficult to get people to ship items that do not exist.
3. Social needs: Affection, belongingness, acceptance and friendship. How about just knowing that a disgruntled co-worker will not blow your head off for accidentally using their stapler?
4. Esteem needs: He's got to be kidding? Its called PAYDAY.
5. Self-actualization needs: Only met by becoming self-employed.
And Maslow's not the only one with deranged ideas. We've got Douglas McGregor with the Theory X and Theory Y assumptions of motivation. Theory X is the assumption that employees dislike work, are lazy, seek to avoid responsibility, and must be coerced to perform. May I just say that Mr. McGregor has a firm grasp on the obvious. Theory Y is the assumption that employees are creative, seeks responsibility, and can exercise self-direction. Who are these creative, happy employees? I'm guessing he was referring to the mentally ill.
There are so many more theories of management and motivation that I have just given myself a huge headache. Thank God for the aspirin. Another hugely expensive and even less thought provoking textbook, dedicates an entire chapter to "Active Listening Requirements." Wait, I have to go back, I wasn't really listening. It spends three pages on developing interpersonal skills. If you don't have well-developed interpersonal skills by now, I don't think three pages of text is going to do it for you. A position along the lines of a toll collector may be more your speed.
Frankly, I don't think any of these theories will prepare you for life in an office. After some careful thought, a great deal of aspirin and mammoth quantities of caffeine, I have come up with some courses that I think could be very useful in the real world.
This course will explain the intricacies of the office grapevine and how to find out what is really going on behind all those motivational posters. It will also explain how to get the dirt on even the touchiest of office scandals, without seeming too interested or nosy. (No prerequisite.)