I have come to believe that anyone who has paid the exorbitant price of higher education should be rewarded with something similar to frequent flier miles so that when age, wisdom and relevance kick in former students could re-take, at no charge, those courses which they had blown off in youthful ignorance the first time around.
If that were the case I would run back to my class on economics which focused on the work of John Kenneth Galbraith, a brilliant man with a caustic wit who made economics accessible and meaningful to the ordinary person – something I would only learn by accident years later when re-entering the work force after spending the better part of 19 years at home raising my six children (the hardest and most rewarding of all jobs).
Since I do not have frequent flier miles for classes, I resort to the next best thing and re-read the college texts that still reside in my library at home. Galbraith’s The Affluent Society is among my favorites. It was in these pages that Galbriath illuminated for me a tendency in the workplace that, as my father often said, “gets my goat.” It is “the art of genteel and elaborately concealed idleness…”
Galbraith draws back the curtain on a practice that many truly believe they have perfected: “Indeed, it is possible that the ancient art of evading work has been carried in our time to its highest level of sophistication, not to say elegance. One should not suppose that it is an accomplishment of any particular class, occupation, or profession. Apart from the universities where its practice has the standing of a scholarly rite, the art of genteel and elaborately concealed idleness may well reach its highest development in the upper executive reaches of the modern corporation.”
Slackers, my mother would call them, observing them herself from her always busy desk in a local high school. They can be found at every level of the work force, but it seems most distasteful when they have a position of responsibility, ignoring the truth that “much will be required of the person entrusted with much, and still more will be demanded of the person entrusted with more.”
A human resource director once pointed out to me, “Increased salary comes with increased responsibility.” Maybe that should have a codicil:
Increased salary comes with increased responsibility that is accepted and fulfilled.
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