Day #71 - Sorry to bother you...(while you're at work)

A couple of days ago I went to a local DIY and hardware centre to try and buy a plastic garden chair. You've seen them, they are rounded at the back and injection moulded, usually found in white or green. There must be one in every home in the country. I walked up to an employee of this hardware shop and asked very politely; "Do you have any plastic chairs, the sort of garden furniture variety, like you might see on a patio?" - response; "I don't know. If you ask that guy over there or even try the customer services desk they should be able to help you." Well, I must be getting quite ornery in my old age because I thought that the whole purpose of having staff moving around a shop floor included looking after the people who are the very reason that the shop exists. Not so it seems. I know that jobs like the one that this chap is in are badly paid and tedious but that isn't really my fault. I've worked in some very badly paid jobs but of all of them one in particular stands out a mile. For legal reasons I cannot name the job or the chap that owned the company but I'd love to. When Michael Douglas' character in the movie "Wall Street", Gordon Gekko, declared that "Greed is Good!" I reckon more than just a few budding entrepreneurs took on this phrase as a mantra of commercial live-saving nous. They came to believe that by being greedy you were doing the right thing - you were living according to the zeitgeist that emerged in the late 1980's and continued unabated right up until the early part of this millenium. The interesting thing is that even now there are many businesses that follow the Gekko trajectory feeling that the characteristic of being greedy will grease the wheels on any commercial enterprise. I don't understand it.

Being driven is a good thing as is having ambition and a desire to succeed but letting greed be the governor of everything that you do erodes morality and undermines any true human virtue. It may be a profitable thing but it is not something honourable.