It took me a while to take that video in. Clearly it was an unscripted ramble, and I found it hard work to figure it out, perhaps because of my general difficulty in taking in the spoken word. Eventually I had to get AI to convert it to text, which made it a bit easier. I was forever wondering where he was going, though once I'd got to the end, I could see the relevance of his earlier remarks, which seemed pretty random when I first heard them.
Basically I think he's saying that he's already got enough on his plate just surviving with ASD holding him back all the time, though his complaints about heat pumps being prohibitively expensive in the UK etc. seem the kind of problems that everybody but the wealthy have to deal with. The problem of chavs blasting music out all the damn time is likely also the kind of crap most of us dislike, though I suppose ASD sensory issues make it worse.
Then he gets on with labouring his main point - he's been tiring himself out needlessly by working beyond his job description, and he's stopped doing that. People come to him for help, but rather than simply passing their inquiries on to the right person and bowing out of the issue, he's been following it through to ensure it gets done right, because he feels that many of those "right people" aren't very competent. It's not his job to do that, and so (I suppose) he's being doing work for which the management gives him no credit.
I'm sure there's merit in his idea, but it didn't resonate so well with me because of my personal experiences. For one thing, in my jobs the management never bound me very tightly to my job description and nobody appraised my performance by reference to that. It was commonly accepted that if everybody worked to their job descriptions, the place would grind to a standstill. Anybody refusing to help on the grounds of working to rule would be seen as belligerent. For another thing, I hate it when a service provider just shrugs me off with "That's not my problem. Next, please."
Like I say, I see merit in his idea. Job descriptions are probably considered more important in the world generally, and where that's the case, the job does rather force you to either break your back or to become somewhat procrustean about what you're going to do. Even so, I took an immediate dislike to his friend who simply didn't reply to emails asking for his help if he felt they'd come to the wrong person. Apart from spam and other hostile communications, it's very rare I don't reply to an email. With me it's an ethic. Somebody asks you for help, you don't ignore them, and you don't "give them enough rope to hang themselves with" as he puts it. You try a bit harder than that. If you know you're directing them to somebody who will screw up the job, you at least warn them. I guess that's the kind of mess we end up in if we worship job descriptions too devoutly.
He implies he is making this change as part of the process of improving his sense of self worth. I'm sure he couldn't have gone on as he'd been doing before, and that some change of the kind was necessary, but he expresses no regret at the fact that the system has forced him to abandon his compassion. I would have thought compassion and willingness to help others was one of the things that a good sense of self worth give you.
What I've written here probably comes over as rather a harsh critique. I didn't mean it to be. I did rather like the guy despite my misgivings about what he said. I'm just by instinct rather blunt in my error-checking. And it's just my 2 cents.
08 Jan 2025, 4:25 am
