I don't get it. I don't get having to go to school and learn as much as I possibly can. In retaining such information and graduating to the workforce, there is a disconnect like no other. With 2 years of college experience and a lifetime's worth of abuse in less than 25 years, I believe that I know how people are in most situations. Every single person will try to solve your problems as if they are you, with a fraction of the knowledge of how to do it. People who know the least about something will talk the most about it. It's not about knowing the right way to do something. Every social dance involves confidence in what you do. With the right amount of confidence, you can get anyone to do or believe anything. Everything is really about maintaining a facade (aka “Professionalism”). Under the guise of professionalism, thieves prosper as managers, rapists prosper as teachers, pedophiles prosper as priests, etc. A good majority of management has malignant narcissistic personality disorder or another maladaptive mental illness that they will use to excuse their treatment of people lower than them (many of whom suffer from a mental illness as well). I have heard enough unprofessional talk during my years in management to know that professionalism is nothing more than passive aggression. Inevitably, your coworkers will start to make a name for themselves by dragging others' names through the dirt. Normally this will start at the gossip stage where it's more lighthearted. However, they will get others to take notice and be involved in what is known as pernicious or even ambient abuse. The person who perpetuates the abuse is almost always the most charming person in the office. This person does no wrong even if they are clearly abusing their power. The minute that you try to stand up for yourself against them, ten or fifteen other people who had seemingly nothing to do with your issue now don't look at or talk to you the very next day. The tension can be cut with a knife as you feel the atmosphere change. Not being able to prove that you're being badmouthed by the person clearly in the wrong, you are made out to be the crazy person that can't get along. Many managers are eagle-eyed for when their superiors are around and make a point to show off during that time. For the rest of the time that management isn't around, they're in their car, smoking a cigarette every five minutes, or trying to sleep with workers. Their boss loves them because they work hard every time they see them and they tell them about all the great things that they did during the only time they will work actively all day. The others who deserve promotions are doing that work regardless of if the manager's ass is there to sniff or not. People who are being trained the right way and want to do well will excel for a while. Then, the complacent higher-ups or coworkers with seniority will bit-by-bit get them to lose motivation by encouraging them to half-ass more and more responsibilities and not worry as much. When the trainee listens to management and tries to “loosen up,” management will start talking about how bad their performance is and say “I don't know what happened with them.” Anyone who is in their clique will know the real reasons why people don't work as hard as they “should,” because they have been working to tear down these people due to fear of being outdone. Everything is persona-based and everything changes by the hour. I have been privy to managers lying about missing inventory, covering up other managers stealing money from a safe on camera, covering up drug use and an accident involving drug use, racially-biased abuse, mentally-biased abuse, lying about having sex with people that they outrank, lying about not paying overtime, lying about blatant time theft, not giving lunch breaks, lying about payment plans and credit card charges to customers, lying about follow-ups with sales leads, lying about business inefficiencies, forging signatures, falsifying documents, selling used products as new, charging more than MSRP for items that they aren't supposed to, lying about raises, lying about job descriptions online and in-store, sabotaging sales, sabotaging promotion opportunities, rehiring people previously fired for huge liability concerns, making employees use their own car instead of a company vehicle because they “can't pay” for company repairs and many, many more things that I try my best to only think about once or twice a week. The point is that the main things that everyone seems to advise are to be accountable for your actions, be responsible and be assertive. By doing these three things I have gotten less than nothing in return. By being accountable I try to grow and perform more efficiently only for everyone else not to be held to that standard and for me to have more work thrown my way. By being responsible I try to do the right thing in every situation, calling out problems and such only for those with more responsibility to continuously avoid theirs and downplay everything. By being assertive I have only been targeted and bullied by people above me because they know that I am exposing their bad deeds and they feel threatened. This is all it is in the workplace and your intelligence does not matter. Intelligence is no match for expert idiots who gaslight as their lives depend on it. Why did I pay attention in school? Why are none of my college skills applicable to any position? Why does everyone pretend like life should be enjoyable even though this is all that we get to do, day-in, day-out? My biggest question: Why does everyone pretend like this is the best way to live when we have survived as a species for thousands of years only to become industrial slaves within the last few hundred years? Society chose industrialization even when there were still kids losing limbs and lives in machines. Now the lives of children are so important that Roe v. Wade will be abolished? History is supposed to warn us about what to change as it tends to repeat, yet history is ignored in almost any conversation about capitalism and the way America should proceed in the future. So much to think about, so little time…