Friday, July 6, 2012

Are traits such as carelessness, laziness and procrastination as bad as 'evil intent' or jealousy?

I had, till now,  been easygoing about certain traits in people  such as laziness, procrastination, inefficiency and so on. These traits did not upset me much and I  would forgive the display of such traits easily.  My reasons for this easy forgiveness about such traits:   Lazy people or procrastinating people(or whatever trait) are basically 'good & decent' people ;  "all human beings have faults";"these people are not evil"; "everyone is careless sometime"; "I too  am careless at times". Infact, I have been very forgiving and accepting of any triats or behaviours which I believed were not "evil' or had 'evil intent' underlying them.

I had however, been very unforgiving  about behaviours such as lying, cheating, stealing, harming others, wilfully hurting others, jealousy, etc. I found these impossibly hard to forgive as I believed that these behaviours were evil or had an underlying 'evil' motive .

Something happened recently that made me rethink my easygoing attitude towards the traits I believed should be forgiven, as they were 'not evil'. I am now, no longer, easy-going about these traits.

Three to four weeks ago, someone close to me was  drastically affected by the laziness, procrastination and inefficiency shown by a HR staff in his organization. Here is the bald, brief version of the story.

  Due to the inefficiency of this staff in HR, my friend  did not get his H1 visa; consequently  the great job and pay  he had been offered a week before was withdrawn.  To continue to stay legally in USA,  he shelled out his meagre savings and quickly enrolled  into a university(a third rate one at that!). By enrolling in this university, he got his student visa and will not get turfed out of USA.  His future plans have been put on hold for one more year..plans including clearing bank loans, getting married,  visiting his family, buying a better car,etc. Thanks to the  inefficiency, procrastination, laziness, lack of knowledge and sheer pig-headedness of this HR staff,  my friend's  path went from prosperity to  basic existence!
 My friend was badly upset for a week but thankfully he has recovered....he is a pretty resilient guy and  I hope he has  not become permanently embittered by this experience!


 Traits such as laziness, procrastination, inefficiency, stupidity, carelessness,  do not fall  on the 'good-evil'  dimension. Yet, these traits or behaviours are NOT innocuous; These traits too  can have terrible effects on people's lives.
The lazy person or careless person  may not have any evil intent when they do things but they can still cause serious harm to others. For example, people have died due to doctor's carelessness; people have been killed by an engineeer's inefficient work on roads and railways; lives have been ruined by procrastination of the people in power. The list goes on and  on.

. A lot of grief can be caused by 'good, decent and well meaning' people who display behaviours  which can negatively impact others lives. Detective Thomas Hauk in 'The Wire' is one example who comes to mind. His carelessness, procrastination and stupidity had such terrible consequences on the lives of others...it was unbelievable and unpardonable.

The sad fact of life is that, there are people with such traits in powerful positions, where they can cause a lot of grief and continue to cause grief, year after bloody year. Yet, they are not removed from their positions or asked to improve or punished! They continue to damage the lives of people by their unchanging stupidity, carelessness, etc.The HR staff I mentioned above, has affected not just one peron's life this year but at least a few! This staff has procrastinated in the previous years too, leading to other employees not getting thier H1 visas in the same way as my friend; yet the management, has not done anything about this!

The same thing is seen in other organizations too. I have seen people, who mess up other people's lives,  Yet these people, continue, in their positions, without any improvement.

In one organization, dealing with mental health, I have seen two people, a psychologist and a psychometrist doing almost zero work, year after year for decades! Yet they have neither been kicked out or reprimended and made to improve. The psychologist has now earned about a million dollars(about 90k per year) doing nothing and so has the psychometrist!!! The work load on thier collegues is more as these two bums dont do any work. If you want to know, they do no other work too at the organization such as teaching students, participating in research or attending to the extra works which are there in any organization. The psychometrist thinks she is fooling everyone by giving a gift to all in her department i.e. a handful of chocolates and a greeting card! Does she think, that the people are fools who will fall for her chocolates??? I am so pissed off with these two but I am not in a position of power to kick them out! I wish I had the nerve to do something about this...but the cowardice which seems to be a malise in either my department or in Canada is affecting me too! 

1 comment:

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