My Love-Hate Relationships

There are people that I love in Cube City. There are also people that I hate. And then there are people that I sometimes love and sometimes hate.

It's the love-hate relationships that keep cubicle life interesting, though the hate seems to live longer than the love. Yesterday, I hated a co-worker and everything that person stood for. Today, I love that co-worker and am thrilled that we work together. We're a good team.

Yeah, it's totally fucked up.

I think part of it is that none of us really know what the hell we're doing most of the time. We take a bunch of stabs in the dark and blame each other for our failures on the inside while smiling and nodding like team players on the outside. Sometimes it just builds up and we've got to beat the shit out of each other. That's the hate. It's not really hate towards a person. It's hate towards the system. People aren't trained to do their jobs correctly, and you really can't blame them for that. The system has failed them. But the system doesn't care, so you have to take it out on a person who has feelings. That's what makes you feel better. Make somebody with feelings cry, and then you're cleansed.

There are times like today, when things pull together and we've moved past crying, that we can feel the love and sense of accomplishment. We can realize why we do this for a living (besides for the money, of course). But don't fool yourself. We'll have a client meeting soon that will remind us that we really don't love each other because we don't know what we're doing. It's back to the drawing board. The cycle will soon move back to hate, but today I will feel the love.