Non Sequitur: Do you love your job?

       I once told a manager of mine that, while I enjoy my work, it would never come before my family.  While this is typically viewed as career suicide, I have reasoned this out.  It comes down to defining love.  But first, lets look at my job.

       I work for a company so large, you are currently sitting where you can see something they made.  You may not know it, and I'm not going to say who they are, due to corporate policy.  Which is point one: rather than say you can't ever mention your job, or that you can't blog, or even that you are not allowed to speak ill of the company, they simply made a policy that you don't disclose precisely who you work for online.  A well-reasoned, smart policy, actually.

       Also, they pay above scale.  The benefits to the employee are simple: higher pay.  The benefits to the employer are manifold.  They gain higher morale, better productivity, (because someone is waiting for you to vacate that seat) and generally, a better class of employee.  This idea is so old, and so obviously beneficial to the company, that Henry Ford himself, notorious cheapskate, used it.

       My benefits package is what you would expect from a company that size, and my 401k is managed by better fund managers than yours.  Overall, they are a great employer who respects the workforce they have.  Yet I do not love my job.

       I enjoy my work.  I am doing the kind of work that is challenging, and for the most part, fun.  I am surrounded by like-minded people who enjoy the job at least as much as I do.  The conditions are good, the commute is less than the national average.  Overall I am happy there.  Yet I do not love my job.

       Love is not only a mutual exchange, it is something that has a clear definition.  It is putting someone else's needs before your own.  When you love someone, that is what you do.

       My employer does not love me.  They respect me.  I do not want my employer to love me.  I want them to respect me. They do not put their needs ahead of mine.  The benefits, pay, etc. are not examples of putting my needs first; rather they exemplify the acknowledgement of my needs.  Each of those benefits comes with an offsetting benefit to the company.  Mostly this takes the form of a better workforce.

       I do not love my employer.  I respect them.  (Well, as much as I'm capable of respecting anyone, or anything.)  My family, I love.  Love conquers all.

It is what it is.

       OK.  See that bit of idiocy up there.  The title.  Worst bit of tautology ever conceived by the English speaking world.  Lets begin our forensic disassembly of this moronic bit of language.  First, if course "it is what it is".  What the hell else could it possibly be.  It goes without saying that this expression goes,... without saying.  It not only is a statement of the painfully obvious, it is also...

       Untrue.  The primary argument people raise against M-theory (its string theory, science stuff, you don't actually need to know anything about it, just play along.)  Anyway, the primary argument against it is that it cannot be proven false.  Therefore, reflexively, it cannot be proven true.  Much like the canned idiocy that is, "it is what it is".  Aside from being obvious and untrue it is also...

       Passive aggressive.  There are ways to express that further action will not help that do not place the blame nowhere in particular.  One might say, "Oh, well, what can you do?"  That phrase places the onus for action on the person hearing it.  Also there is "Que sera, sera."  or in English, "What will be, will be."  This at least places the inevitable in the future where it may or may not be acted on.  But moreover these phrases are used in particular ways, to achieve effect.  "It is what it is" is a phrase used in a host of inappropriate ways.  "Why aren't I getting a raise this year?"  "Well there's no money left in the budget so, it is what it is."  It adds nothing to the conversation except a second.  That is a second you will not get back.  

       A coworker once used that banal idiocy in a conversation with me and I told him, "Stop.  Don't use that moronic phrase, man.  You're better than that."  He agreed.  (Although I did catch him saying it again)  Certain phrases, like this one should be avoided at all costs, because it tells the world they are dealing with an idiot...

       Who is not worth talking to.  There's the silver lining.  I no longer need to wonder if the person I'm talking to is the sort of person who when being asked about the average level of intelligence replies, with no sense of irony, "I think most people are smarter than that."  (actual conversation.)  "Than average"  I said.   "Yes"

"You are saying that most people are smarter than average?"  I condensed.  "Yes"  They replied.  

       But if they had replied with "it is what it is" I would have known them for an idiot without the need for clarification.  (Most people may be smarter than the average level, if there are more profoundly retarded people than geniuses.  But such things are beyond the grasp of the person I was talking to, and not within the scope of the conversation.  Just for clarity's sake).  By the way, I have sworn off ever uttering such ridiculous drivel as that cursed phrase.  The only time I have employed it is here, and it will be the last.