A cave dweller would never admit this, and I never will if asked, but all of our anger and frustration and subtle sabotage stems from our own inability to feel useful at work. I have the intelligence, the skills, and abilities to make a huge difference at my company. What I lack is motivation.

I hate waking up in the morning. I hate driving to work. I hate that the fact that I’m too much of a wuss to quit (until now). I hate being carbon copied on an email. I hate filing cabinets with missing keys and smelling other people’s food in my cube and loud talkers and doting mothers and power struggles and management patting itself on the back and expense forms and ‘touching base’ and all of the things that stop a person from being productive and useful and a valuable member of society.

What makes somebody a valuable member of society? Is it your job? For a lot of people it is. For a cave dweller it is certainly not. And it gnaws at you constantly. You know that you are wasting your career while people are out their trying to cure cancer and build houses for refugees. But there are also people working minimum wage struggling to get by. How can I throw away a decent paying corporate job? I’m lucky to even have one.

What do I do? My friends are in awe of what I’m capable of getting away with. My friend Todd calls me to let me know when he’s going to be in town and I either do a no-call-no-show or call in sick. He’s disappointed when I actually have to go in for some reason. It’s a source of entertainment.

My roommate tracks my work attendance and performance as he would a stock. He’s constantly wanting me to ‘sink lower.’ At first it was pushing the bounds of small things like coming in half an hour late, not shaving for a week, or getting a haircut during work. Those things seem to innocent now.

For every time I sank lower, I also needed to rebound. My performance bottoms at cave dweller and reaches the heights of actively disengaged. Around July of this past year, I couldn’t help but enjoy the project I was working on matter how hard I tried to resist. I had moment when I actually felt that I wanted to further my career.

It’s a difficult decision. I am fully confident that if I tried my hardest I could really become a leader within the organization. I honestly believe that there’s nothing I couldn’t do if I applied to myself wholly to it.

But is it worth it?

Everything a cave dweller does in regards to his or here work and career can be boiled down to that one question. If I bust my ass, put in every effort I can, work overtime, and rise the corporate two or three rungs at a time, is that worth it to me? One on the biggest sticklers for me is all in the math.

Let’s say that I am currently getting paid $50,000 a year. This salary is paid out to me regardless of how many hours I work. An average work week for me involves coming in around 9:30, taking lunch from 11:20 until 1:15, and heading home around 4:30 or so. All told, that equals around 5 hours of ‘work.’ (Notice how I’m being extremely generous by not even totaling the time spent going to the bathroom, taking walks around the building, and looking up stuff on the internet.)

Also, I take at least two weeks worth of sick days/extra vacation days/no show no calls a year that an actively engaged individual wouldn’t even dream about.

Now, this may get a bit fuzzy, but let’s just forget about the actual days off provided by the company since I would receive them regardless of my level of engagement. So, I’m going to take my 50 grand and divide by 50 to get me weekly average. (For an actively engaged individual I will divide by 52 since they don’t get the extra two I do. If you don’t like this method, then just skip past the example.)

$50,000 / 50 weeks = $1,000 a week
$1,000 a week / 25 hours a week = $40 dollars an hour

In my company, the next level up from my current position makes around $60,000—a healthy 20% increase from my current level. We will also assume that if I do work my hardest, management will recognize this within one year and give me the salary associated with the position. (Fat chance.)

The actively engaged around me speak of crazy things like working overtime and dialing in on a day off and skipping lunch and not taking all of their vacations days (!) and taking on more work.

I’m going to say that an actively engaged individual works 50 hours a week. Of course, that number goes up much higher more some of them.

So it all pays off, and you get a promotion and raise. Again being cautious, lets see you work 50 hours a week even though you will probably be ‘taking on more work.’

$60,000 / 52 weeks = $1,153.85 a week
$ 1,153.85 / 50 hours a week = $23.08 an hour

Even with a nice 10% of 6k (highly taxed, might I add), the actively engaged is still going to come out behind in the long run if you look at the hourly wage. I have to point out that the actively engaged needs to work an entire year at the $50,000 salary before getting promoted to 60. During that period, he or she is making $19.23 an hour. The cave dweller is making double that! (Said I was good at rationalization, didn’t I?)

I guess a lot of it depends of how much you value your free time. If certain people worked the hours I did, the amount of free time on their hands would begin to drive them crazy. On the majority of those extra days and hours off, there won’t be too many people you know available to hang since they are all busy with their jobs.

Technorati Tags: promotion, career advancement, salary

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