The thoughts expressed in this image I made and below are why I recently quit my customer service position at a video game company. You have to read the whole thing to win the prize!
Humans are capable of accomplishing amazing feats for very little reason. On May 25, 1961, President John Kennedy requested one small little favor of the people of the United States; He suggested we go to the moon. On top of that, he said we should consider getting this done sometime before 1970. He gave the citizens of the US less than an entire decade to start a program from scratch that would land a human being on the surface of the moon. What amazes me the most is not that his challenge was accepted, met, and exceeded. Not at all. It was that some ability inside human beings exists allowing us to accomplish the impossible with very little motivation. While I’d like to think the United States wanted to impress John Kennedy, or wanted to give a big fat middle finger to the rest of the world, I believe the motivation was rooted on one factor: Someone was willing to pay for it.
While a politician giving a grand speech in front of a US flag on the steps of an old building at our nation’s capital might be epic, it’s still only a motivational speech. Why should I be more motivated by a politician making that speech than say a window washer? Because, the politician is basically implying that his words are backed by a proposal that will soon be made to find funding to support this new endeavor. When a President says we get to use his wallet, the Treasury, people line up around the block to get a piece of the pie.
At this point, I’ve begun using metaphors, so I know it’s time to get back on track. Shit. Did it again. Cat’s out of the bag. Shit! One more: the rat race.
Money is our prime motivator. As much as I want to believe we can move mountains with the power of love…helping your brother move is hardly flying to the moon. Fixing your mom’s computer is hardly walking outside a space shuttle while traveling at 17,500 mph. Even though Huey Lewis declared love is “…the power that makes the world go round”, human beings still won’t achieve greatness without a little something on the side. Again, even though I know most men would barter over degrees of sexual favors as currency, nobody is going to invent a flying car because they were horny. (Well, Japan might.)
Not that I haven’t seen people do some crazy shit just because they were bored. Check out what Hitler was capable of in lieu of having friends, or the iPhone to keep him busy. Yes, I just wrote that Hitler’s regime killed millions of people on the premise that he was bored. I really have no idea what his motivations were. But, I’m willing to bet it had something to do with money. Please get past that little attempt at invoking humor while referencing Hitler, and let’s discuss why I mentioned earlier that money is what I consider to be a prime motivator.
By money, I mean currency. Whether it’s gold, silver, beads, pennies, or a “prize” like I said in my first paragraph, human beings love exchanging similar items for services and goods. We’ve developed a view ways to acquire our modern form of currency. The most common is earning it while under the employ of a company. People will do “whatever it takes” while employed on the promise of getting paid at the end of their service. Unfortunately, for me, I choose to do that whatever while working for a glorified call center. For almost five years I poured my whole being into providing customer service for a popular video game.
While I wasn’t developing a space rover that would survey the Martian soil, I was under a different kind of challenge. On a daily basis I communicated with frustrated and irate customers, dealt with backlash from terrible managerial and departmental decisions, was under constant pressure to achieve results based on metrics that were always “good but not good enough”, faced an increasing work load where every task imagined was given to you on top of the pile you were already burdened by, was shamed by the way the rest of the company and other industry members felt about your role, saw and had to embrace constant changes to our workflow that are never fully explained, had received no inclination that promotion was a possibility, learned more and more that there were forces in place to prevent you from getting promoted period, found the gap between your department and the rest growing at an alarming rate, met a growing lack of respect from peers and management combined, struggled while trying to contribute to the success of our company and never understood why so much effort was put into doing the opposite from corporate, worked every holiday because “hey, why not”, fought to do my job in a full eight hour day without our support tool program crashing or killing our mobility. Really. I’ve got some major first world problems. Or, at least I did.
At first it was easy to joke about the constant pressures of the job and overall silliness of the ineptitude of persons who chose to make customer service a career goal. But, really, it was joking in the same way you would equate Hitler murdering millions of people out of boredom. In other words, more sad and not funny. Eventually, for me, the joking became so absurd I came around to realizing that I simply couldn’t press on anymore. Working a shit job is a young man’s game. It was becoming increasingly impossible for me to tell people who played our game how to find their way in a virtual world, because my motivation was lacking.
Financially, living where I do is very difficult. While I was able to manage for a couple years, surviving long term just started to seem impossible. Don’t want to cause any panic attacks from the sudden shock of saying this, but call centers don’t pay very well. Once you get back in your chair, I want to surprise you again. Sure, money motivated me to do some retarded soul sucking activities to make other people rich, but I knew the risk I was taking when I came back to work for this company. All this talk until now about money being a motivator is actually irrelevant to my decision to leave the company. I just though it would be really easy to say I quit because I wasn’t making enough money. Sadly, that had nothing to do with it. In fact, let’s make a new paragraph to actually explain what it took to quit.
I had a career goal when I landed back at the same department I left a couple years earlier. Not exactly a groundbreaking statement, nor was I the first to think of it. But, I really thought I had a plan. Won’t go into details here, but I was determined to meet that goal. After two additional penniless years I began to realize it wasn’t going to happen if I kept on the same path. Many nights were spent contemplating how I was going to hop out of my circular maze of the rat race. Only one concept rose to the challenge. And, it’s really embarrassing. At 36 years old, I feel dumb saying it. Before I do though, understand I spent my life in the video game bubble. This is a bubble where age is meaningless. Video games and the culture it comes with are invulnerable to criticism once you break the hurdle of living at home with your parents. I broke out of that some time ago, but there was one thing I refused to do until the moment was necessary. I grew up.
Ugh. I really do hate to admit it. I matured. I manned up. I grew some balls. Or, wouldn’t it be more proper to say, my balls finally dropped. More metaphors that all reference puberty. And for good reason. The sad fact is you can’t stop aging. I used to think I would live forever if I never grew up. It makes sense on paper! If I don’t grow up, how can I GROW UP? Finally, no matter how hard it is to give up control, my body just wasn’t going to take it anymore and made the choice for me.
Maturity is now my prime motivator. The necessity to be an adult, to make responsible decisions, to care for the next generation or two, to boldly face the impossible, and protect my friends and family. This is the next step for me, and I’ll leave with one small piece of advice. Dear reader or readers of this blog, please know that one day, you too will have to mature. Until then, embrace the surrounding world however you damn well please. And don’t you dare touch any of my toys. The end.
