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May 23, 2009
Slackoisie-Fest: Fighting Loser-ism in the Workplace.
Listen, you creeps, you screwheads. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. A man who stood up against the scum, the dogs, the filth and the crap. Here is a man who stood up.
~ Travis Bickle, Taxi Driver (1976)
Young wankers against work. Scott Greenfield at Simple Justice rails, too often alone, against the dreaded 'Wazee: the Cliff Notes kids, scourges of the workplace, and Maynard G. Krebses with a straight-faced demented Ritalin-laced rap on the right to be barely adequate at work. This is Gen-Y. You were born after 1978. You demand--with no real bargaining power--that employers buy into "work-life balance". You want a family-life "lifestyle".
The truth: you're lazier and more incompetent than WAC?'s old Southern Ohio whiskey-swilling doped-up hound dog "Craps". But now you call yourself Super-Daddy. Or Concerned Humanist. Or Non-Selfish Sensitive New Age Person. Some trendy if wimpy U.S. employers are increasingly buying into this.
But since 1997 at Hull McGuire--the firm for which I co-write this blog, and clerked for last summer--such workers have been referred to openly as the Slackoisie, the 'Slack and (on bad days) "Looters". The firm was alone in its dismay for many years. Then other firms in the U.S. experienced the same problem. No one, it seemed, wanted to talk about it--even as higher-end clients worried increasingly about getting real value from their planners and problem solvers.
But, in Scott Greenfield, last year we finally found a talented and spirited ally. Here is a man who would not take it anymore. He is hero to the quiet legions of builders, planners, inventors and yeoman lawyers who know what problem-solving takes, and what sacrifices are demanded to get things done for clients and customers.
Ben Franklin, Tom Edison and Clarence Darrow root for Greenfield in Doers' Heaven. The Immortals do watch us. They hope that America's shameful, and ill-timed, work-life balance charade will soon die the vampire's death it deserves. Enough is enough, they think; this is not what we Yanks are all about. Get "balance" on your own time, in your own way, or through a less demanding career.
Young lawyers need to learn the tough and hard-learned art of practicing law. Older lawyers need to work hard at teaching them, and serving valued clients.
We serve. Clients and customers are "always"--and they come first. See Scott's "First, You Have To Get The Job". About 30 comments so far.
Greenfield (dated photo), Last of the Anti-Wankers.
Posted by Holden Oliver (Kitzbühel Desk) at 08:48 PM | Comments (5)