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Title: “Choose Your Attitude”
Author: Kevin Carson
Date: February 3, 2006
Language: en
Topics: book review
Source: Retrieved on 4th September 2021 from https://mutualist.blogspot.com/2006/02/choose-your-attitude_03.html

Kevin Carson

“Choose Your Attitude”

Too bad the Nazis didn’t post that over the gates at Auschwitz.

Everybody would have been so much more positive on the way to the gas

chambers, without all those “change resisters” complaining and bringing

everybody else down. You may not be able to do anything about that

jackboot stamping on your face, but you can stop being such a Gloomy Gus

about it. Keep an eye out for the next touchy-feely motivational book:

You Will Be Assimilated. Resistance is Futile.

Remember when the catchphrase was “I’m mad as hell and I’m not gonna

take it anymore”? Seems like a lifetime ago, doesn’t it? Now there’s an

entire behavioral-engineering industry geared toward seeing how much

more we can be “motivated” to take, without going postal.

In the comments to my earlier post on Who Moved My Cheese?, an anonymous

commenter asked for my opinion on “Fish Philosophy.” I’d never heard of

it before. But what I gleaned just from a web search was absolutely

appalling. The book (Fish! A Remarkable Way to Boost Morale and Improve

Results) is definitely on my to-read list now, if only for the same

reason that we’re compelled to gawk at a really bad car wreck.

Anyway, FWIW, here’s my take on it, based only on looking at their

website and reading favorable references to it by the Motivational

Mafia. Like Who Moved My Cheese?, the underlying message of Fish! is

that ordinary people have absolutely no say in what happens to them; the

only thing they can control is whether they have a good attitude about

it. Or, as one Amazon reviewer put it,

After reading this book, I have only one idea from this book. Since you

are being raped, why not close your eyes and try to enjoy it instead of

complaining about it.

Here’s another good one:

We have three authors with interesting and challenging jobs telling

everyone else with bad jobs, bad bosses, and great big obligations to

face the facts that there is nothing you can do about it so be happy

instead of miserably depressed. It’s not even “make the best of it” it’s

“be happy in spite of it all”! I’m sure every business in this country

wants all of their employees to change their attitudes rather than the

business change the way they treat their employees, the way they

structure jobs, and the way they compensate the people who work for

them.

I got such a kick out of some of the Amazon reader reviews of Fish!, I

decided to check out those for WMMC?, as well. Here are some excerpts

from the best:

This book is wrong. It teaches that you must accept change without

regard to whether it is appropriate it not. It teaches that you must not

struggle, you must not fight. You must simply accept whatever change

happens. This is the perfect book to distribute when a company is going

through reorganization....

....The only way you might find value in this book is if you have no

sense of self.

If you don’t “swallow” this inane, paternalistic, Orwellian crap, you

must be resistant to change. In other words, “Are you still beating your

wife?”

The message of this book is meant to squelch personal ambition and

encourage its readers to resign themselves to corporate slavery. The

central metaphor that the author uses is inherently dehumanizing. In his

world-view, all of the people who work beneath the summit of the

corporate pyramid structure are akin to mere lab mice, trapped inside an

inescapable maze not of their own making. They are being cruelly

manipulated by their all-powerful corporate overlords, represented by

the scientists running the experiment, who keep moving the metaphorical

cheese (representing sources of income in the workplace/marketplace) to

new locations. The mice must constantly adapt to the ever-changing

cheese movement patterns devised by their overlords, or else they will

starve. In this scenario, the only power the mice have is over their own

basic survival. If they persistently, tirelessly pursue the cheese hunt,

constantly adapting their strategies to the new conditions, they can

live to hunt another day. The changing cheese locations may represent

for the readers, variously: (a) changing market forces, such as new

trends in consumer demands, or; (b) changes in the demands of their

employers (such as requiring more previous experience for applicants,

longer hours, smaller pay, fewer benefits, drug tests, intrusive

personality assessments, credit checks, etc.) The key to being able to

adapt to these changes is to maintain a positive attitude about it, and

to accept the changes without complaint.

Apart from the infantile, patronising tone that the author adopts, he

does something insidious. He makes it seem like it’s YOUR FAULT that

you’ve been downsized, demoted, or unsuccessful. In this day and age,

that’s simply a lie.

I find little to redeem a book that portrays the average working stiff

as a lazy rodent who mindlessly resists any changes sent down by the

benificent philosopher-kings who only have the employee’s best interests

in mind. Perhaps employees prefer to have some say in the changes that

are thrust upon them, perhaps they believe that the powers-that-be are

not as all knowing or well-intentioned as the authors portray them.

Personally, I’d recommend a good Dilbert book instead.

If you are a manager who wants to be excused for his/her bad decisions

by disguising them as “change” that “just happens,” this is the book you

should make mandatory reading for your employees.

That’s how a lot of corporate America works, after all: companies do not

make mistakes, it’s the employees who cannot adapt to “change.”

I’m surprised Johnson didn’t name his “littlepeople” Spit and Swallow,

since those seem to be the only possible responses to “change.”

Here’s a similar acute observation about Fish Philosophy from a

discussion forum of people who’d experienced the uplift program

first-hand:

Morale is often low because workers trust management. They trust that —

Management doesn’t give a damn about people, just the pretty charts and

reports they make at the end of the year. — Management will screw the

workers every chance they get, sometimes even when it’s

counterproductive. — No matter how good they do the job, management

might still toss them out on their ear. — People who give 110% just make

management expect it as the minimum. — Management has no clue how things

are done in the real world because they’ve never gotten their hands

dirty doing actual work.

I’d be insulted to have this fish crap shoved at me — it’d be

management’s attempt to get contented cattle.

I was especially amused that so many employees have come to recognize

their employer’s distribution, promotion, and forced reading of Who

Moved My Cheese? as the prelude to layoffs. One of the pro-change

slogans that Haw jots on the walls as he runs through the maze is

“Noticing Small Changes Early Helps You Adapt to the Bigger Changes That

Are to Come.” How true! For example, if you notice your boss is making

you read this shitty book, you can lay in a supply of K-Y for the royal

ass-fucking that lies in your near future. You’ll either be laid off, or

doing the work of somebody else who was laid off in addition to your

own.

There was a lot of restructuring going on and the “grunts” were nervous

and anticipated things getting worse and worse. Suddenly this magical

book appeared, everyone was forced to read it & later watch the movie.

I recently survived 2 ‘reorganizations’ in my company within the last 8

months. I just had a department meeting where people in my department

complained about the many more tasks that we are responsible for and

increased workload because of layoffs. To add to this insult, the

Director said, ‘change happens, deal with it’ and doled us this book.

There’s one obvious reason why this worthless book is on the

“nonfiction” bestseller list, year after year. It’s purchased in mass

quantity by corporations, then doled out with each layoff....

Amusingly, a copy of this book was given to everyone in our company just

prior to a massive downsizing, outsourcing, and layoff program.

Anyway, back to Fish!

What’s really pathetic is comments by thoroughly processed human

resources, chiding negative reviewers for their “bad attitudes.” It’s a

bit like a house slave rebuking the shiftless, lazy field slaves for

ingratitude toward Good Ole Massa. For instance:

The first principle we learn in Fish! is Choose Your Attitude. How

appropriate, since what you get from this book completely depends on the

attitude you choose when reading it.

I was given this book by the company I work part-time for. They decided

to use this Fish story and other material to make our work place a

better place to work. I personally don’t think the company pulled it off

very well since most people didn’t read the book or take part of any

activities that they created for us.

Imagine that--what ingrates! And this:

I feel sorry for those who find it mundance [sic] and making them more

cynical.

There’s one way in which Fish! is far worse than Who Moved My Cheese?

The latter work is thoroughly Protestant in leaving it to the individual

reader to work on his own attitude. Fish!, on the other hand, involves

all sorts of ritual in the workplace as an “outward and visible sign” of

all the minds that are getting right. The whole point of Fish!

Philosophy is to increase comraderie, morale, and cohesion in the

workplace, through enforced socialization and bonhomie.

It was implemented using a team of 4 volunteer “Fish Mongers” who were

assigned to plan something for a quarter of the year, iow 4 teams per

year. One team setup the “You Made Someone’s Day” award which put a huge

hanging sign over a staff’s cube for 3-months, the next team placed

white boards up and periodically switched out topics on the white board.

They started out like “what is your favorite X” and we had everyone

putting their answer (along with their name) on the board. Every week or

so the topic changes... this has been a huge success and is still going

strong. We did a traveling award, whereas you could take the big stuff

fish and place it on the desk of someone who did something good for you,

they then passed it along to the next awardee. Our meeting room has

glass walls and when we put up cling-on fish to initially promote the

program the conference room was nicknamed the aquarium and many agreed

with the posters in this thread that this is an extremely juvenile

program and it made us look like a pre-school....

Some of the things we’ve done:

Every member of management within the department has made 1 FISH related

goal that he/she has to meet on a weekly/monthly basis. One manager made

the goal that he would get out of his office and chat with staff about

nothing work related just to get to know folks better.

We get together on Fridays for lunch as a department. Sometimes we order

in, sometimes we go out, but we always try and have lunch together.

We put up a bulletin board with funny pictures, a quote of the week,

recipes and a daily trivia question. We found that asking trivia

questions about folks in the department worked REALLY well, better than

asking Trivial Pursuit questions.

We bought foam balls that we throw over cube walls at eachother.

We have candy baskets everywhere.

We always celebrate someone’s birthday with a cake and at least a card

and everyone in the department makes a point of coming.

Occasionally, we throw on some music and have a 10-minute dance party to

loosen up.

People constantly bring good stuff into the department to munch on

during the day.

We had a staff-organized pot-luck lunch where everyone brought in a dish

and we took a break to eat and visit with one another.

Those are just some of the things we’ve done and they’ve really worked

well.

Yeah, I can see how that would really work well--if your goal is to

provoke a workplace shooting. Haven’t these idiots ever seen Office

Space? Like a lot of “motivational” programs of this ilk, Fish! assumes

that everyone is naturally an extrovert, and that anyone who isn’t

should be forcibly reeducated. The kind of crap described above seems to

be calculated to push all my buttons. You work in an understaffed

shithole, trying to do the work of two people, dealing with constant

interruptions and stress, with somebody in your face about something

every minute of the day. So what’s the best way to build morale? Why, of

course, take away your lunch break--the one opportunity you have for

peace and quiet, to be left the fuck alone and recuperate from dealing

non-stop with people--and use it instead for mandatory,

company-supervised socializing! And waste time you already don’t have

enough of for getting all your actual work done, to participate in some

touchy-feely circle jerk of an encounter group! As another commenter

said, every minute he wasted in the bullshit meetings, all he could

think of was that he’d just have to spend that much more of his personal

time to get his real work done.

Look: I work because I need the money to pay my bills, period. The 1500

or so cubic centimeters in my skull belongs to me. “It’s not enough to

do your work, Winston. You have to love Big Brother.”

I expect any day now to turn on the six o’clock news and see a

disgruntled worker on top of his office building with an AK-47, and a

sign that says “I’m choosing my attitude right now, motherfucker!” The

fact that a popular video game is called Blow Away Your Boss (just

upload a digital photo of his face) tells us all we need to know about

the state of morale in Corporate America.

But how’s this for wild and crazy?

We started to implement the FISH! idea and one of the big hits was the

‘graffiti wall.’ We hung old green bar on one wall and let people

write/draw what they wanted, within professional limits.

“Within professional limits”??! Whoa, hold me back! What a bunch of

maniacs! Woo-hoo, I don’t think my heart could stand that much fun!

An Amazon reviewer cuts to the heart of the problem:

See, here’s the problem — if you’re a manager who forced this nonsense

on your employees you probably didn’t bother to ask them if they wanted

a toy fish. If they wanted a “sand box.” It probably never even occured

to you to step up to one of your employees and ask “how would you like

to be humiliated and treated like a small child? How would you like to

be forced to go home after 9 awful hours and bake cookies for everyone

in the office to avoid being labeled ‘not a team player’?” Because

that’s what “living the fish! philosophy” really means.

None of it even occured to you, and that’s the problem. From some

particularly cruel act of fate you, who think that handing out

children’s toys to adults is treating them with respect, have somehow

become a cog in the ever-turning wheels of power in this country.

Somehow, people with the emotional awareness of 2 year olds and the

intellectual depth of sand crabs have taken control, and the rest of us

are being forced to suffer for it.

One thing I’ve noticed, in surfing the Web for commentary on these two

books: a huge portion of the people who read either of them did so

because their boss recommended it to them, either informally or through

some sort of mandatory reeducation camp (er, seminar). Now, I can’t for

the life of me imagine taking a postive attitude toward any book an

employer required me to read, let alone actually believing anything my

mortal enemy wanted me to believe. If any boss I ever had gave me a book

on why the sun came up in the east, the next morning I’d be up looking

for it in the west.

But the publik skools in this country have been geared, for over a

century, to teaching human resources to be receptive--to have a positive

attitude--toward whatever line of bullshit people in authority are

trying to sell them. How else could you explain the success of public

service announcements like “Doing Drugs Isn’t Cool”? “Gosh, I really

enjoyed doing drugs. But if that authority figure in a multi-million

dollar ad created on Madison Avenue says it’s a bad idea, maybe I ought

to reconsider.” Personally, I think preventing anyone that stupid from

OD-ing is about the worst thing we could possibly do to the gene pool.

The lesson we ought to be learning is just the opposite: to

instinctively doubt anything anybody in authority tells you. Twenty

years ago, I remember my mom telling me about a union decertification

vote at the Tyson plant where she worked. The bosses just about wore

themselves out talking about how much better things would be for

everybody when the union was gone. Now me, I would have figured the fact

that the bosses wanted me to vote the union out was enough reason,

alone, to vote for keeping it. And guess what? Six months after the

union was voted out, the bosses sped up the lines by 50%. My mom, now

retired, has crippling arthritis in her hands from handling a knife on

the eviscerator line. A lot of people voted out the union local out of

spite, because it was such a do-nothing, lap dog union. And it really

was--but the bosses must have been afraid it would grow some teeth,

balls, and a backbone, because as it turned out they were sure eager to

get rid of it before implementing the speedup. You can damn well figure

that anything your bosses want is against your interest.

Look, it’s this simple: You don’t need to develop a more “positive

attitude” about the people who are screwing you. You need to be mad as

hell. Having a good attitude toward people who do bad things to you may

anesthetize you enough to make it bearable, but it just makes it easier

for them to keep dicking you around. When people do bad things to you,

you shouldn’t feel good about it--you should be fighting back. They are

the ones who need to change. I am goddamned sick and tired of victims

empowering their victimizers. You’re fucking-A right I “choose my

attitude.” I choose not to enable those who are screwing me by having a

good attitude about it.

One of the commenters in my earlier post summed it all up beautifully:

Clue: Whenever a company wants to give you a book, BURN IT.