Interesting Times at Work

Well, it’s finally time. After several years of rumors and threats, it looks like the closure of the government facility where I work is imminent. One of my coworkers, who has been there for over ten years, once commented to me that operations at this facility have been comparable to beating a dead horse for some time, and it looks like we’re finally going to acknowledge that.

unfortunately, this hasn’t meant the end of the rumor mill, which continues to churn out a stream of unfounded crap. Most of this seems to be produced by people suffering from what another coworker refers to as the “tavern syndrome”, an ailment characterized by a need to spread emotionally charged misinformation in order to get attention.

One of the more prevalent ideas in the rumor arena is that the organization that will be closing the site will be able to get whatever they want from the state in terms of environmental freedom, thus making the closure quicker and our employee life spans much shorter. Everyone in our organization who has any experience with the state says there is no way this could happen, yet this idea persists, nurtured by the conjectures of people with little or no experience working with the state. More disturbing to me than the shaky foundations of these people’s conclusions, though, is their motivation for excepting conclusions that are obviously bias in favor of them losing their jobs More quickly.

I suppose we could argue that the organization tasked with closing the site has some kind of secret weapon or set of tactics that will be affective in getting what they want from the state, but I haven’t heard anything to indicate this is probable, and the people I’ve talked with who have been in meetings where the state and the closure organization have been present say the closure organization is shocked and nervus about the level of environmental vigilance the state will require. Once again, I don’t understand why people would choose to be bias in favor of an idea that would result in the accelerated loss of their jobs.