House of Eratosthenes

I’m completely biased on this catchphrase: When conservatives say it to liberals I’m in there with a thumbs-up and a “right on!” When liberals say it to conservatives, my reaction is more of a “what the hell are ya thinkin’?” And you know what…that’s not all an emotional my-team-good your-team-bad thing. There is an abundance of durable, coherent logic involved in why I think that’s a perfectly legitimate argument on one side and a perfectly silly one on the other. Yeah that’s right, I think it. I don’t feel it, I think it.

Someday I shall endeavor to explain it. But I’ll say right now that if you need to have it explained to you, you’re probably never gonna get it.

Anyway. Thick, thick coating of dust on this one…as in, when it was written up, a lot of folks had not yet heard of Barack Obama. And it is bitching about business, not politics. But I like it. It makes points that really should be obvious, although they somehow sometimes aren’t, and it makes them very well.

That seems to be the sentiment in many companies these days. I heard it once when I approached a VP about a problem my entire team was having with a certain procedure. “If they don’t like it, they can leave.” A friend of mine heard a variation of it once when he expressed dissatisfaction with the management style of another manager, a dissatisfaction that was shared and voiced by many before him. “If people don’t like him, why don’t they leave?” And I’m not talking here about one employee’s personal gripe or moral viewpoint. I?m talking about big issues that if remedied could make quite a few people happy and the company more efficient.
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I’m not sure what school of thought the “don’t like it, leave” statement comes from. It’s not exactly Management by Fear. It’s more like Management by Apathy. Maybe if you make your employees feel expendable, they’ll be so grateful to you for employment that they’ll buckle down more? I really don’t know.

Would you offer that statement to your spouse if you were having problems and wanted to strengthen your bonds? I would hope not. I know that marriage and your relationship with your company are not the same but don’t both benefit from some nurturing and tweaking? And we spend more waking hours at work than we do with our spouses.

What does that attitude do to the integrity of a company?…I know it’s no longer my father’s day, when people often retired from the first company they worked for. Because of company relocations and buy outs and layoffs, I’ve seen my long-term careers plans derailed more often than I care to think about. The cosmic job forces all seem to want to send the same message to workers: You are replaceable.

“If you don’t like it, you can leave.”

The statement is dismissive and not conducive to positive change. It’s like trying to correct unruly behavior in your teenager and hearing “Well, I didn’t ask to be born.” It simply becomes a mechanism for avoiding the work it will take to correct a problem.

The best answer, ever, to “I didn’t ask to be born”:

“Well, if you had, the answer would have been No.”
- CGHill | 10/26/2009 @ 19:41
I have always hated hearing this from people, whether it be in a personal relationship, a work-related context, a business transaction with some profit-making entity, or pretty much anywhere else.

It says three things to me, both of them very unpleasant:

1) Your thoughts, feelings and opinions are not important to me, and listening to them is a waste of precious time.

2) Your business or presence here is not important enough to me even for me to say that I value your opinion, and will take it under consideration.

3) I’m not interested in making our relationship / business arrangement better than it is; you’re not worth it to me. It’s easier for me to just blow you off, all-or-nothing, accept it as it is right now or “get lost.”

I don’t like hearing this from my girlfriend, my boss, my colleagues, anyone I buy or sell from, or any government official whose salary I pay. Even if it’s perfectly correct for the person to say this to me. I don’t think anyone likes being told that his perception and observations aren’t important to the listener.
- cylarz | 10/26/2009 @ 22:59
Morgan, when I first stumbled across this post, I assumed it had to do with liberals and conservatives telling each other to seek residence in some other country if they didn’t like the way things were being run in the US. We on the right suggest quite frequently that Europe or Canada would be more to their liking.

Following the link, however, takes me to a page that clearly would indicate the subject is the workplace, not politics. Why did you say, “When conservatives say it to liberals I’m in there with a thumbs-up and a “right on!” When liberals say it to conservatives, my reaction is more of a “what the hell are ya thinkin’?” I’m not following your meaning here.
- cylarz | 10/26/2009 @ 23:02
It’s all about the purpose for founding the country in the beginning.

If the leaders recently elected are of conservative bent, and the policies soon to come out lean toward the right, then what is happening is a restoration of the country to that purpose. Freedom of religion; Congress shall pass no law with respect to the establishment of a religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. You can own a gun. Land of opportunity. And it becomes, again, a shining beacon of freedom upon the world. A unique beacon. “If you don’t like it, leave” becomes the logical thing to say. There are literally hundreds of other places to go if you prefer socialism and womb-to-tomb health care coverage, welfare benefits, free bananas……et cetera……

If the leaders recently elected are like the ones we have now, that beacon is under threat of being extinguished, and America begins a process of transforming to look like those hundreds of other nations. It’s the people who don’t recognize the value of freedom; they’ve always wanted to blot out all the other people who do. “If you don’t like it, leave” then becomes something of a death sentence. There’s no other place to go.

I just wanted to throw in that caveat before linking. The lady isn’t even discussing politics, but my caveat has to do with the politics. Regardless, she wrote on it so well I really wanted to get it linked.
- mkfreeberg | 10/27/2009 @ 06:27

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“If You Don’t Like It, Leave”Sunday, October 25th, 2009

“If You Don’t Like It, Leave”
Sunday, October 25th, 2009