The typical newbie is…well…new, for lack of a better description. They are generally young and very impressionable. You can spot a newbie quickly, as they have an alertness (bordering on nervousness) about them. They are almost too eager to please, and will agree with almost everything.
A “new-hire,” as they are referred to in our company, is someone who is fresh out of the company’s new-hire workshop. This is a one-week session where new employees must be “oriented” to fit the company’s model. Brainwashing is a better description. This is the beginning of the end for many young people. Individuality, creative thinking, and many freedoms are sidelined as the company rhetoric is pumped up full volume to the somewhat naïve participants. The newbie doesn’t stand a chance.
A week later, fully primed with a weeks worth of propaganda, the new-hire reports to work. Most will still have a child-like innocence and are very impressionable and eager to please. That’s why the newbie is usually taken under someone’s wing (a manager, normally) to be molded into the perfect employee. Once this happens, that person will never be the same. They will settle in as a small cog in a large wheel – never knowing what happened to their freedom and individuality.
Most of the office staff will have a standoffish attitude towards the new employee. I don’t know why that is, but I’ve seen it many times over the years. Is it that the more senior workers feel threatened by the enthusiastic newbie? My guess is, yes. Well, that, and the fact that they feel the new employee must earn a bit of recognition first. Office snobbery, I like to call it.
Personally, I am friendly with all new employees. I like to treat them decently, as I can remember walking into a strange office eighteen years ago, and feeling resentment and indifference from most of the people.
Once introduced, I smile and give them a friendly handshake, welcoming them to the “team.” In fact, I feel sorry for our new members. They are being blindsided and don’t even realize it. I still stand there, smile, and go on about how great the company is and how they have made a good choice. Man, talk about hypocritical - but what else can I say? I’m tempted to tell them to run and never look back, but that wouldn’t be conducive to a good teamwork environment. F**k, I hate this place.
This person will feel fortunate to have landed such a great opportunity. Little do they realize they have started down the path of the wage-slave. In the coming years they will bid for promotions, make more money, buy a house, and start a family. They will start paying bills and taxes. They will have an insatiable appetite for the latest consumer junk, and will work so much harder to obtain them. They will maintain an equilibrium of wages versus expenses. The more they make, the more they will spend. They will do this because that is simply the goal set by society. They will allow their careers to define who they are as a person. In short, they will be caught up in the rat race.
Hello Phil,
You probably know me as Quaestor over at the whywork.org site. You say nobody reads your blog… well, I just read it. I really like the colour scheme and the way you’ve laid things out. Nice job.
After reading this post about newbies, a light bulb went off in my head. I now know the real reason for age discrimination in the job market. It has nothing to do with the capabilities older workers have. If anything, older workers should be more capable by virtue of their experience.
However, employers are loath to hire them because they are not as malleable as younger workers (aka newbies’). Older workers have seen the games and seen through the lies and are far less likely to swallow the bullshit served up to younger workers. More importantly, unless desperate, they are unlikely to take the low initial wages offered.
In our capitalistic society, it is said that paying new workers less is justified. They do not merit higher wages because they lack experience. What absolute horseshit. When you see how de-skilled and mindless many jobs are, it’s plain that everyone deserves the same wage rate.
Employers often use this progressive wage scale as a trick to retain workers. It works if the people offered such a regime are unenlightened and do not realize that taxes (remember our tax system is ‘progressive’) and inflation will quickly null out the gains made.
Something else newbies swallow all too easily is the idea that they will get promoted and that will somehow compensate for the screwing over they get in their early years. Alas, employers only promote toadies, spies, friends, relatives and favourites, or those rare few who have the kind of personality (usually amoral if not antisocial)and skills that are too valuable to let go of.
Comment by Quaestor — September 17, 2006 @ 9:15 am