My brother Paul has finally made it in the corporate world.

In his own words:

After only 5 years in the corporate world, I have finally reached the iconic status that all people truly desire.

Everyone at work has to make a lifestyle choice, weighing up the invetiably higher paycheck in return for longer hours. There are ways the company's we work for provide rewards, bonuses or freebies. Some of us get free drinks on Fridays, better work hours, free car parking. Some of us just work bloody long hours in order to get the extra money.

But at the end of the day, there is probably something more important at work than money, and that is respect. From personal experience, I have worked at a firm that paid less but where my work was valued and my opinion was listened to, and then went to a firm that paid better but others took credit for my work and then blamed me for the hours i spent doing the work.

It was like an old Dilbert cartoon, where they we offered a choice between low pay, but their work was valued, or high pay, but at the end of every day, their work would be burnt. And the cartoon characters thought that both were a better choice than what they currently had....

In my current job, I am in a position where most people treat me with respect. With 5 years corporate experience, I have a good idea of who it is important to know in a business. The head of the company wouldn't know me from a bar of soap, but he is totally irrelevant to my job, so any effort on my behalf would be a waste of time. But I know all the secretaries, and one of my co-workers, who has been here for over 20 years, happily organises for anything I need to find out from any other department. The Sales and Marketing people live in fear of my phone calls, HR and Legal come around for a chat before they do anything major to get my opinion.

But until today, I didn't have the respect of the most important person.

Since we moved to Mascot, I have been reporting on a nearly daily basis to this person. It's hard dealing with a person so frequently when they act like they don't know who you are. It is a bit infuriating, but you learn to live with it. But today, that all changed. The man in the coffee shop recognised me and made my large Mocha without asking what I wanted. I was still standing in line when he told me my large mocha was read and waiting at the counter. He even stamped my coffee card twice to commemorate the special occassion.

Today is a great day.

posted by Simon on 05.05.04 at 11:47 AM in the