A Series of Thoughts I: Rudeness

i. Bad Drivers

As someone who literally read the textbook given in Driver's Ed class prior to operating a motor vehicle for the first time, I can appreciate how systematized the entire experience is. Rules for turns, rules for right-of-way, rules for non-functioning lights and crosswalks and emergency vehicles. Rules, rules, rules.

Man, I love rules.

Fully acknowledging my own failures as a human, especially the motor vehicle kind, I'm finding myself increasingly frustrated with the, dare I say, rudeness of drivers today. It's not just the idiots more engrossed in their smartphones than the road ahead of them as they operate a motorized, multi-ton projectile that irk me. It's also the "nice folks" coming to a stop in the road to flag someone out from a side street, putting the line of vehicles behind them at risk of collisions. It's the motorists who yank into traffic oblivious to those around them, expecting everyone else to yield to their grandest of chariots and work around their own poor decision-making skills. It's pavement princesses hogging multiple parking spots, vehicles merging or turning without a flick of their turn signal, assholes "jumping the line" at major interchanges and slowing down the remaining lanes just so they don't have to wait, or even using emergency shoulders as their own private driving lane.

I suspect that if America collectively forced a nation-wide retesting - written and practical, and scored the results seriously - that a sizable number of drivers would fail.

I think that'd be an excellent idea.

ii. Spatial Unawareness

Since COVID, I've become quite adverse to the whole grocery store experience. Until inflation and a job loss made curbside pickup untenable, I was happy to pay a modest premium on my order for the sake of avoiding the absolute hell out of a grocery store during peak shopping hours. Because of the aforementioned inflation and job loss, however, I have been forced to return to the store in-person for grocery runs.

Holy. Fucking. Shit.

Did COVID somehow destroy the concept of spatial awareness in people? Couples blocking aisles while they bicker over which specific loaf of bread looks like it'll last past its expiration date, shoppers turning their carts sideways so they cannot be disturbed by passerby while browsing condiments, or just the odd slowpoke now completely unaware of the line of people behind them trying to get to the milk and eggs, it's all the fucking time.

Then I remember that these same people who cannot successfully navigate a grocery store aisle without inconveniencing or harming other humans in the process, also had to drive here. Then I get angry, remember that anger is a choice, and eject the building rage from my body with a loud "Excuse me!" and a push past. Some scoff, some get annoyed, but most folks seem to feel quite embarrassed that they were too self-absorbed to notice they had inconvenienced others around them.

iii. Politicking

I'm at the stage of my career where I'm trying to pivot more into a mixture of architecture (for technical work) and management/leadership (for social work). This means I've had to devour a lot of perspectives on both, including the refrain that I must play the political game to succeed at this level. I swallowed that advice like bitter medicine and gave it my best shot: alignment to organizational goals, quoting our earnings calls in presentations and pitch decks, building trust relationships and alignment behind broader pushes.

I can see why you Product Managers love your jobs: building shit is fun.

Unfortunately, my attempts thus far have only exposed how deeply rooted the politicking in older or ossified organizations is. It's not a matter of merely losing arguments about product decisions - I've dealt with those blows my entire career, and roll with them quite well when folks take the time to explain their rationale. Rather, it's the sabotage, the backstabbing, the undercutting, the withholding of information and the forced intervention of non-technical persons in highly-technical matters that grinds my gears and wears my temper.

I did not take them up on their ESPP offering this window.

iv. Politics

I'm a gay man, a queer dinosaur, a Democratic Socialist and a Fiscal Conservative. Basically, I lean heavily left but also still believe the government budget, by law, should be balanced every single year and fully transparent to the populace.

A mindfuck, I know.

I also believe that open discussion of policy is critical to overcoming the growing partisan environment. I continue to find that discussing things clearly, even when coming from opposing viewpoints or perspectives, results in us discovering we have more in common than we do differences. This assumes both parties are discussing things in good faith, of course, but my travels through America and successes continue to support this feeling.

This puts me at odds with much of my current fellow Americans, because they somehow exist in a paradox where they both hate discussing politics, but also wear political logos and jargon like sports team memorabilia. Nobody wants to discuss policy, rather they want to spout whatever is on their mind without consequence or challenge. A nation of "hot takes", not discourse.

For those of us in the fringes, however, these policies are life and death at times. It's all the more imperative that I not only remain "out" and visible to normalize my existence to those still irrationally hostile toward it, but also to try and defuse tensions in general through healthy discussion over policies and harms.

Anyway, I was told to "not bring my politics to work," despite multiple colleagues devouring a specific propaganda channel every single day in the cafeteria while loudly espousing support for the summary execution of protestors by cops, and the deportation of anyone accused of committing a crime, regardless of citizenship status.

Rules for me, but not for thee.

v. Surveillance

A Flock camera went up outside my neighborhood recently. It surveils the only entrance and exit for all vehicle traffic in a heavily transient neighborhood (Section 8, HUD, immigrants, etc), essentially acting as 24x7 total surveillance of the local population's movements.

I do not like it.

What I like even less, however, is my local PD's response when I asked about its presence and capabilities: bald-faced lies. Did you know that Flock magically built the world's only camera that only captures the specific light particles reflected by license plates, and nothing else whatsoever? Because my local PD seems to believe so, and stopped responding when I asked for clarification on how this might be physically possible.

I am generally fine with surveillance on private property - you do you, after all - but I find the livestreaming of my public life to cloud providers, data brokers, and private surveillance companies to be quite grotesque, especially knowing the state of mass surveillance in America. If cops are going to build out surveillance systems, I'm of the opinion that they should be built and owned outright by said cops, within that town's geographical boundaries, paid for by taxpayer dollars in a transparent manner, at their police station (or local municipal datacenter), and fully subject to FOIA - not rent capability indefinitely with questionable funding sources from inscrutable and hostile profiteers so they can avoid accountability.

Its existence is rude, but its placement is hostile. It's an unequivocal statement from the police that my neighborhood is a target.

I am a person, not a target.

vi. The Youth

I love my younger peers and colleagues. For all the whining from current leaders about "Gen Z" and their myriad of flaws, the folks I've worked with have been some of my favorite colleagues yet. They're starving for challenges, for growth, for recognition. They soak up information like fresh sponges, jump in to help with work, and have excellent ideas on improvements.

They also - and I cannot stress enough how much I love this in a colleague - set firm boundaries. As someone for whom social skills are very much a work in progress, I love that they make it clear when their workloads are maxed out, that they don't pickup work messages after-hours, and that they hold the line against unreasonable intrusion of work into their non-work lives.

Having colleagues with firm boundaries is so damn liberating, because it eliminates most of the common guilt trips and tactics used by bad managers or leaders. If the work needs to get done, the business is responsible for ensuring the team in question has the resources they need to do it.

For all the "rudeness" certain folks like to heap onto younger folks (myself included), there's nothing rude about firmly asserting yourself against unreasonable asks or demands.

The young aren't rude, they just know they're getting fucked over like their millennial and X'er elders - and firmly refusing to do more than the bare minimum they're getting paid to do.

I love it.