Lowering the Bar

I have a question. How can someone go to work day in, day out for over 10 years where the primary objective is not to aid progress, not to develop, not to grow, but simply to plod through, exerting only enough enthusiasm to do two things: get paid, and cover your ass. How?

While everyone else both up and down the proverbial totem pole is trying to get to the root of a problem, this person's far too busy eschewing any culpability or fault to contribute to the solution.

Clearly there is no shame in it for him. He casts away blame with such outward vigor that he's clearly proud of it, or ignorant.

The ironic thing is that in most cases this person probably ISN'T the source of the problem, ISN'T to blame, but the act of immediately and vigorously denying any blame does more to hurt his reputation and respect than actually causing the problem.

I've always believed that owning up to mistakes is a necessary part of building reputation, character and respect. But that assumes you care about building those things. If you don't, then happily escaping blame, avoiding responsibility and getting paid is fine I guess.

Ten years on and I still find it hard to believe someone can go through life perfectly happy to wallow, perfectly happy never learning anything and perfectly happy never progressing.

Maybe it's time I lower my expectations of others.