Change...Proceed With Caution

Dear Avid Reader,

"The only constant is change"

There are a lot of changes happening this year. So I guess this year is going to be constant.

Situation 1: Lazercade

First, the owners of Lazercade have decided to sell the business. This means that I will probably not like the new owners because I am comfortable with the current ones. Here's why.

When they first opened, I was there every weekend working. I built up a level of performance that the owners appreciated. So now I live in the aftermath of those times. I can continue to perform at the high level that I always have, but I don't necessarily have to come in every day to prove it. I've already proven it. This works out well for me because I am getting my Master's degree and can no longer work all of those hours that I once did.

But the new owners will have no preconceptions about what each employee can do. All of us are starting fresh. Which is good if you have a record of poor performance, but bad for me because I have a record of good performance.

Unfortunately, as I stated before, I don't have the ability to work all of the hours that I once did. I am in the middle of my Master's work. This is coupled with the fact that I will probably move away when I graduate (I say probably because I refuse to say anything definite about the future due to my faith in God and my faith that God has a sense of humor about things like "certainty".) All these things add up to me not having the political weight that I may have carried in the past.

"Why listen to this guy," the new owners might say, "He's hardly here and he's leaving in three months."

This will then allow some other person in as the main "go-to" person and person will turn out to be an idiot and they will in turn screw everything up. I say screw everything up, but what I really mean is change things from the way that they are currently and make me uncomfortable.

Situation 2: Harding

Now let's talk about my other job. Of course, I have to be a little secretive about what I'm talking about, so bear with me.

There is this idea that I have, we'll call it Project Totally Rock-Awesome (PTRA). PTRA is an idea that I've had for a while, but I could not seem to get the right combination of supervisor and extenuating circumstances to get it through, until now.

PTRA, however, means that some other departments have to come out of their comfort-zones. This may mean that PTRA may not be implemented, but it should. It would help so many thing in my department and would eventually help everyone once the change has been excepted.

So now we reach an epiphany. In both situations, change is going to happen. And for one party, there will be discomfort and for another, and alleviation of some discomfort. For Lazercade, the owners are selling the business in order to spend more time with their other jobs and family. The discomfort will be felt by the current employees and the new owners and maybe even Lazercade's customers. At Harding, the discomfort will be felt by other departments, but I will experience the alleviation.

So when change occurs, it is not bad or good in of itself, but can be perceived to be good or bad by those affected by it. In this case, I perceive the Lazercade change to be bad and the Harding one to be good. But these distinctions are completely selfish. But can change be either good or bad by itself?

I feel as though it cannot, at least it cannot be judged that way before it happens. Take artificial intelligence. If we develop it and we don't have machines revolting and taking over the world, then that change would have been good. But if robots rebel against us and we lose control of the world, we may look back and say we were better off not developing AI.

continued...