When I was growing up, I was taught what was important was truth, justice and the American way. Throughout the years, I came to learn that Dilbert's rendition of the work environment was a tapestry painted of the real world.
Many workers know Dilbert's boss (every employee's nightmare) who was practiced in the art of performing unscrupulous acts. The Dilbert's boss top priorities were the bottom line and looking good in front of subordinates and superiors. For some atypical reason, the person least qualified to perform, clawed his way to the top, similar to the Dilbert's cartoon character.
Florida government has become a lot like a bad boss from a fictional story or cartoon. A cartoon story line is painted of organizations that rid experienced or able-bodied persons in place of comic book bad guys rewarded for not rocking the boat, who turn a blind eye to organizational misconduct, who reward members for remaining silent and who assist in building a compliant work force. The Florida government boss rises to the top if he is unsympathetic to workers and threatens workers with,
do this or we will get rid of you!
Merely mentioning concerns within State government causes a worker to be treated as an outsider. Workers must sacrifice beliefs, honor, human dignity, work ethics and protection of the public - or risk sacrificing career, home and family.
If experienced workers report misuse of government funds or shoddy work, they are terminated and replaced by inexperienced compliant workers who could show meaningless statistical improvements.
It doesn't matter that an inexperienced person performs investigations as long as the numbers of closed cases increases. It doesn't matter that inexperienced and untrained persons answer phones, as long as the number of answered calls increases. It doesn't matter that the work is shoddy as long as it shows the work was done. It doesn't matter if children, elderly or disabled persons are protected as long as the numbers look good.
Florida government, in many ways, has become another Enron, an agency that no longer cares about the public or its employees. Too bad it's not a cartoon!
The Dilbert-like work environment has become a part of Florida's government. Pack as many people in a telemarketer-type room, allow a hundred people to produce enough motion and noise to cause any normal person to suffer health problems. Force workers to sit 8 hours a day while over-eating trying to mask depression, take away all their dignity and respect while Dilbert bosses ensure no one makes waves.
Above all else
MAKE THE NUMBERS HIGHER. As the powerful, clerical, inept and unscrupulous drink their morning coffees in private and quiet offices conducive to working, those who perform the most stressful and critical work are left to fend for themselves on a QVC-telemarketer-type floor with Dilbert supervisors who were not hired because of what they know.
Florida's workforce has evolved into corporate governance, whose focus is on profit and compliance. No longer is Florida's workforce focused on protecting the public or ensuring responsibility. Privatizing government has outsourced work and spending to corporations outside of Florida and outside the U.S.
Workers who perform their job duties well can no longer depend on their Dilbert boss to ensure honor, dignity, social conscience, fiscal responsibility and work ethics will be preserved over the bigger focus of numbers and corporate protections. Organizations have become more willing to isolate, sacrifice or destroy anyone in order to prove the illusion of organizational self-sufficiency.
We should have learned from Enron and others that encouraging ethics, openness and responsibility is the way our government should be run. What is really important should be truth, justice and the American way.
It doesn't take talent to corral people in telemarketer-type work cubicles, threaten to fire those most experienced, or behave in an unscrupulous manner where the bottom line is how a boss looks in front of superiors or subordinates.
Even a DILBERT cartoon could do that. Florida should be able to do better than absurd cartoon-style management of government and its people.
