Ask Neycha
the value of experience; experiencing value
2008-02-27
Advice columnist K. Neycha Herford welcomes all questions, dilemmas and inquiries about life, love and transitional crossroads. By submitting a letter here, you grant EbonyJet.com permission to publish it on this site or elsewhere. However, be assured that your e-mail will only be identified with an anonymous descriptive name. No last name, email address or location is given out. Please note that due to the volume of mail we receive, we cannot respond individually to every e-mail.
Dear Neycha
I’ve been in the workforce for about three years now and am ready for a promotion. Unlike my older colleagues, I put in long hours (they are strictly 9-5), take on extra assignments (they do only what is asked of them, no matter how it impacts the quality of their work) and project the “next level” attitude all the career articles I’ve read say you should project. These coworkers resent my attitude, and are always talking about how “different”young people are today - unwilling to “wait our turn.” My question is: wait our turn for what?? Doesn’t that go contrary to the idea of seizing the day, taking what you want, and all those other uniquely American captain-of-industry clichés? These people are lifers - not on a fast track to anywhere - so there’s nothing I can learn from any of them. I’m sick of hearing this same old tired gripe. How do I respond? And, is there such a thing as too much ambition?
-Ready for a Corner Office
Dear Ready,
Slow your roll lovey, k?! While I agree that you have every right to want to advance your ambitions and to do within reason what you can live with to move forward, don’t count the lifers out. It’s arrogant and ignorant for you to think there’s nothing you can learn from any of them. Although you seem to believe they are “not on a fast track to anywhere”, you are potentially missing a wealth of knowledge because you have written them off.
In spite of the fact that your older co-worker’s day to day contributions may pale in comparison to your own, there are still benefits to absorbing what is useful from those who have walked before us, and therefore learned many lessons before us, and further still been granted the gift of the common wisdom gained from surviving – surviving a workplace that even 15 years ago was a much more difficult environment to navigate than the one you face today. I feel sorry for you if you forfeit being blessed by that hard won expertise. Take in what you can from just a few of them and dispose of what is unhelpful.
If some of those lifers project hostility toward you and your ambition, let it be their problem. Free yourself from their tiresome drone of what you’re supposedly doing wrong and shut ‘em out! Get your iron man on so that any ill wishing intentions will ricochet right off your back. I can’t tell you unequivocally that there is such a thing as “too much ambition”. I can tell you however, that for every goal we achieve, there is a price. It is the cost of sacrifice. YOU must determine how much you are willing to pay.
School Girl Crush
