Everyday Poison

It’s interesting to work with people these days.

When I was younger, I worked with many interesting people. But these days, the people with whom I work are boring, shallow, vapid, and almost utterly amoral. But they’re interesting to watch and to listen to.

Ann Barnhardt talks about what she calls diabolical narcissists, and if she were to show up at my office and just sit and watch and listen for one eight-hour day, she’d have enough material for a year’s worth of blog posts and podcasts.

We’ve all got that one obnoxious family member who is never happy unless he/she is pitting people against each other, stirring up strife, playing “Let’s you and him fight,” and then sitting back and watching the fun. Have you ever worked for someone like this?

Have you ever worked for a boss who gossips about the rest of the staff TO the staff, backstabs everyone in the office, then holds him or herself up as a paragon of professional ethics?

Have you ever witnessed the Stockholm Syndrome of employees who despise and fear a bad manager but cling to him/her with rabid loyalty even when said bad manager is eviscerating them publicly?

Most days after work, I have to give myself a pep talk and convince myself that I’m just letting stress get to me, and that people aren’t as bad as I perceive them.

But my pep talks are lies.

The fact is, most of the people I know in the workplace seem to be mentally or spiritually ill. Some of them are as crazy as a rat in a drainpipe. Some of them are wretches. And some of them are absolutely, stomp-down evil.

And every one of them is a regular church attender.

Do these people believe they are okay with Big Daddy because they sit in the pew regularly? Or do they know they’re not, but put up a good front? Or do they lack the self-awareness and insight to even ask the questions that matter?

I don’t know. I am convinced, though, that most of them are crazy or evil. I can see it in their eyes. They’re not like me, and they’re not like people used to be.

They’re all worrying about the media’s favorite boogeyman, the corona virus, but none of them are worried about the dark cancer on their souls. They are poisoned and poisonous, like an asp that has bitten itself in a fit of blind rage, and they don’t even know that their death throes are not a celebratory dance.

I see it every day. And I pray for protection against this supernatural infection.

Through the ages, tyrants and despots and personality-cult leaders have remarked about how the masses of people are stupid — for the first time in my life, I have come to believe that the people swirling through my life are evil. Not evil in the theological, original sin sense of the word. Evil as in malignant and rotten.

The everyday poison sickens the soul. I am grateful, however, that I can still notice and be troubled by it.

~ S.K. Orr