Business Professional

For the last few years I feel like I have been working on and mastering the art of being myself unabashedly and trying to be more and more sincere in all that I do and say. For some reason though, when it comes to the professional social sphere, I feel quite inept at navigating conversations and knowing the right things to say. I have always found that the part of me that I have trained to be myself and be sincere never quite feels comfortable in those scenarios. I always feel like there is part of me that is lying or that is supposed to lie about things.

Even when I was starting out in real estate some people told me to just lie about the level of experience that I had to home owners so that they would trust me more, which never really seemed to sit well with me. Also, I am not really trying to take a moral high ground on that—I just never felt like I cared enough to fib about what I had done so far. That being said, I also feel like when it comes to being professional it also seems like some advice I have been given from more than one outlet was to basically not be myself.

I understand that to a certain extent because honestly I am not a very professional person in the way that I carry myself and also, I am sure that I don’t really give off a business professional sort of vibe. I do think and hope that I give off an approachable and genuine sort of vibe. And even if I don’t, that is more what I am going for. Something that I have noticed about business professionals is that they seem to be really unapproachable and scary a lot of the time. I would like to say that I am pointing out trends or commonalities that I have observed enough for it to seem noteworthy. I am not trying to speak in always and nevers here.

It does seem though that there is a certain aspect of being professional in where you need to mask the true part of yourself and in some sense pretend to like certain people or things that you really don’t like. IE people talk about how much they hate their boss or their coworkers all the time, or they will tell me a story of how they had to deal with someone who was absolutely dreadful for a whole day and the entire time had to pretend they liked them or cared about what they were talking about.

Now I understand that an amount of this just comes with the territory of being polite, especially when you or those who you represent want something from this example’s dreadful party. I guess there is a line where if you are just being generally kind you will indulge someone in a conversation you are not particularly interested in, or you will put up with someone who you find to be disagreeable. BUT if along the way you do say “I have had enough of this” or “I don’t really like that sort of talk,” it seems like basically in most instances if you work your way high enough anywhere you get to talk however you want and everyone else has to kiss your ass or just deal with it.

Something else that bothers me is that people talk in their business voice more than their normal voice and it just becomes how they are all the time, and people are always talking to you about how you’d get fired if you acted like that in an office or something. But why is the office place where there is no fun or you can’t really be yourself? Or at least to me it seems to be that way. I know that nowadays at startups and stuff you are allowed to cuss or maybe call someone a pussy or something, but it seems like they are doing that to be like “look how cool we are, you can work out at our office and say a cuss” or something like that. Which honestly I’d rather have that than not, but regardless I still think it is strange.

I may be doing a lot of speculation and I think a lot of this is just my own projected insecurities on the professional world itself because I feel like it is a place where I would not fit in, so of course I am trying to confirm my bias. So now let me work from the other direction here. Why is it that I don’t feel like I would fit in? I think a lot of my criticisms about the professional world are likely to be true in some respect, but so many people who I respect have managed to figure it out without seeming to lose themselves or looking like a shill.

One example is my friend River who I work with on these jobs where we chauffeur important people. River always chills with the fellas and chops it up in an absolutely major way but can also slide into the boss man role pretty seamlessly and in a way that never gets on my nerves. I will say since he is my bro too I would of course want to make sure I handle business for him because he has my back, but at the same time even if he was just my boss and not my homie I would still feel like he was a great boss and a cool guy. But even my hero also will talk to me late at night about some of the frustrations experienced in the upper echelons of our company that we work for, and there seems to be to me the taking off of a mask or the discarding of a mantle when he gets back to the Airbnb.

Maybe that’s what it’s like for all jobs though. Does everyone have to pretend a little bit to get along with so many strangers or other people that they don’t really care to be around at any job? I would guess so, but it still feels like there is something going on there that feels disingenuous to the point that I don’t really like it or feel that I’d like to participate, and maybe that is just in the business side of things. Maybe in other worlds it is less so, but as I push further into the whole real estate thing the less I feel like I can be myself.

I look at my friend Tanner who is a teacher and he seems to have a natural ability to balance both, or that he knows how to be himself and also be a professional. I can’t be sure, but from the outside looking in I would make that assumption. It just feels to me though they want you to act a certain way or they just aren’t going to like it. And if you’re not willing to play ball then it just isn’t going to work.

I don’t know how to explain it but once my friend told me about how her boss said a bunch of creepy stuff to her and says weird stuff all the time and that everyone just pretends that it’s funny so that they don’t make him upset I guess, or just because he’s the boss I don’t really know. It just seems like you can’t really say what you want to say and when people do it doesn’t really go that well for them. I had another friend who worked with this lady and the bosses at the office said a bunch of crazy stuff about her and she reported it to HR and then just got fired.

I don’t know man, it just seems like a weird world to me where you can’t really be yourself and you gotta kiss ass a lot. I think about how they always make it seem really cool in movies to work in an office and then the main character will make this speech about how it sucks there or finally speak their mind and then they will get this big applause or things work out for them, but it doesn’t really seem like that’s true very often. Or in movies they will show how some eccentric guy started working someplace and kept being his quirky self and it went so well. But it seems like that doesn’t really happen much. It seems like you play ball or you go home.

A lot of people will tell me that they just try to fly under the radar as much as they can. I know that there is definitely some awesome places to work and that you could totally be yourself and that people will value that, but I would guess that’s like 5% or less. Could be more but I just don’t think so.

Whenever I talk to someone on the phone for RE stuff or I have been helping my buddy do some sales for his company I feel like when they talk to me on the phone there is this sort of jargon that I am not tapped into that is just not really the way I talk that I’ll hear people tap into and I never know what to do about it. Like they answer the phone and I hear them click on or whatever. I just don’t get why we can’t all talk like we normally do when we talk to each other on the phone. Why is there this rule why we have to be super proper or use bigger words than we normally do? It just feels way more serious.

People tell me that texting in complete sentences builds confidence or that talking in a more refined way makes people think and take you more seriously. Why can’t people see that I am just talking the way I normally do and be like “damn this guy must be serious, he is keeping it hella real.” I just don’t think people can always express themselves in that way and then things get lost in translation. Or I just don’t understand why people aren’t expected to express themselves in the way they feel most comfortable.

If someone is clearly making an effort to communicate to me in a way that I can tell they feel is “smarter” it makes me feel like they are not saying what they really think and makes me feel like they are being dishonest. I think back to that episode of Trailer Park Boys where Ricky is in court and asks for permission to swear because he won’t be able to properly express himself if he can’t swear. Swearing might be unprofessional but that seems more genuine to me than talking in more restricted terms where someone can’t say what they really think. As always I am sure there is some kind of silver lining that I just can’t find.

This is sort of tangential but another “professional” thing that pisses me off is when people say that it is weird to talk about how much money you make. I feel like the older I get the funnier people my age act when we talk about money. I feel like people don’t want to brag or get embarrassed which I get, but at the same time I think the whole “don’t talk to your coworkers about how much you get paid” is a scheme to keep us down.

I was working a job once where I had been at the company like a whole year longer than this other guy and then we were talking about what he got hired on at and it was like a dollar an hour more than me. So then I called my boss and was like “what the hell, the new guy got hired on at more than me.” So then my boss was like “oh that is weird, let’s email the real boss and see what’s up” but before that he was like “you guys really shouldn’t discuss how much you make with each other, that is private information and it is really unprofessional to discuss that.” I was like “ok” but I had already told two other guys who I knew were getting paid the same as me the information so that they could also get the raise. There was basically no reason that they could not give it to us because we had hella more experience than that other dude.

So in my head I’m thinking what is the reason that they would not want us to talk about that other than that they didn’t want to pay us more. It’s the same as like buying a house or anything that is a lot of money. I feel like we the common man need to let each other know how much we are paying and getting paid because we all have to buy most of the same stuff and if we don’t talk to each other about it then it is way easier to trick people.

I just think about a shy dude who is scared to ask for a raise and he just has no idea he is always getting paid less than some other dude who does the same job maybe worse because it is taboo to compare salaries. Hit my line if you think I’m wrong but it all seems like some trickery to me by the man to keep us down.

I just think people are always embarrassed to say that they are low on funds but honestly I saw a dude post on Facebook Marketplace yesterday and add that basically said “I need to make $200 today, I’ll do any type of manual labor” and a bunch of people were like “I got you bro.” I just think most people want other people to be ok and would help you if you needed it. It just goes back to that thing where people like to feel good about themselves and if they can do a small thing for you which might be nothing to them on the low then they do it every time because they get to feel like a good person about it.

I just think most of these rules and regulations of professionals are just there to keep us down in a lot of ways. But sometimes you have to play the game a little if you want to get that cash money, but we can always play the game in our own way if we want to—it might just be harder. You think about Dennis Rodman, that guy was a freak and definitely played by his own rules but his value was undeniable. People just like to be able to control you in some way I think and it feels like these rules of engagement sometimes are an effort to just control the situation.

I am tweaking a little now but for real that is kind of what I am realizing. That is why the American dream is fire and big corporations are lowkey bad for us in my opinion. I think honestly the key to not having to play by the rules of the professional world is to basically just start your own business and be your own boss. Or just make a few bands by your lonely. I feel like when the pressure is on you and yours to get the job done you’ll know how you actually need to be and if people want what you got bad enough you can basically act however you want.

You see that all the time with guys. If they are down bad enough or want some lady so bad those fools will let ladies treat them like bugs man. Of course I think there will always be rules you have to play by—that is just humanity—but I think if you remove yourself from the cog of the machine and just do your own thing at least you’re not the fat guy on the treadmill with the donut on the string in front of him just out of reach.

Because the thing that I have been realizing is that these big money companies that people work for deceive them with the idea that they are guaranteeing some level of security in their life which really just isn’t true. They can take that donut away from you anytime and they will because if they find another fat guy cuter than you who will run faster for a smaller donut they will put your fat ass out the house with no job. Then they just turn us into a damn rat race and that’s how they stay on top I guess.

It is funny how I will basically be like “this problem is so complicated how do I solve this” and in the end it’s usually the most basic answer which is so funny to me. So we can conclude that if you don’t like working for a big company or the culture that is included in that package just figure a way to make money doing something else like starting your own business or something. Hahahahahahahaha