‘To all the grumpy old men and women I’ve worked with, I salute you’

Posted on December 10, 2021December 10, 2021 by David Hopkins

As seen on LinkedIn – thanks to Mark Chisholm for posting this. I feel seen.

One thing I notice in Linkedin posts is that everyone is ‘Very excited,’ or ‘Celebrating’ or ‘Looking forward to new challenges.’
Now, call me an old cynic, but the best people I’ve worked with were the marginally grumpy realists. You know the type. Deeply experienced, highly intelligent, a few grey hairs and a lazer like ability to see through shiny toothed corporate bullshit.
The kind of people that HR hate because their cynicism cuts through the cobblers and are quite happy to ignore the nonsense.
Best of all is when these people get to the financial stability level that means they don’t have to lie when the latest guff pours down from above and will happily refuse to play ball. These people just want to get to the job, do the job and then go home. And because the company knows they know their stuff and are actually needed rather than a corporate hack who has read every self help book on the shelf the fun is watching the pain management and HR go through trying to work out how to make them fill in another meaningless form or do another pointless online ‘Learning.’
These people will never make it to the top of any company tree but they are without a doubt the best people to work with and dare I say it have a laugh because they rely on their ability and work ethic not their ability to say the right words or jump up and down at a meeting clutching their parts to be seen to be seen.
To all the grumpy old men and women I’ve worked with, I salute you.