I saw a resume today from a guy who wants to be a VP of something (anything). There was something unobvious about the resume that really annoyed me, yet I couldn't put my finger on just what it was. (The rest of it was hilarious in its own right.) Driving home tomight, it occurred to me what was wrong with the resume. It had the following as part of its objective:

... strive to ... increase corporate profitability, create a unique and rewarding environment for my staff, and enable customer 'delight.' ...

What bugged me about that? No, not the word "delight", and no, not that it's in quotes, and no, not that it's right after the word "enable". The sexual innuendo and/or jokes in that phrase are officially Low Flying Fruit, and I cannot go there.

What bugged me was this: The two goals of worker satisfaction and corporate profits are antithetical. One cannot have corporate profits and staff happiness. It's axiomatic: workers are happiest when not working. That's why they have timeclocks and shitty, ride-your-back managers at low-paying jobs. Karl Marx got all his material from just such a place. The Catholics got all their gold from the other end of that place. One feeds the other. Expense and profit comes from loss and gain. Entropy does not include the creation of wealth and success is a zero-sum game. Yin and Yang, give and take. Corporate profits is to employee happiness as security is to convenience. You get the picture I hope.

I'm not saying that you can't be happy at work -- after all I love my job, as do many other people. But garbage companies are profitable, yet very few people want to pick up trash. Produce companies obviously make money, but nobody wants to pick tomatoes for a living. Someone is making money from and because of a few someone elses.

I wouldn't hire the author of that resume. He fails the logic test. He's trying to do the impossible, which means he'll eventually have to either cover his tracks, make something up, or pretend that it's working. Or all three. He's got everyone's goal in mind, not one goal. You can not only not please all of the people all the time, you can't even please most people any of the time. Trying to do it all is setting yourself up for failure, and is just plain weasely. Pick a goal, figure out how to achieve it, and go forward. I have two more diametric concepts for you: leadership and consensus.

And no, I'm not a Marxists, communist, socialist, or any other ist. Bullshit, like aggression, should never go unchecked.