Why shit happens (or how office politics comes to be)

The desire for control. That's my simple answer to the question.

I'll review other people's opinions later on but for now, this is my own opinion based on observations in the various companies I've worked for.

If you look carefully at disgruntled employee rants, you'll often find a few common themes - people's comfort zones being intruded, rewards not matching the efforts, egos assaulted. In almost every case, when you strip off the color and emotions from the argument, its all about stress from bursting bubbles of reality. A fear that one's control over his/her affairs is slipping.

Remember the time when you were a toddler and discovered that you didn't control the world? Do you remember how you reacted when they wouldn't give you all the toys, candy and stuff you wanted? Like all babies you probably threw tantrums and wouldn't quiet down until you got what you wanted. Unfortunately being a lot older doesn't necessarily mean things have changed.

From the day we developed a critical mind, I suspect we developed an innate desire to shape the world in our own image. It may be subconcious but its there in how we dress, how we renovate our houses, how we raise our children. I call it the god complex, one where we use every tool at our disposal - material, time and other people - to create and protect our own version of reality, our little bubble of beliefs. For every second we're awake, our subconscious mind scans and analyzes other poeple's realities and compares them against ours.

The thing is we are territorial creatures by nature. When other people's realities collide against or intrudes into ours, we can feel violated. Maybe someone snubbed our opinion or belittled our authority. We think our control over our little bubble is challenged and we react either by telling the person off or, if we're not influential enough, we plot the offender's downfall. If we don't believe in diplomacy that is. Many babies don't.

Some of you may be fortunate enough to work for companies that let diplomacy work. The rest of you may feel you have to resort to underhanded tactics to settle scores. Both scenarios are political in nature, the difference being the latter is inherently destructive.

So I've concluded that wherever there's people, there's a desire to control. Where there's a desire to control, there's politics. And in the office setting where reward, sanctions and limited resources are the order of the day, it only seems logical for politics to flourish. That my friends is how shit happens.