Helping Out Regardless

Helping even though it's not really part of my job exactly can be a great thing to do, in the right circumstances.

Recently, one of my part time jobs that I like to do every so often encountered an issue with one of the machines that are there that we use to participate in the work. These days, machines are ubiquitous when it comes to the workplace, but what isn't prevalent is someone knowing how to troubleshoot and help fix something.

We ran into an issue with the machine where somebody was using it previously and had saved some stuff on it and now wanted to get it off the machine but it wasn't working the way it should have. Those types of things do happen and it's annoying but what I've seen a lot of people do is give it one try, if it doesn't work, make it somebody else's problem and say fuck it. I really dislike that mindset, as it is of course pretty lazy! At the same time, I do sometimes get myself into trouble (in a joking way, not actual trouble) by being one of those guys that will jump into something and see if I can figure it out!

With this issue, I was pretty sure I could figure it out. I've worked on these things before and also helped solve some of the issues, so naturally I was inclined to do so. I had spent a good 30 minutes before the work started just mucking around with the thing trying to get it to work the way we would expect it to so that we could get the stuff off the machine. Sadly at the end of the day, it didn't end up working which was unfortunate.

I wasn't going to stop there though, damn it! I was determined to get this thing sorted out LOL so I got the contact information for the company that produced the device and reached out to them. I spent a good 30 minutes outside of work to get all of that figured out, email sent and the end result there was also sadly the machine was end of life, end of support so they wouldn't even give us help with support documentation to see if we could fix it ourselves. It was overall fairly annoying but with the vendors these days it's not surprising. They are only willing to help out if the dollars are flowing in their direction.

While we didn't get the issue solved, I think the important thing is the notion of being able and willing to help someone out with something that is not necessarily in our job description or scope of the work that we are doing, but giving it the college try anyways. This has been a way that I've worked and operate on a daily basis for a long time, and I think it's a product of how I was raised which is a good thing. I am trying to raise my son to be the same way because that is how society improves, where people are willing to help out and do the work instead of being lazy fucks and constantly deferring responsibility to somebody else.

There are definitely limitations for this whole notion as well, don't get me wrong. I wouldn't be doing this if the people I worked for were assholes because those types of shitty managers deserve whatever issues they have their way. There can also be said though of those types of people, where you can give them a few services like this and see how it goes. It could drastically improve your relationship with them and turn a corner which would be a good thing. I've experienced that once before, where the person I worked for was a real piece of shit but doing good things like this for them changed the relationship I had and ended up being bearable while I worked there.

I think we need to get back to this mentality of helping each other out to the extent possible that we can. This society is heading in a difficult direction right now where everything is being abdicated to others or those in power and that's wrong. We have gotten soft as a population and that only leads in the direction of more pain. We have to shoulder responsibility and hardship in order to improve things, and getting accustomed to going the extra mile when possible is a good thing under the right circumstances!

What about you? Have you done something at work where you were helping out even though it wasn't really your responsibility? Was it something you would do more?