Sick systems: How to keep someone with you forever

[issendai]

So you want to keep your lover or your employee close. Bound to you, even. You have a few options. You could be the best lover they've ever had, kind, charming, thoughtful, competent, witty, and a tiger in bed. You could be the best workplace they've ever had, with challenging work, rewards for talent, initiative, and professional development, an

Comments

[selkiechick]

Wow- so that all sounds familiar. I have printed it out as a list on "manager don'ts" because it would be really easy for my office to become a sick system.

I do have an addendum, that I suspect fits.

Tired, overworked people inevitably make mistakes, especially if your sick system pushes them all the way into depression. You call attention to their mistakes, point out their inconsistent performance, and call their basic competencies into questions. If you do this long enough- you can make them believe that you are only keeping them on out of loyalty, out of the goodness of your heart, because they are inherently unemployable (or unlovable).

But you gotta be careful with this one- if the person has any spine or self worth left- they MAY respond with a hearty "fuck you".

Shudder.

[issendai]

Good addendum.

It's amazing how sick systems undermine the self-worth of their members. They're amazingly good at convincing them that:

1. You're worthless and incompetent.
2. No one else will want you.
3. You're completely responsible for me.

The real magic is convincing people that they're worthless and incompetent, BUT they're the pillar on which the system rests. And if you can sell someone #3, it doesn't matter if #2 turns out to be wrong--I've seen systems that managed to reroute damage so that the failure of #2 /reinforced/ #3. Amazing.

[hobbit_cogs]

*facepalm* Hello my life. I wish I could say I did not recognize this pattern, but I do, now.

Argh argh argh argh arggggggggghhhhh

[squidypoo]

Thank you! You just perfectly described the relationship I had with my previous BF. I have spent a long time trying to figure out what I did wrong and how not to make those mistakes with my current BF. I feel a lot better for having read that :)

[green_knight]

Wow. I'd never heard the term 'sick system' before, but what you're describing is all too familiar.

Been there, with relationships and jobs.

GOT OUT.

My current job is just turning into a sick system with a vengeance - our employment is determined by _how many named contacts are picking up the phone_ which is, of course, completely out of our control, so we're bound to fail. (It's the World Cup soon. People will not pick up the phone during football games.

This time, instead of fighting hard to keep my job (working unpaid overtime to make my quota etc) I'm working hard to leave it. When I walk, everything I've worked for for the last year will collapse... and I need to *not* feel guilty over that, because if they wanted the system to keep working, they could simply have continued to employ me.

This was something I very much needed to read at this time. Thank you.

[issendai]

You're welcome. I've been there too--this post is 25% what I've read, 75% what I've seen. Terrible how addictive they are, and how we can be trained to run out of one sick system and smack into the arms of another

They didn't fall apart....

[crosis101]

I was a head guard at a Pool....weird situation I know, but I was punished because one of the other managers broke the rules

[green_knight]

The real reason I knew I *had* to get out of that relationship? I was more and more reaching for some weird passive-agressive shit because I was at the end of my tether and that was the last way i could defend myself.

I didn't like the person I was becoming, and at that point, I'd recovered enough to pull the plug, but yeah. When you're really stuck in that sort of trap, you come to regard it as a baseline for 'this is how people deal with each other' which feeds the system.

[shadowvalkyrie]

That's what my mom and stepdad's marriage and our whole family life was like. They divorced years ago, when my mom was on the brink of doing something really stupid because she couldn't stand the pressure anymore and barely managed to break free at the last moment, and in hindsight she can't explain how she could even live like that for so long. We kids never thought to question it either; it was our version of normal

[kayateia]

Sounds like my family in some ways. I'm still looking over my shoulder to figure out what it is I've done wrong next. :( Even now that I see the sickness that was there clearly, it's hard; some of them are still at it, 2000 miles away, trying to guilt trip those of us who escaped right back into it.

Kudos to the OP for that epic rant :)

[3fgburner]

My sister-out-law (late brother's ex) tried to guilt-trip me by saying I'd "abandoned" my family. Maybe I did. I see it more as having left a burning building. My mother's escape was via lung cancer, or more precisely suicide by cigarette.

[aetherbox]

Yeeeeep. Jail break veteran with four prior prisons under my belt. And I think I'm getting better and faster at identifying and getting the hell out of them, too. Sure, my tools could use some...finesse? I mean, frantically throwing around a sledgehammer, lobbing grenades, and then running for the hills while screaming like a little girl isn't the most recommended or um...dignified course of action, after all, but hey. *shrugs* Always room for improvement?

Thank you for posting this: relevant, intelligent, well-written (and amusingly well timed) account of these systems and how they catch and keep their victims.

[azurelunatic]

To paraphrase @feministhulk: SMASH IS ONLY ONE OF HULK'S MANY TOOLS.

[aetherbox]

*Tosses hands up in air and laughs a little hysterically* Hulk have to learn somewhere!