Doing Your Job

Some time back I posted a list of ten things that get on my nerves. As a practicing curmudgeon, it was difficult to limit the list to ten, and so some things had to fall below the cut-off line.

One of those was People Who Don't Do Their Jobs.

My co-workers and I are often frustrated by people in other offices who will spend more time explaining why they shouldn't have to do whatever it is we're asking of them (usually to provide comments on some document or another) than they would spend just doing what we asked in the first place. It's common to hear a phone being slammed down, or an e-mail closed, with our signature comment - "How about just DOOOO YOUR JOOOOOOOBBBBBBBBB???" (you should be able to hear the sarcastic drawing out of the phrase in your mind as you read the words).

I'm always amazed by people who seem to believe that their paycheck is earned simply if they occupy desk space and turn coffee into urine, and who are very much put out if you actually expect them to do something. Such morons are common enough to warrant comment, but (fortunately) few enough that the world doesn't grind to a halt because of them.

I was thinking about this yesterday while listening to the news reports of what I view as disgusting behavior on the part of some of our State Department's Foreign Service Officers who are loudly objecting to the possibility of being involuntarily assigned to Iraq.

How about just do your job?

No one willingly goes into danger. But when you take the job, you take what goes with it, the good and the bad. If you take the King's shilling, you do the King's bidding. There are probably some people who sign up for the Foreign Service thinking they'll spend a pleasant career sipping cocktails at receptions in London and Paris. They're idiots. We have a Foreign Service because the nation needs people to capably represent it in Ouagadougou and Baghdad and Rangoon - not just in the sedate halls of Prague, Ottawa, and Tokyo. Yes, life in the Foreign Service can be dangerous ... but it goes with the territory. When the nation needs you, it needs you in a specific place - not just in the place you'd prefer to go. Ask any member of the Army, Air Force, Marines, or Navy who is serving far from their family and friends in the dust and heat and horror of Iraq, and not on a parade field in front of a cheering crowd.

News reports yesterday featured a State Department employee who whined that an assignment to the Baghdad embassy was equivalent to a "death sentence," some who complained about being separated from their families, and others who objected that they shouldn't be forced to serve in Iraq because they don't support the war. Well, I don't support the war, either, but I believe that if you are being paid by the Department of State to serve as an emissary of the United States abroad, you ought to either do your job or resign. Preferably, do your job.

The sad fact is that we need the professionals of our Foreign Service more now than ever. America's image abroad has been so shredded by the actions of our current administration that we desperately need the services of our diplomats to help repair it. You may not support the administration now in power, but that administration will soon be a memory, and someone will need to be there to help rebuild America's prestige. You may believe, as someone once said, that the purpose of diplomacy is to prolong a crisis. But the real purpose of diplomacy, as plodding and byzantine as it sometimes seems to be, is to prevent wars, to keep disputes from erupting into violence, and to stop the violence when all else has failed. You need professional diplomats to do that.

You need people willing to do their jobs.

I hope that some folks in the State Department finally realize it.

Have a good day. Do your job. More thoughts tomorrow.

Bilbo