NOTE: For those who know me, this may not have the typical energy of topics that get me riled. I’m aiming at a very large audience and my cursing has been removed.

I’m not one to rant, but I saw something this week that irks me to no end. What’s worse is I’ve heard it many times from some very smart and “experienced” people.  I was in a meeting where once again someone was complaining our training is insufficient at work.  While I don’t disagree with this, the reliance upon something external over and over again simply does not fly with respect to managing one’s own biz.  If something is important to you, wouldn’t you take the time to learn about it?  Wouldn’t you read existing procedures and documents before flying off and creating your own or complaining there’s no training.  It’s not far removed from “It’s not my job.” and “I wasn’t given the opportunity.”  Continually complaining about training is like saying, “It’s not my responsibility to read the documents available to me” “It’s not my job to do what it takes to collaborate and get things done,” and “It’s the responsibility of someone else to train me.”  I think this is complete horsepucky. What a crock of steaming smelly excrement.

If you truly want something, you do what it takes to make it happen.  In a working environment you ask questions to see how things are done, do it and improve it if you can.   We earn our paychecks.  We are not given our paychecks.  When we took the jobs we have, we entered into a two way contract.  It’s our job to do what it takes to make both ourselves and our company successful.  It’s the company’s job to hold us accountable to what we were signed on to do.  Personally, we are accountable to ourselves first and foremost.  We are accountable to our company and the job or function we signed up to do.  To take a job and blame lack of training is like blaming some external agency, society, or aliens and is akin to giving up.  This entitlement crap prevalent in our society does no good for the individual or the companies we work for.  We need to hold ourselves and our companies we work for accountable for making sure we both profit.

Being smart, having a degree, being good or bad looking, being from this place or that, having dark or light skin, being of different culture,  or growing up in our day and age doesn’t entitle us to squat.  Entitlement implies ownership.  To be an owner is to possess something of value.  In relation to our jobs, what we possess is our ability to meet the demands of the contract we entered into.  Personally, we own our skills, time and energy.  Our function is to do something with our personal resources.  If we don’t and blame the training we are given, our situation, or “the powers that be,” we have accepted powerlessness and given our right of ownership to others.  In doing so we let others manage our biz.  If the company let’s us go for whatever reason, we have no one else to blame than ourselves.