One strange thing leads to another for Dorothy. Why should the Witch of the West be such a kvetch? Why do the trees throw apples at her? Why are some creatures hostile for no apparent reason?
Culture shock.
Dorothy's tumultuous arrival in the Land of Oz is perhaps more bizarre than the first day on your first job. But for many, it's a fair parallel.
For most of us, the first day on the job does not constitute a crisis per se. However, it gives you a series of "coming attractions"-foretastes of crises that will be met, and resolved, throughout the Learning Decade. The paramount quality of this first day is its strangeness. The rules, the ethics, the structure, and the priorities of the working world seem significantly different from what came before. It is the process of acclimating ourselves to these new standards-of internalizing what at first seems alien and apart-that defines the Learning Decade.
Janet Carpenter, after receiving her M.B.A., had accepted a job with Arcturus Dynamics, Inc. On the morning of her arrival, she spoke with Andrew Hassler, her department head.
"We're all on a first-name basis here, Jan. Please call me Andy. You'll be going through the usual personnel-department routine with the forms and the lectures and all the rest of it. Don't worry about the personnel people. They take themselves very seriously, but you're in a line department. Right now, though, I thought we could just chat. We want your input."
Jan began to talk about how excited she was, and how she intended to do her first assignment. Hassler listened for a minute, then said, "Jan, please do it the way you're instructed to. Missy, my secretary, who is a tower of strength and the real brains in this department, will show you the format I prefer. Well, I think we're really off to a great start, Jan. Good luck, and I'm sure we're both going to be very glad you chose ADI."
This is, for Janet Carpenter, orientation to a new job. But it is considerably more. It is the first step in initiation into a culture. She is beginning to learn more about the universal customs existing in business and also the particularized customs and folkways of the microculture she is entering: Arcturus Dynamics, Inc.
Within this brief exchange are threads of some of the major elements of the business culture: rites of passage, ordeals, incantations, the nature of the priesthood.
But of course Jan will get used to it. She will even learn how to read her way through mixed signals, the surface appearance of gentility and sweet reasonableness, and the flinty underlying reality of power (sometimes masking inse-curity), greed, egotism, bias, and favoritism.
She'll get used to it. But for right now, Janet's talk with Andy is a bewildering mix of contradictions and cloudy messages. Does he want my input or doesn't he? Does he want to tell me what to do or doesn't he? Does he want an informal relationship, or am I supposed to keep my distance?
Involved here is what S. I. Hayakawa calls the "meta-message," the real message behind the words. Children catch on quickly. But it is not so easy in the world of work, because the rules and structures are different from what you've gotten used to in dealing with parents, friends, teachers, etc. "When I use a word," said Humpty-Dumpty to Alice, "it means just what I choose it to mean-neither more nor less."
You are suddenly receiving messages that are shaped by a hierarchy . . . pecking order . . . greed for power .. . fear. (Never underestimate the extent to which you, as a new person, will be perceived as a threat by people who seem to be safe and secure beyond imagination.)
Even the surface language of business is hard to under-stand. The messages underlying this surface language may be hard to read. They are in code. Many of the crises of these years revolve around misinterpretation or refusal to accept the code.
For others, the "welcome" to the world of work is a stone wall. Caroline says that she was in her first job for two weeks before anyone gave her any guidance at all. Her boss was pleasant but simply said, "Don't worry. You'll pick it up." Co-workers didn't exactly snub her, they just seemed to act as if she did not exist.
And then there is the situation in which newcomers to the work scene encounter hostility that seems to have no basis whatever. "I had never met any of these guys before," says Vincent, "and here they were trying to louse me up. And it wasn't even as if I was in competition with them. They just did not want to accept me."
They did not want to accept him. They rejected him- as the body will often reject a transplanted organ.
Much of the difficulty you meet when you first go to work will involve this tendency of the organism to reject anything that is added to it. As a matter of fact, you will run into the same thing throughout your career, every time you take a new job; but later you will have adjusted to it.
When you first enter the workplace, though, it will seem new and strange. You are one small cell, trying to find a place in the complex organism. But at the same time, the organism has to shift-even if ever so slightly-to accom-modate you. The critical shock you feel may be mirrored by the shock your arrival causes somewhere else.
It's all part of structure-building.
The first multicelled animals were sponges. The sponge is a loose aggregation of specialized cells: Some cells form the skeleton; some form the flagella, which beat the water in search of food; some cells transport food to other parts of the sponge's body; and so forth.
You can force a sponge through an extremely fine mesh, separating it into millions of tiny parts. If you leave this heap of disconnected parts alone, the cells will reassemble themselves into a sponge, each cell finding its proper place in the structure.
Structure-building, whatever its initial cause, is a characteristic of organisms that was essential in the evolution of more and more complex animals.
At a certain point on the evolutionary scale, structure ceases to be purely biological and begins to include nonphy-sical factors. The pecking order; the social organization of the wolf pack-these are just two examples of this other sort of structure-building.
Human beings are psychic structure-builders. During the Learning Decade, you fabricate your own environments, including a place to live, nonfamily relationships, life-style. One of the most important elements of the psychic structure that is built during this time is establishment in a workplace.
As you begin to find your place, the shock of strangeness abates. But there will be moments of panic; nightmarish, like those terrible dreams in which you wander lost through a strange place, turning down one lane and then another, always finding blank walls and indifference from people who look human but don't act the part.
It is because the instinct for structure-building is so strong within us that the failure to find one's place in the structure leads to crisis. "I don't know what I'm doing!" is a lament that can really mean "Everyone around me seems to be part of the structure, to have a role in the functioning of the complex organism. But I am an outsider. Will I ever be safely on the inside?"
Some years ago, the psychologist Leon Festinger for-mulated a theory to explain why and how people get used to things, even unpleasant things, and come to accept them.
For example, someone you like walks out on you. You're desolate. The person was warm, caring, interesting. Six months later you remember that person as cold, selfish, and dull. What happened? Festinger called the process "cognitive dissonance."
In effect, said Festinger, the mind gradually pushes a bitter shock below the surface of consciousness and then later brings the same experience to the surface in a more pleasant and palatable form.
One way researchers tested this theory was to ask teenagers to list their ten favorite records in order of preference. Then they told the teenagers that they would be giving them three of the records on the list. However, the gifts were not numbers one, two, and three. Instead, a teenager might be given number three, number five, and number nine from his list.
A little while later, these same young people were again asked to list their ten favorite records. Almost invariably the gift items would move far up on the list, often winding up as numbers one, two, and three.
It is cognitive dissonance that causes people to pay particular attention to the advertising for expensive items after they have bought them. People study ads for cards, stereo and video systems, and big-ticket appliances after the purchase is made. Somewhere inside they still have doubts. They are resolving their cognitive dissonance.
Here's one way this phenomenon operates in the world of work.
Harriet was assigned to Alberta Walker's group when she joined the company. Harriet thought the sun rose and set on Alberta. Alberta's observations were law. Her criticisms were Holy Writ.
And then one day, just like that, Alberta was fired. Harriet was moved to Mary Gallieni's group. Casually, Mary began to dismantle the edifice that Alberta had been building, by saying, "You've got a future here, kid. Don't louse it up by sticking with some of those idiot notions Alberta was so fond of."
Harriet kept her mouth shut. With painstaking care, she unlearned what Alberta had taught her and learned it Mary's way-but it was agony.
That is, it was agony for the first couple of weeks. Then Harriet did not think about Alberta much anymore, if at all. Four months later she was able to say to a friend-and really mean it-"I was lucky to get away from Alberta in time. She really was a loser."
The process of resolution of cognitive dissonance can be cruel, but it is necessary. The trouble is that some dissonances may not stay resolved. Ten years later, even twenty, there are people who have not resolved their basic dissonances about the world of work. They are hostages, doing what they're told, but resenting every minute of it. One way to view their failure: Their own psychological makeup has let them down by not adjusting to the reality of work.
