Sean, that was a really fun and interesting interpretation presentation you, Erik, and Joey had created for the class when you three acted as the gods, gave me a pizza, and let me decide what to do with it. During the facilitation/discussion part of your group’s presentation the thing you asked that stuck with me for quite a while was, “How did that make you feel? Didn’t you feel powerful?” During the activity I definitely felt like I was given some sort of power and I still find it interesting to reflect upon how I acted with it. The whole activity reminds me of a famous quote by Abraham Lincoln that goes, “Nearly all men can stand adversity, but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Looking back on it, I feel like I learned a lot about myself. For instance, I never would have thought that I would find abusing power to be fun, but it I thought it was kind of funny to start eating a piece in front of everyone before giving any of it away. Another thing I started wondering is if great amounts of power is something that I would want to have. I mean, it definitely seems to be the things natural go as many strive to become better than others and having major influences on others, but with all of power comes the burdens of responsibility. From what I’ve experienced, whenever something went wrong at work, all the bosses and managers had to stay late and fix everything while I just sit in a menial position and watch them deal with all the stress. What’s weird though is that I still decided to become a supervisor at the place I work at a while ago. I think it’s kind of fun to feel important, call all the shots, be in charge of people and everything, I don’t really enjoy knowing that my employees were only listening to me, being nice, and laughing at all of my shitty jokes because they were afraid of getting fired or trying to advance themselves. I’m not totally sure on how I feel about having power, but the activity gave me a better idea of how I might end up dealing with it.
On a side note, I had gotten a feeling that your group was looking for someone in particular to give the pizza to because I was nowhere in any of your lines of vision when all of a sudden Erik spins around quickly and picks me for the activity. Just thought that was kind of funny.
Rodney,
ReplyDeleteI really like the quote you put in your post. Recently, I too took a supervisor position at my job and often times it makes me feel really uncomfortable. I am now responsible for supervising many of the people I've worked with for several years, all of us previously having the same positions. I don't like the authority and I hate feeling like my co-workers are doing things simply because I told them to. It's unnatural and awkward.
As for the pizza thing, you caught me. While we wanted to make it look like a random choice, I'm a horrible actor and we had you in mind for the activity before the class. I hope you don't feel offended, we just wanted to pick someone who didn't talk a lot in class because we thought it would make the power dynamic even more interesting.
I nearly forgot all about this. I really enjoyed putting this presentation together. I was excited to see how Rodney would use/abuse his power and really excited to see how the class would react to seeing someone appointed a certain amount of power. We debated of which type of person we wanted to appoint the power too, and we landed on you. It’s interesting to see the real life example of making the decision to become a supervisor and having certain power. I thought it was interesting of you mentioning the reaction of fellow employees. Because as I recall when people came up and just asked for pizza you said no and then people just took it and got teased. But when Ben politely asked and said please and thank you, you gave him a piece. So thanks for sharing your example from your work.
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