The wokeforce.
Traditional workplace values are on the way out in a woke world, but they are still vital to personal success: insights from my experience.
It's been two years since I've been in the workforce.
but, of course.
I had to lay the foundation, for a decade, to get where I am today.
Will I ever return to work in Australia?
Probably, but not anytime soon if I can help it, and it certainly won’t be for a woke major company.
You've definitely all encountered this in the workplace.
It's a common scenario: a new person joins your workplace, and immediately, you’re not their biggest fan.
You dislike their attitude; they come off as cocky and disrespectful to those with more experience. It all feels like a selfish game.
A typical reaction if you were raised like me.
Let me provide some general context about my upbringing.
I grew up in a working-class rural town in Tasmania, where the prevailing belief was that the world owed you nothing. Respect for elders and hard work were values deeply ingrained in us.
During my late teens and early 20s, while at university and afterward, I took on various physically intensive labour jobs. This exposed me to a unique, old-fashioned hierarchy that differs significantly from the woke diversity initiatives seen in modern workplaces.
If you disrespected any of the older workers (often elder gentlemen) in these workplaces, it would not be a fun time for you.
All you had to do was simple: keep your head down, respect and listen to your elders, work physically as hard as you can, and understand that your stint in this job is likely temporary.
It was crucial to understand your place among them. You had just entered their world and their workplace.
This upbringing has served me well in my professional career, and I'll explain how.
Geologists.
It’s likely no different from any other professional career, but fuck me, you can get some serious whackos.
Maybe it’s the lifestyle of spending so much time outside of societal norms in temporary accommodation in the middle of nowhere for years on end.
My first week in the profession as a graduate was hectic.
You're the little bitch to an experienced Geologist, and you have to do whatever they say.
Fair enough.
As a graduate, I was paired with a grumpy older Geologist. The guy gave me a tough time at first but then became a good friend and was my main reference for my next job.
This guy was hectic though and had me doubting my choice of profession. His first task for me was to clean the dust off the ute (truck) tires while we waited for the drill rig to drill more meters.
Does that seem achievable to you, in the middle of the desert?
It ain’t, but I gave it a good crack.
Because I knew my place, this guy was testing my reaction and willingness to follow orders, and my previous work experience as a younger fella in working-class Tasmania held me in good stead.
I eventually earned some respect and ended up learning more about the profession here than anywhere else.
Fast forward a few years to the next step in my professional career.
A major global miner who had focused on attracting investment based on ESG (the S (Social) bias factor of diversity and inclusion propaganda felt the dominating factor).
The mine site was a living hell for a red-blooded male. Although many of these men exist on site, they keep their mouths shut and comply. Some surprisingly even change their thinking through exposure to the propaganda.
Usually, as an exploration geologist, you can escape the confines of mine site offices, as exploration teams and offices are often pushed to the side, in some sea container-like setup, out of sight and out of mind.
But not at this place.
We'd have a Caucasian Aboriginal woman from the comforts of inner-city Perth come and lecture us in a course about how racist we all are.
Diversity posters were everywhere on site, even in the men's toilet, where you'd have to stare at a rainbow flag right in front of the pisser (toilet).
There were cupcake days in the crib room on-site for diversity, and women were being flown off-site to attend conferences while their male counterparts picked up the workload.
As I discussed in my last article, feminists seemed to be everywhere, usually in all-female teams and not those who actually work in male-dominated professions.
You also encounter a different type of individual in these major companies.
The entitled individual with private schooling a flashy degree or just completely spoilt by Mum and Dad.
Zero idea of old-school traditional values and respect in the workplace.
They tend to receive preferential treatment in the hiring process over harder-working, more skilled individuals who usually do a better job, despite not having the unnecessary couple of extra years at university.
I tweeted about this last year and it was mentioned on the Money of Mine Podcast, which I’m a huge fan of!
So much emphasis is placed on these people in the workplace, but they often end up rubbing others the wrong way. In my view, they're actually a burden to the business because they often get bogged down in niche, unimportant aspects of the job.
I have a great personal workplace story example of this.
During the COVID pandemic, I was overseeing an exploration camp in the middle of the Western Australian desert, with no one around for a 100-kilometer radius. A new, less experienced geologist had just joined the company, and I was responsible for showing him our way.
This new geologist had all the flashy credentials I mentioned earlier.
One evening, after a long day of drilling, as we all sat around the campfire drinking beers, the new geologist quietly mentioned to me that everyone was sitting too close together without wearing face masks.
I laughed and assured him that there were only six of us, we had been working together all day, and we were in the middle of nowhere, so there was no need to worry about it.
However, he got up, went to the caravan, grabbed a box of face masks, and began handing them out to the drillers and me, lecturing us about the dangers of COVID-19.
The drillers, who were older gentlemen with over 20 years of experience drilling in one of the most remote and harshest environments in the world, had a memorable reaction. They took the masks, held them for a moment, and then threw them straight into the campfire, and just went about normal conversation, saying absolutely nothing about it.
Bloody funniest shit I’d ever seen, especially as this is during the time of full-blown COVID authoritarianism.
For the remainder of our time there, I had to convince the new geologist not to report the incident to the mine site's safety department.
I failed, and sure enough, he reported it to the safety department, the drillers had an incident filed against them and were pissed off.
This made his time incredibly difficult at the company from then onward as the respect was lost from the people he had to work with every day.
As expected, he received plenty of praise from the company's safety department, which is as woke as HR (Human resources) in many major companies today.
A lack of social awareness regarding traditional workplace values has likely always existed, but it appears to be more pronounced today, probably due to the influence of woke ideology and an emphasis on protecting people's feelings.
The old-school style of putting your head down and working hard, shutting up, listening, and respecting your peers who are older and more experienced is disappearing.
It’s almost as if people are encouraged to treat other newcomers to the workplace as if they are fragile and sensitive.
In my experience, those who embrace these values and prioritise earning respect through their actions, rather than relying on credentials, gender, or race, tend to excel in their careers. Conversely, those who lack respect and rely on an easy ride often fade away.
I hope this remains the case. I still fear the day when we see boomers completely out of the workforce, taking their traditional work values with them, and the university wokeness bulge assuming positions of power in society.
This will make the future workplace a tough place to be for folks like me.
The wokeforce is certainly well-lit on the horizon.
Thanks for reading.
Please leave a like if you enjoyed this, it helps me out big time.
I hope you had a good weekend.
Jordan - Geólogo Trader 🇦🇺
Would love a "how it started"...meme 5 years on for the geologist telling his more senior colleagues to put on the mask around the remote campfire. If he hasn't got pronouns on his LinkedIn page, I'm not here ; )
Good take Jordan.
I am hoping they discuss this article on the podcast too.
Push back required