Balancing Principles with being Employable is hard
I think, like most people, I try to be helpful and not annoying as a coworker (and succeed, most of the time), but recently I was reminded of a couple of things that I don't particularly like that separate me from the rest of my coworkers:
Meta
I mentioned in a meeting that I'd seen a message on teams about the updated time of this meeting, and the person who had sent that update was funnily enough the last to join, but I was then informed that actually someone else sent that on WhatsApp first, and he was only informing me as I do not use it.
I really hate Meta (probably like a lot of BearBlog users), and have never had a Facebook, and only had WhatsApp before it was bought out (then moving to Signal). This doesn't add too much friction to day-to-day work and only once in a month does something important seem to happen there, but I can't help feeling that maybe I am being a burden by sticking to my guns and avoiding the platform.
Obviously, I'd be happy to use Signal or any work-provided messaging platform, but I do not want WhatsApp on my personal phone (and to be quite honest, I like not hearing about work on my personal device out-of-hours).
I don't know if I will ever have to concede on this point to work somewhere, but we will see.
Horse Racing
Another thing that came up, and the thing that drove me to write this post, is the fact that our boss is organising a whole team meeting at a horse race, and suggested that he'd give us all some money to gamble on it.
When I was young, my mum rescued a race horse who sustained a neck injury during his training, and was sterile, so no use for breeding either, who was supposed to be shot as he was of no use to his owners at that point.
I'm not much of a Horse person, but I do love animals, and knowing that this Horse (who went on to live to 24 years old, getting the injury at around age 4) was considered worthless by that industry makes me feel very negatively towards the industry, and I think if no money were in it, it'd probably be looking at a ban like Greyhound racing is in some jurisdictions.
He says he's paying for the table anyway, and would be disappointed if I weren't there, so now I'm wondering where to draw the line. I can either totally not go, but let him and the team down. Go, but refuse to bet (will that be seen as weird, I don't want to harsh the vibes, but I also really don't want to support the industry with my money) or just pretend like it doesn't bother me and go along with it all. I feel the guilt from the latter choice will make that untenable, but I don't know which of the other two to choose.
I don't know... but I'm sure I'll figure it out.
Thanks for reading.
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