I encounter what I describe as “the obsession thing” so often nowadays in employment law situations that I am genuinely baffled.
What I am referring to is an inability and/or unwillingness of an employee who comes to me for advice to accept what I believe is obvious and self-evident in their particular circumstances.
I don’t think it is only me who would have the view that the employee is being obsessive and unable or unwilling to accept the facts of their situation. I am firmly convinced if I explained the situation and circumstances to any reasonable person of average intelligence, they would agree that there is a gaping chasm between the views and expectations of the employee and the reality.
I cannot go into specifics in this post, but it is puzzling to me that a person cannot accept the situation and that their view and expectations as to the outcome are simply untenable.
The recent growth in platforms and outlets for the promulgation and advancement of views that are simply absurd and devoid of reality in other areas of society may be feeding into this attitude that because a person believes something that it is true.
This is not the case.
I never thought I would have to write this, but it is notorious and widely accepted that Wednesday comes after Tuesday in our system of recording time in weeks, the sun sets in the west, and the earth is round.
Yet on social media, and in society generally, you will meet a large minority of individuals who will simply not be persuaded to alter their position or view on a given topic or issue, regardless of how they arrived at that position in the first place.
So it is with certain employees that I have met over the last number of years.
These employees are simply unwilling or unable to make simple presumptions and reasonable findings from a set of facts which surround them. They appear to have so little self-awareness or empathy for the view of the other, an inability to put themselves in the shoes of other persons, that they are hopelessly obsessed and mired in the quicksand of their own irrational beliefs.
It is a truly sad situation and tremendously counterproductive and harmful to the individual concerned who cannot move on.
I believe that this phenomenon will worsen as a consequence of the platforms and opportunities open to an individual to hold their own views and occupy their own world with their own “facts”, set apart from the majority of the population.