I had dinner with some friends the other night and met a guy a who horrified me and reminded me why, after graduating university with a business degree, I really had no interest in ever pursuing a career in business. There are lots of things I love about the business world but the one thing that has always puzzled me is how people can become so passionate about whichever widget their company sells.
In this case, the passion was tires. This guy was obsessed with them and our conversation over dinner often led back to these apparently fascinating wonders of the rubber world. We got the history of the rubber industry in Asia along with accounts of sales targets and other juicy tidbits. He refered to his company as ‘we’ when listing off things they’d invented and proudly told us about his 14 hour work days.
Everything he told us was with a freaky, intense passion that I don’t think I’ll ever be able to understand. It seems to me that he’s sold himself on the idea of tire sales and spending all of his time working to better the company is something he genuinly wants to do. It’s an added bonus that he gets to do the expat thing in KL but when all of his time is spent at work, it doesn’t sem to me that it really matters where he is.
So more power to this guy! He seems happy, he’s found his calling and that’s great but I will never understand how people can become so passionate about things like tires. But I’m sure there are plenty of people out there who can’t comprehend being passionate about computers and the internet.
I guess the difference is that I don’t bore people at dinner parties with my Adsense stats!
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