Have you been able to "stick it to the man"?

I never wore jeans on jeans day. Eventually the hot girl from process improvement asked me why I never did. I told her I wasn’t a monkey for management to make dance when they wanted to feel “cool” and “with it”.

This question is a little hard for me to answer. I am generally a rule follower, so I am not usually trying to stick it to those who make the rules. However, when the rules are absurd, lack integrity, and unfair, I do try to push back. I have had little wins here and there in my career and with dealing with those who seemingly have the upper hand to me. But, usually it is pretty tough to fight city hall, and eventually I give up if I am beating my head against the wall.

The biggest way I have been able to stick it is by saving, saving, saving money. I really did not spend much at all the first 10 years of my marriage, and so now I feel free to quit or tell people I won’t do something, because of my financial situation. Unfortunately, my husband does not quite have the same liberty, being the breadwinner, but even he could quit and we could float for a while. Moreover, I don’t think he perceives his world as having to stick it to the man, not part of his make-up. He is greatful for the opportunities he has had in his life. He readily conforms to the expectations of a company, will cut his hair, dress to code, without a thought. If they asked him to do something very unreasonable or he felt treated unreasonably he would get out of there as soon as he could, and just move to the next thing. Unreasonable would be ridiculously long hours, too rigid about time off, not understanding during a crisis, feeling underpaid, and anything close to unethical or ilegal business practices he is out.

Living well is the best revenge.

The only “man” I ever had to worry about was the cops. I never much stuck it to them, except by making them worry about me, and of course it wasn’t really the cops, but their idiot bosses that were the problem, and even they weren’t really the problem. The problem is really too amorphous for there to be a man to stick it to.

So the best thing I can do is to do what I want to, and to ignore the stupid conventions. Lot’s of places have rules that are stupid or counterproductive. All you can do is point out the stupidity and hope that a few people might have enough glimmerings of intelligence to get it. Unfortunately, that is mostly not going to be the case. People are too stupid to learn anything.

But I do what I want and the hell with the consequences and so far, no one has had much to say about it. One day things may be otherwise, and then perhaps I will complain. Right now, there is no man to stick it to.

Only until I got out of school. Then I realized I better make peace with the man if I wanted to succeed. I still celebrate my occasional rebellions though they are pretty mild by today’s standards.

I’ve never really wanted to, and in most cases it seems needlessly pig-headed anyway. My way is to respect authority up until it is wrong, and even then to not be rude about it. I get a lot of leeway, politically, because technically I am The Man.
Curiously, I will “stick it to the Man” for his own good, because he doesn’t usually understand what it is that my job does or needs, neither is he interested. I modify equipment and procedure, work longer shifts, use non-standard tools, and generally ignore policy (when it’s safe) to make sure that my work is done thoroughly, despite foolish staffing and ‘cost-saving’ decisions.

You ^^ are not from that generation. You’re just a baby.

@tinyfaery Man-child, maybe. But yeah, I didn’t see the temporal demarcations.

My grandfather stuck it to the Man for most of his life (he was born in the 30s and started with the sticking sometime in the 40s and did so until the mid-90s). He ended up living in a shack full of junk in a quarry in central California with no company but his dog, at the dead end of a trail of damaged relationships good jobs lost. He lived month to month on food stamps. You can keep the man-sticking, I won’t be needing it.

At the moment if I want to pay my mortgage I have to work for someone else and that means I have a boss. So, at least at this point in my life “I am working for the man”. I work in the university sector so he is a pretty flexible man, but nonetheless, there are rules, demands and pressures to perform and sometimes they are ridiculous demands.

My husband is “the man”. He has his own business. I could stop work and help him with his business but then I would be working for ‘my man’ and I suspect that would be a disaster.

I’ve never been in the financial position for that luxury, I enjoy to live well though and as @wundayatta wrote, that feels best.