Work Job
The “Work Job” is a sexual act of the most scurrilous and despicable nature. It involves finding a partner, known as a boss, turning around, bending over to touch your toes and waiting for it. The rest? It’s so heinous I can’t even think about it, much less describe it, not even to liven up this post for your entertainment. Sorry, I just can’t do it.
I’ve noticed something. When I make predictions and statements that are born out to be 100% correct, the universe covers me in a pile of shit as way of thanks. When someone like Karl Rove makes predictions that are dead wrong, he is given somewhere between $90 to $160 million of other people’s money to throw down a toilet hole.
Something tells me it should be the other way around.
Take the topic of bosses and jobs, for example. I’ve been preaching the way things are for quite some time. Did anyone listen to me? No!
There are a few keys moments I can remember in my life. For a lot of folks they remember where they were when JFK was shot. Well, I’m too young for that. For me, those watershed moments are things like the Challenger space shuttle disaster, the morning of 9/11, and the SCOTUS ruling on DOMA.
It turns out there’s one more for that list. The day that Gallup released data indicating that 70% of American workers hate their jobs. No shit. Really? Now you’re justing repeating things I’ve already said! I made that case a long, long time ago, only more eloquently.
Where’s my piece of the pie?
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Staff Infection Meeting
I once quit a job over a staff meeting. True story. I’m sure it’s documented here on the blog somewhere, but long story short, they made us on the 6am crew stick around for a 5pm meeting. I asked, “Is it important?” Our managers assured us it was. “You have to be there,” they said.
The meeting started and the first item of business was rolling out birthday cake for our safety director. At 5-fucking-o-clock. It’s not like most of us would be consuming dinner any time soon.
Then, for the icing on the cake, the rest of the hour was consumed by our managers reading memos to us. Line-by-line. Word-by-word. Like we were in kindergarten or something. Memos that had previously been delivered to our inboxes. Memos I had already read on my very own. It was worse than an insult to our intelligence. It was calling us babies.
After the meeting I opted to go back to my desk rather than heading straight home. I sat there and wrote out a memorandum of my own. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s a classic piece of Americana called the letter of resignation. I plopped that puppy on my manager’s desk and then called it day.
Good times.
In another place and another time there was another staff meeting. This one involved the quintessential management tool known as the employee survey.
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The Company You Keep
“Company.”
The dictionary defines the word as “a commercial business.”
Wikipedia, as usual, is a bit more verbose:
“A company is an association or collection of individuals, people or “warm-bodies” or else contrived “legal persons” (or a mixture of both). Company members share a common purpose and unite in order to focus their various talents and organize their collectively available skills or resources to achieve specific, declared goals. Companies take various forms such as [a] … [b]usiness entity with an aim of gaining a profit.”
Source: Wikipedia – Company
“Warm bodies?” Holy shit. Wikipedia nails it. Again!
The business manager stormed into the meeting and saw a lot of empty chairs. “God damn it,” he bellowed. “Get me more warm bodies in here!”
Most of us born and bred in the United States wholly swallow – hook, line and sinker – the premise that a company is an organization comprised of human beings with the shared goal of making money, i.e., acquiring profit.
My purpose here today is debate the other point of view, that this concept we’ve so fully accepted is complete and utter horseshit.
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Boss cancer
If you ever want to feel really depressed, do a google image search on the word cancer. Now I want to die. I picked this image as it is one of the more uplifting ones.
Even though the boss does everything in his power to prevent it, the new company website is proceeding at a snail’s pace. He frequently brags to people how this project has been his baby for “years” now. Yeah, excelling at being an idiot is something to be proud of. Remember: Boss is another word for the opposite of results.
This week something strange happened. In spite of the boss’ efforts, a customer actually placed an order and attempted to buy some of his inane shit.
It was an odd moment.
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I estimate you suck
This is yet another work-related post in a long series of work-related posts. Sorry, sometimes work just has to come out of me, usually in the form of vomit and/or poop.
The boss came to me a few weeks ago and said he wanted a company-only “wiki.” Yeah, just like that famous encyclopedic one. He explained it would be a good place for everyone on the team to document critical information. We’d all benefit by having searchable information at our fingertips.
Even I had to admit that sounded like a logical good idea, if everyone chipped it and actually used the tool effectively.
I should have smelled a rat.
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It’s a job
How would you come off if someone secretly recorded video of you doing your job? Would you pass that test? Would you come through with flying colors?
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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