revision99

These signs were up at my office last week:

I pulled this one down this morning. The fact that I work with people who could do this must truly be my last and final degradation.

Hope I still have some friends here.

I know what happens to bloggers who don’t post often. Most of us say we’re only doing it for ourselves, but of course what we want — what I want — is to be read, to be understood, to have a chance to explain myself, to demonstrate to the universe that I’m a good person.

But I don’t have time for that right now, so here’s the short version quick catch-up:

• The new band is now called Big Noise, and it took up most of my free time for the last two months. We’re doing a few songs that I wrote, but mostly it’s a party band, so we’re doing fun covers that you can drink to. I don’t like to sound like everybody else, so I’ve spent a lot of time finding obscure music to play, learning it, transcribing it, arranging it and teaching it to the band. This has been hard for me, but exhilarating at the same time. All the pressure of trying to showcase at The Roxy and get a record deal is off, and what’s left is pure, sweaty, rockin’ fun. Still, it’s time-consuming work, so, no time to blog. (I’m not apologizing, just sayin’.)
• Now I find out that even the cheesiest dive in town (yes, I’ve checked) wants an audition CD before they will talk to me about booking. I guess I’ve been out of circulation too long, but I thought I’d be able to go and talk myself in at some neighborhood bar, and they’d be grateful to have me. But no: now I have to book a recording studio and record a demo. Rehearsing for parties is different than getting ready to record, so now I have to start a new phase with Big Noise, wherein I try to hear if the bass and the kick are working well together, if the harmony intervals are as they should be, etc. This is because if you make a mistake at a party, someone may hear it, but no one will really care as long as there’s dancing and an adequate liquor supply. But if you release a recording with a mistake on it, people will be able to play back your bad playing or singing as many times as they want, and sooner or later any lame-o will detect the errors and from that day forward they will hear nothing else, just the mistakes. Not conducive to getting booked.
• The strutting, loudmouth egomaniac about whom I have previously written, the executive who has ruined all my fun for the past year at my day job, was fired. Actually, sources tell me he sneaked into the building on Friday morning before we opened and cleaned out his office, sneaking away again without speaking to anyone. I know he was fired, because if he had left voluntarily he’s the kind of jerk who would have called a meeting and given a speech, a speech in which he would have talked about himself for an hour or so, then told us that he loved us and he hoped that the things he’d taught us would serve us well, but he was moving on to a higher calling. In fact, he practically killed our business, decimated our staff and destroyed the morale of everyone who didn’t resign. He wore a suit like nobody’s business, but he had no idea how to run our operation, or, I suspect, any commercial venture. I guess I shouldn’t be, but I continue to get amazed that a big, fancy corporation like HugeCorp still gets taken in by con artists like this guy. I could tell he was jive as soon as I spoke to him. Why can’t they? Anyway, leading up to this blessed event, pressure at the office had been building to an exquisitely high pitch, as I and the few professionals too stupid to leave tried to hold everything together. Once again, not much time to spend with you, my precious few bloggin’ buddies, although if you would pay my rent I’d blow off the job in a minute.

I compose blog posts in my mind all day, and — also in my mind — I email all of you with love and good cheer at least once a week.  I hope you’re getting it all.  More soon.

I need some philosophical advice.

Here’s the sitch: My latest boss (eight months now) is a smug, obnoxious, strutting, self-involved and ruthless stuffed shirt. Of course it goes without saying that he’s also incompetent. And, I have to assume he knows I don’t like him. He was hired from outside as the top executive at our location, and since he joined the “team,” the team has disintegrated, with more than half the staff walking out or — even worse for him — transferring to other locations within the company, which is like saying “I’m OK with the company, I just don’t want to work for you.” During his short tenure, profitability and morale have plummeted. So in addition to being an asshole, his job is probably on the line. Trust me, I’m doing all I can to expedite his departure, but that’s another story.

All of a sudden, HugeCorp has decided to restart a program they abandoned a few years ago, and here’s where the fun begins. The program is called ESI, or Employee Satisfaction Index. Yes my friends, Hugecorp now says it wants to be an “employer of choice” within the industry, and to that end they are going to survey the current employees regarding their experiences and attitudes about their jobs, and their supervisors. They want to find out what we all think about our bosses and how the place is being run, so they can keep us satisfied. This may or may not be bullshit. Certainly they have shown no inclination in the past to care about what anybody thinks, but that doesn’t matter, does it, because now I am going to get a chance to have my say, and I will surely poke a sharp stick into his puffed-up ego.

So the day after we all find out there’s going to be these ESI surveys (the week after next, by the way), Mr. Potato Head calls me over to his desk and lets me watch him fill out my own Employee Evaluation form. Without even reading it, he gives me the top score in every category straight down the page, and then writes a nice complimentary note at the bottom (even if I did have to spell “meticulous” for him). So I am now the perfect, model employee (as if I weren’t already!).

Over the past week he’s been stopping by my office periodically, to make sure I have everything I need, shoot the breeze for a moment, see if if I’ve had lunch and just generally schmooze me. Remember, he knows I don’t like him, and our relationship to date has been, shall we say, cool. So the obvious conclusion is he knows he’s a jerk and he’s got about a week and a half to get on my good side so I don’t torpedo his ass in the survey. Of course I will torpedo his ass anyway, because he royally deserves it, but here’s what I need help with:

I could ask for a raise.

I brought the subject up several months ago, and never got an answer (which means “no,” I guess). But he’s now somewhat more motivated to make me happy these days. My dilemma is that this kind of extortion would be wrong, even if I do royally deserve a lot more money. Also, this walking sack of rhinoceros dung should be fired for the mess he has made of our operation. He should have to wait in the unemployment line in hell for all eternity, and if I make the kind of diabolical bargain he wants me to make he will get a reprieve from HugeCorp, or maybe even a promotion (yes, they are that clueless).

Plus, whatever money I got out of the deal would be Satan’s money, rotting and putrefying in my pockets and stinking up my soul. I already feel like I need to sponge off after every one of his glad-handing visits to my office. Could I stand to be in bed with this arrogant shithead?

Of course there’s a chance I wouldn’t be able to get the money anyway (HugeCorp might decide to block it, for example), but assuming I could, should I? I mean, I have had to enter into a suicide pact with a coworker, because I hate the job so much. I don’t know if I could stand closing ranks with management and becoming the “right” kind of person.

So that’s my dilemma. What do you think? The Devil’s Bargain, or The High Road to A Squalid Death?

If anyone is wondering whether I work for a stoopid company…

…check this out. HugeCorp issues “General Field Bulletins” from time to time, to keep us all alerted to the latest wacky plans they come up with. I downloaded one at random this morning, just for a laugh:

Purpose

To communicate to all users that the Log report section has been re-architected. Instructions will be provided to guide the user through the training and implementation of the new reports.

Background

The Log was re-architected primarily to speed the running of the reports and to provide a more user-friendly interface. Additionally, a need was identified to provide dynamic reporting to better serve the requirements of all users.

That’s right. They’ve “re-architected” the Log. Because, apparently, “…a need was identified…”

Does this give any of you a headache? Because it does me. I’ve spent my whole life trying to save the world by making my bed every morning, keeping the nouns and the verbs in their separate pens and sending the intransitive constructions to the Parts of Speech Rest Home.

And now this. And I’ll bet the people who did the re-architecting don’t even know what’s in the Log.

My main computer at home is farkled, so I have to work on that when I can, instead of blogging.

It has been a rough couple of months at my crummy job, and I am worn out from the stress. I don’t feel like fixing this computer. I feel like going out and buying a new one, but the screws have been tightening at work, and now it’s a close call as to whether I will get fired or quit pretty soon. So I have to conserve my money, which means I will have to geek around with the computer until I get it working again, which means I may not be writing for a little while.

Being in this position at my job makes me feel like a loser. I’m smart and educated and I’ve worked all my life, a much longer time frame than I even want to admit right now, and all I have to show for it is a crummy job from which I will never have the wherewithal to retire, part of a corporation that doesn’t have a clue, in an industry that makes most of its’ money doing things that would be illegal in a just world, under the thumb of a swaggering, big-mouthed egomaniac who in a battle of wits would be unarmed.

I try to let the shit roll off me, and considering my underlying attitude I guess I’ve been doing that pretty well. I try to tell myself that being there is like going through the looking glass into an upside down world, and that my real life starts when I walk out each day, but the corporation is so in my face lately that it’s getting too difficult to forget about it when I’m not there.

I wish I were earning my living doing something I loved. I have said that I would play blues in a corner bar for hot dogs, but I really can’t do that. I don’t want to go into the whole mess right now, but I have responsibilities and as bad as the crummy job is, it gives me a regular — albeit minimal — paycheck and health benefits.

So I have become the gray, plodding, broken man that I mocked when I was a brash youth, and I owned the world. Sorry, Dad. I didn’t know how life can beat you down, how you can get hooked on the money, trapped into doing things you loathe, running as fast as you can just to stay in the same place.

And feeling the knot of fear in your stomach when you realize you’re not even staying in the same place. You are slipping behind.

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I’m OK. Maybe what I wanted to say is that, while I’ll be busy working on the hardware for a bit, 2007 will be a big year for revision99, so stay tuned. As always, my heart skips only for you.

Last night I was stuck at the tackiest “Christmas Party” ever.

In lieu of a real party, we closed the doors at work (at 4:00 PM, big deal) and had a dinner on the premises. There was no music. There were no decorations. We didn’t have Secret Santas. There was no indication that we were celebrating anything, or observing any ancient tradition.

“Gifts” had been extorted from our various vendors, and were distributed by means of raffle tickets and a drawing. Yes, that’s right: We called the businesses that supply us and told them that we expected them to donate stuff to our Christmas party, or else we would have to rethink our relationship with them in the new year. And yes, we are a Fortune 500 company.

Gifts. You know - things you give to others, people you love or want to impress or for whom you want to do something nice. I understand that certain holidays, most notably Christmas, have created a sort of ritualized gift-giving frenzy, whereby we feel that we must give to certain friends and family and associates. But still, at least we know who’s getting the presents, and the giving bears some resemblance to the real thing.

Our event last night was fully disconnected from the entire concept of giving. The “gifts” were from people who didn’t want to give them, to people they didn’t know. A bald guy got a hair curler. The 19-year-old receptionist got a jug of Johnny Walker Black. The guy who got the golf balls was trying to trade them - for anything else.

I didn’t want any of the tainted booty. I knew it would be cursed, so I threw away my raffle ticket and stayed in my office. In the end I was forced to put in an appearance, and I must say that the food was fantastic. One of our employees, a guy from New Orleans, operates a family catering business on the side, and he cooked up a phenomonal cajun feast for us all. He spent the whole day on the meal, and it was worth it. About half of it was still here in the morning, so all I have done all day is eat.

Except for the gumbo and the sausage and the crawfish, this event was easily the low point of the worst year of my professional career, and helps keep me focused on getting the fuck out of this gig. I hope I am able to do that.

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On a much happier note, Blue Girl and Neddie Jingo have recorded a Christmas song, collaborating long distance on a sweet little masterpiece for the holiday. Blue Girl is in my Reciprocity blogroll, and Neddie Jingo is someone I’ll be reading a lot more in the new year. Some of you may recall that I did something like this with y’all last year on a protest song, but they have taken the collaboration idea to a new blog level, and it is wonderful. If your computer can play music, click here to hear the song.

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Finally, I might be talking to God this weekend, so let me know if you want me to ask anything.

I really, really, really need to get a new job.

It’s Friday night, approaching midnight, and I feel like I have just finished a week of running in front of the bulls at Pamplona. I don’t want to complain abut this too much — after all, at least I have a job. It’s a steady paycheck and subsidized health insurance. But since we were bought out by HugeCorp things have gone from bad to worse. I have tried to maintain some sense of balance, and after almost fourteen years at this place I have seen a lot of self-annointed bigshots come and go and I know that no matter how bad things get it’s just a job and my real life starts when I walk out of there each day.

But money touches everything and HugeCorp, like all corporations, exists only and purely to make as much money as possible, and it is like a giant machine, whirring in the basement (or the penthouse), grinding out new schemes and initiatives and procedures, blissfully unaware of what it’s like to be me, trying to implement them and still find time to get some work done. Some of the schemes make some sense in theory, or at least it’s possible to discern the good intentions behind them. But when they are brought into the workplace and start bumping up against reality all their flaws are exposed and eveything the planners didn’t think of takes place and there is chaos, anger and frustration.

I usually like chaos, but I am angry and frustrated because I am starting to see that I am a square peg and I will never fit into any of these HugeCorp round holes. For years we could both ignore this incompatibility, because they paid me and I efficiently did their work. But they are losing interest in getting work done. What they want now is to seem to be getting work done, so investors are impressed by the prospectus and the stock value goes up.

Another thing investors like is cost-cutting, so this week all the office supplies were moved to a warehouse a block away from the building where they are used, where they are being cataloged and shelved. This started without warning or explanation a few days ago, and by today most of our day-to-day stuff we need to work was gone from our premises. So when I was in the middle of a print job on the main laser printer and it ran out of paper, there was no fucking paper anywhere in the building. I asked the woman who had previously been in charge of supplies, and she told me to go to the other building and ask for a ream.

Really. Do I need more of a hint than that? Not only am I getting reamed, but now they want me to ask for it.

OK. I get it. It’s a huge corporation and they want to be as efficient as possible. They want to enhance the bottom line by saving money on supplies by making people accountable for what they use. But because of the stupid, arrogant, thoughtless, haphazard way they went about doing it, I - and the other twenty people who use that printer - had to stop everything and wait for someone to hike down the street and ask for a ream.

It was me, of course, and I didn’t ask. I took four reams of paper and hiked back to the office. I loaded the printer and asked the former supply-woman where she wanted the rest of the paper, and I asked her to call the warehouse and let them know how much paper I had taken, since no one had been there when I arrived. Just helpful Jones, trying to keep all the wheels turning.

For this rogue behavior I got to have a special, ten-minute closed-door meeting with the (new) general manager and the (new) controller, who together have worked there a total of six months. I won’t go into the grisly details of my reprimand, except to say that even though neither of them could refute my logic that I was just trying to get the whole fucking office back to work and ensure that another such delay didn’t occur in a couple of hours, they insisted that I had to play by the new rules (which had never been revealed to me, but that didn’t matter), that there could be no exceptions and it was too fucking bad if I didn’t like it. And, oh, yeah, neither of them was responsible for the new rules - they just happened spontaneously. (I actually used the word “spontaneously” in our conversation, and it appears that neither of them know what it means.)

So, to summarize:

• Stoopid rule.
• Productivity suffers.
• Circumventing the rule and actually working gets you in trouble.
• No one is responsible.
• I really, really, really need to get a new job.

I haven’t written in more than a week,

because I haven’t felt like writing. A whole bunch of life is happening to me, and it’s going by so fast that I can’t find time to blog it. This will be the gap when I’m old (OK, when I’m really old) and I’m trying to remember what I was doing just before I spent that mad year in Rio, with that crazy, crazy redhead from that goofy modern dance troupe. I will try to refer to my blog, because I know that blogs are forever, and all that I write will remain here for me and the world to read for all eternity, or until the ozone layer is completely gone and the entire human race has departed for another star system, lush green and yellow and silver planets that beckon and welcome, hiding their deadly secrets until all of the spaceships have been dismantled and beaten into plowshares…

But long before the Great Exodus, I will be a doddering old geezer yelling “URL, schmoo-R-L! Just find that blog!” And the great great grandchildren with their Intel Argos Brainchips will call up Google and frantically search the database of over 50 trillion blogs and vanity web sites for some record that I ever wrote anything at all, much less described the goings-on of June, 2006 but instead they will keep getting sidetracked by pictures of Paris Hilton going down on Jenna Bush, the future First Lady and President of the United States, before the Last Election, in 2032.

But I haven’t felt like writing, and so nothing will be found. I feel bad about this, although I know I’ll get over it before I am a doddering old coot. I feel bad because I keep thinking this would be a cool opening sentence - and then I could go on to show how this is a good example of… but right about then something else swoops into my mind and washes that idea away, and I’m not telling you what idea it was because I have no fucking idea, because I can’t concentrate on anything long enough to remember it five minutes later.

It now occurs to me that perhaps these are symptoms of already being a doddering old fool, much as the overuse of italics could be seen as a sign of a decreasing facility with language and thus a need to resort to ever more typographical tricks to make one’s writing seem vibrant and relevant, emphasis callously and frivolously superimposed over meaningless text in a pathetic effort to fool you, the reader, whom I love desperately. I know, you’re thinking “He’s saying that because he knows he’s the reader, and of course he loves himself, the narcissistic fool.”

Ah, but do I love myself? Maybe I loathe myself. How would you know, really? Notice how you only have to replace the “v” in love with “ath” to totally reverse the meaning? Merely a coincidence? I think not, and you’d think not, too, if you just thought about it.

So, what’s everybody doing for summer vacation? I’m planning to catch up on the laundry, maybe shellac a few picture frames. I could come over if you need some company. I’m a little eccentric, but I totally hide it in public, so you wouldn’t be embarrassed. I could bring some killer weed. I don’t have any, but I’d get some if you wanted it. We could pitch a tent in the back yard and stay in it all night, and tell your parents not to come and check on us no matter what.

I seem to write only about my crummy job lately.

Not to belabor such an admittedly unimportant issue, but this happened today at work and I am still scratching my head over it.

I was walking by an office, and a member of our highly paid, friendly and knowledgable sales staff - let’s call him “Albert,” shall we? - was sitting in there and staring at a blank computer screen. He wasn’t meditating. He just didn’t know how to log in. I see this as a good thing, because once they get logged in the trouble starts.

Sensing me near his door, he called my name, not taking his eyes off the screen. I thought about acting like I hadn’t heard him and just strolling on past, but it was early in the week and I was still filled with good will from taking Monday off, so I went in.

“What’s up, Albert?”

“Hey Larry. I’m trying to [use the computer to perform a function that is against state and federal law as well as company policy, and which could violate my customer’s privacy and compromise his financial information and leave him open to possible identity theft], but I can’t figure out how to get this computer working. Can you help me?” Those were not his exact words, but that’s what he was trying to do.

“Sure, Albert. I know your manager’s password. Let me just log you in. And… there you go. All set.”

“Thanks, Larry. We’d never get anything done around here without you.”

“No problem, Albert. Have a good time.”

I walked on, musing that Albert will probably remain logged on to that computer until the next power failure.

I may have mentioned my crummy job in the past.

It’s wrong for me to be so disrespectful of it. It pays my bills and keeps me out of that large group of Americans who don’t have health insurance. Without it I wouldn’t have this fine, fine computer, with which I blog. And, as noted here in the past, every Monday I am full of resolve to make the best of it, to be friendly and helpful, to keep it light, to solve problems rather than create them.

Maybe it’s the corporate ownership. My company has been absorbed by HugeCorp, a company whose only purpose is to own other companies (and extract the cash). It was created just a few years ago, so no one working at HugeCorp has been around as long as I have, or most of my immediate colleagues, for that matter. They know nothing about the actual business we’re in - that is, the part of the business that generates the revenue. So their “management” abilities are purely theoretical, and as a result the orders we get from them are arbitrary and, well, pointless. And stupid.

This has caused morale on the ground to disintegrate. Everyone’s upset because they are following orders, rather than getting the job done. You spend most of your time following orders, and then when you can fit it in, you get the job done, almost as an afterthought, and certainly not as a result of the orders from HugeCorp.

As part of the takeover, HugeCorp made it clear that it was their way or the highway. I stopped counting how many documents I have signed saying that I understand that I serve only at their pleasure and can be discarded at any time for any reason. The good news was always that I could quit if I wanted to (as if I couldn’t do that anyway). I wonder if they really think anybody swallowed that. In any case, these documents always arrived with our paychecks, as if to remind us that there was a linkage between getting paid and agreeing with everything they wanted.

The progression of my attitude has been: first, I tried to be a good employee, so I could keep my job and continue to get paid. Then, I saw how things could be improved and I moved to do so. Next I found myself having to fix problems that wouldn’t have happened if the company had brought me in to the decision-making earlier. I got a little sour about that.

After a while I made proactive suggestions to increase efficiency and streamline procedures. These were either ignored or rejected, only to be resurrected verbatim by somebody higher up the food chain and presented as their own, often to me! Around the time of the takeover I began to realize that I was not a member of the family, and would never be allowed to sit at the table. I was only greased when I squeaked really loud, and I got pretty fucking sick and tired of that. At some point I just stopped trying to help.

I have a rotten attitude. If I worked for me, I’d fire myself, except I might not be able to replace me without paying myself a lot more than I’m getting now. Also, I might sue myself for wrongful termination, if such a crime exists. The only way to get rid of me might be to kill me, which is why I have an assistant start my car each day when I leave the office.

The other day somebody’s father-in-law died. Your wife’s dad. Terrible news for your wife, no doubt, but just a bummer for you. Nonetheless, I wanted to sign the card that was circulating around the office, let the guy know I sympathized (I’ve never even met his wife). But I couldn’t catch up with the damned thing, and it ended up in the hands of someone I can’t stand to talk to, a know-nothing, do-nothing, pompous jerk who, in my opinion, only works here because he couldn’t manage the deep fryer at McDonald’s. Every time we need each other we both get angry and frustrated. My fault, as much as his.

So I didn’t sign the card, and my empathy became the victim of a toxic work environment that has got me divided from the very people I should be working most closely with - if we were trying to run a good company instead of just trying to keep our heads down and get by with the least amount of friction, so we can go home at the end of the day and start our real lives.

I wonder if this is some kind of new management-by-confusion technique that they are teaching in business school these days. So anyway, I’m a shithead. I can’t take full credit for it. In fact, I’m sure someone somewhere at headquarters is getting a promotion and a raise for it right now.

In other news, last night I ate a rotisserie-cooked chicken with my bare hands. Just tore it apart and devoured the flesh like an animal predator. Got it all over my face and shirt, and didn’t have no stinkin’ salad, neither.