The Blog

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.