I had this really long post I was working on, that was going to give the cyber world a very long summary of my exploits over the past few months: going to Korea (briefly; there's another whole blog about that), moving out, etc. But after a particularly vexing day at the hellhole that is my occupation, I feel I had to vent. I apologize this has no structure, no order...but I guess it kind of fits the content, right?
To sum it up: My friend (one of the few normal people there) told me of how his boss needed to have a screensaver set up with a password. My friend needed his boss's password. No, it wasn't "1,2,3,4" like Michael Scott's, but it summed it up perfectly: "----sucks1." I won't reveal the first four letters, for fear that someone else doesn't share my less than sunny disposition about my employer, but I'll just say the first word is where I work. That's the problem; there are literally thousands of people like him: hate their job, their life, hate everything. Is it the job? I'm sure that plays into it. But I know it has to do a lot with the people that work there. I've often times said that a monkey could do this job, but that actually does a disservice to the monkeys, animals that can actually be trained to do work and function as humans. The organisms I work with are unteachable. Not that they're stubborn to learning (they are), but they are genetically disposed to reject all learning. It doesn't process in their brain. Instead, you get these half-retarded creatures roaming around, like they just got bad lobotomies. You know how I know work sucks? When everyone around you tells you to "get out." When people who literally pick up things from the printer and get food out of a refrigerator are on the payroll. This is the safest job on the planet, because if a guy can shit himself in front of everyone and still collect a hefty paycheck, then I can be President of the company. True story.
This place, if you hadn't gathered it from the many posts written, sucks. How else can I sum it up any more succinctly? It is this festering piece of shit dump that spreads its evil around and eats up everything in its path, like a tornado. No one is safe. Everyone there is pathetic, depressing, and strange. I don't know if it's the work (yeah, it's the work), but why does it make everyone so guarded and closed off? Seriously, go onto my floor, and ask anyone what they did over the weekend. "I went to Central Park and had a picnic." "I saw an amazing concert." "I went to the beach." Any of those answers would be acceptable, and even enjoyable...if these people were normal. Here's the real answers you get: "Nothing." "Sat in my house." "I wasn't here." Everyone there, in a past life or when they were younger, must have been severely emotionally and/or physically scarred, because getting any type of information out of anyone is like trying to pull a sandwich out of a fat man's mouth (and there are two of the fattest, most disgusting people I've ever seen that work here. One weighs at least "five hundred pounds" according to someone else there, though it's probably closer to 350. He apparently used to bring in loaves of Italian bread and a pound of bologna and just plowed through the combo. Everyday. But he is actually more tolerable than the other one, who is not as fat but 100 times more disgusting and pathetic. If it wasn't bad enough he bought a wife and her child from the Philippines, then the not bathing and dropping his pants at the urinal like a 5 year old would take the cake. Seriously? He basically needs a diaper or suspenders. And he, like the previously described hippo, make collectively over $100,000 a year. My employer throws money around like Pacman Jones in Las Vegas).
Another great example is when some girl came up to me and asked if I just moved. We got into a short conversation about how she moved to my neighborhood. "She's cool," I thought. "Maybe we can hang out, it's always good to have some more friends to hang out with in a new environment." But then, after saying that maybe we could hang out, she said what I should have expected her to say: she immediately threw her guard up like the Berlin Wall being reconstructed, and said, "Yeah...maybe we'll see each other on the train or something." Wow! Really? Do you think I'm going to come to your apartment and rape you? That sounds extreme, but c'mon!
Maybe everyone around are CIA agents with double lives. They're mild-mannered at work, but once they punch that clock, they go into killing mode. That's the only way I can explain keeping everything so close to the vest. Or maybe they're just weird with no forseeable social lives. Do these people think I'm going to broadcast what they do to a blog or something? (Hmm...)
Another girl lives in one of the sickest neighborhoods in Brooklyn; an area everyone not there would drool over. What does she do in her free time, you ask? Just sitting around in her apartment, talking walks with a friend, or shopping. Yes, riveting. She also spends about $5 a day to feed her Starbucks addiction. Did you get the newsflash that they sell this at supermarkets now? And you're not too thin yourself, I would suggest cutting back on the calories and reaching for a water. How about the girl who appears to just take fitness classes? Or the guy who sits in his house all day? I could go on forever, but I think I've made my point.
And these are young people! Under 30 in a lot of cases. Whereas for most people, work is just what takes up your time when you're not doing something fun, these people saw work as everything. And that is the saddest thing of all. Because this job isn't worth it to get stressed out or angry. While people may go around and act as if we're saving the planet, we're not doing anything worth a damn. In the grand scheme of things, our job means nothing, like a lot of other jobs. This false sense of entitlement people have sickens me.
Slowly and slowly this job feels like it's consuming me. Everyday, I talk to people who share the same malaise I do, and whenever we talk about work, all we can say is, "What a place." "Or people suck." For every decent (there's never a "good" day here) day, where I think to myself, "I could work here a little while longer before moving on," ten things come up and make me realize why I have been actively job searching after about 2 months of working there. People just get so complacent, and that's when you settle, and that's not what I want to do. I don't want to start falling into a routine there. So maybe it's good to keep running into these things and being miserable. It'll make me want to get out that much more. At least I get out there and try to live my life. Granted, I'm not popping bottles every night, or bedding beautiful women daily, but I do go out and do things. I don't go home and wait for work to start the next day, which sadly, so many of my co-workers do. You have to distance yourself from work and life. That sounds easy, but so many people just can't do it. And it's the worse when people talk about work outside, or ask you what you do. I have told I don't know how many people what I think I do, and they look at me like I just spoke in a foreign language to them. Trust me, how do you think I feel telling it? I've been there two years and I sometimes get the sense I'm drowning. And not like the quick, ball and chain around your ankle and you sink to the bottom of the ocean. I'm talking about the long, painful, water slowly filling up in your lungs, stranded in the middle of shark-infested water drowning. I'm just hoping for a lifeline soon. I guess the best thing I can say at the end of everything is: "Well, it can't get much worse." But, it is only Tuesday night.
