Travel Games

I was flying from Texas to California yesterday, and as luck would have it I saw someone I knew in the airport. This happens to me more often than you would think it might, it happened just this past December, as a matter of fact. It's only really freaky when it happens in a foreign country, where you would have no right to expect to meet someone from, say, your high school.
   Anyway, I saw a lady I knew when I worked at Countrywide. She had A23 boarding number, I had A22. Which was eerily similar to the events of December, when the friend I met by chance in DFW not only was on the same plane as I was, but had the seat right next to me. The lady from Countrywide worked in HR like I did, her office was on the other side of the big room from mine. Come to find out, she's from San Antonio too, I never knew this before. I ran into her at McCarran airport - that's Vegas for you non-travel savvy folks - but she'd been on my same flight from San Antonio. Weird.
   We got to talking and I realized there's a game people play when you meet someone you don't really know all that well, but you feel obligated to make conversation because you recognize them from work. You talk about people you both know and where they are now. Mark? Don't know, still looking I imagine. Jeff? Started a business. Other Jeff? Working a consulting gig. Nathan? Working his family's pharmacy. Eve? Working for Scott - remember him? - but recently laid off and looking for work too.
   Big pause.
   What do you say when you realize you've run out of meaningless pleasantries? When you've exhausted the list of people you both might know but you still feel obligated to keep the conversational ball rolling? You talk about your shared hometown. Did you know they have music at Wonderland Mall, which hasn't been Wonderland for years but neither of us could remember it was called Crossroads Mall until much later in the conversation. You talk about what high schools you went to, and where my father went but didn't graduate from, and things that didn't used to be there and where farms once dotted a landscape now filled with ugly McMansions.
   Big pause.
   Then the boarding announcement sounded and we shuffled on board for our 3 ounce plastic cup of soda and two packets of peanuts.
   It was an awkward dance, though pleasant enough. I found out she lives in South Pasadena, as do Other Jeff and Sandra. Never knew that before either. Small world.

I'm Still Not Satisfied

I'm fickle.
   I've come to this realization slowly, but I think it's accurate. At least I'm fickle when it comes to work. Let me 'splain.
   I've been at my contract gig for about eight weeks now, and I've been largely unsupervised. Not that I'm slacking off, but what I do is so different from what the others in the office do that they don't know enough about it to give me effective direction. However, having been in charge of contractors before, I know I would do things differently.
   So I'm taking a point away from them for not supervising me or my work properly.
   But today one of the managers was starting to take an interest in what I've been doing, and giving me some minimal instruction and direction. And while I was pleasant and nodded and agreed with what he was saying (I was doing it anyway), in the back of my mind I was thinking 'dude, just leave me alone.'
   So I'm now taking a point away from them for trying to supervise me and my work.
   See? Fickle.
   Either I want them to treat me the way I treated contractors I was in charge of previously, or I don't. I can't have it both ways. But I want it both ways. I want to be unhappy no matter which way my fortunes turn. Can't they understand that?
   Now I'm going to practice for tomorrow. I'm going to resent having the TV on, then I'm going to turn it off and resent it not being on. I'm going to be dissatisfied with my un-brushed teeth, then I'm going to brush them and be unhappy with that too. And then I'm going to be upset with my sink full of dishes, and when I put them all in the dishwasher I'm going to resent the fact that I have to turn it on.
   Ahh... it feels good running a game no one can possibly win.

COMMUTE - there - 35 minutes      back - 40 minutes, it took me 20 minutes to go 6 miles. That just ain't right.
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 39 days

The Way It Should Be

I'm home from work right now, I have to go in late because the EDD (California unemployment office) is calling 'between 10 AM and 12 PM' and I have to be home to take the call. Kind of like the cable guy except I don't have to let any suspicious characters into my apartment.
   I gotta say, I've missed getting up when I feel like it and working on stuff that interests me. I got into a good rhythm with my writing over the past months of being 'between assignments' and it's nice to get back to it, even if it's only for a morning.
   Right now I'm working on a proposal for a children's ABC book that would benefit animal charities by donating 51% of the authors' after-tax profits. In the hour and a half or so that I've been working on it today I've gotten more done than in the previous five or six days of after-hours struggle. Not working just works out better.
   I was talking this over with a friend who is also 'between assignments' and we came to the conclusion that about 30 hours of work a week is good. Go in about 10 or 11 and get done about 4-ish. You really only have 4 or 5 good hours of work in you anyway, why waste the other 4 hours pretending to work while you surf the 'Net? Get in, do your thing, get the hell out, that's what I say. The old 8-hour (now 9- or 10-hour) work day is designed for factory production, three shifts of 8 hours each, for a round-the-clock factory cycle. People don't operate that way, we need to re-think this whole 'be absent from your homes and families for 10 hours a day' thing, it's a bunch of crap.


COMMUTE: there - haven't left yet      back - haven't left yet.
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 59 days

Puttin' It Out There

A few weeks back I declared that I was tired of being 'between assignments' and that I wanted to start working again. Well, Mama always said to be careful what you wish for. I landed a contracting gig, had an interview for a regular job and then a second one today, and I found three other good jobs I applied for in case that one doesn't pan out.
   Trouble is, all this working to make rent money is severely cutting into my writing time. The fact that I finished several books while holding down a full time job is now nothing short of miraculous to me. I have to find that discipline again, I don't have the whole day free to schedule however I wish any longer. I finished a book in January, and another one in March, but with my schedule the way it is now, I don't know when I would finish another. November? December? Who knows?
   I figured that what I needed to do was confess my desires in a public forum, much like I did my desire to start working again, and see if the Universe arranges for things to happen again. So here it goes:
   I'm tired of working for someone else. I want to be a published author. I have fiction that is as good as anything on the shelves right now and I just need to get my foot in the door. I also have great non-fiction proposals that will make excellent books - an alphabet book for early readers with half the profits going to animal shelters, for example - that just need to get seen by the right people to make them happen.
   There you are. It's out there, floating through the aether. I've tossed my bottle into the ocean, let's see what shore it washes up on.


COMMUTE: there - 40 minutes     back - does not compute, I had an interview
CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 65 days

Held Hostage

I was telling a friend of mine just last night that even though I've re-entered the workforce - go me! - it's only grudgingly. Given all the bad that's happening in the world I've got it pretty good, no one's shooting at me or trying to chop my hands off for voting or anything like that. I really have nothing to complain about.
   But I'm gonna.
   The office is about 16 miles from my house. Which, in Texas terms, would mean about a 15 to 20 minute commute. But not in LA. The office is on the Miracle Mile, which means it's not easy to get there from anywhere else in the LA area. It takes me 35 minutes at the very least, 50 minutes on a bad day. Insane in the membrane. I've been away from any sort of commute for a year, and I honestly don't see how I once made a 50 minute commute regularly.
   Being in the office for eight to nine hours a day - absent the commute - feels like I'm being held hostage. Or being punished. Seriously. I feel like a fifth-grader staring out the window on a fabulous Spring day.
   I had several meeting today, with various members of the team, sales, marketing, technology, several hours all together. While the meetings did help with the work I need to do, I don't miss meetings. At. All. To say that I'd rather have someone hit me in the back of the head with a nail-studded two-by-four than attend another meeting is understating things. I remember there were people at my previous jobs who did nothing but attend meetings, all day, every day. I just don't see how they did it.
   And then I have to get back in the swing of bringing my lunch to work, which means I have to buy stuff for sandwiches, get chips and carrot sticks, all that kind of thing. And preparing all that stuff takes even more time out of my day...
   Crap.
   Now I'm starting to sound like a 'friend' of mine who has never held a real job in his entire life, and thinks the world owes him a living just by virtue of him being alive. I guess it's time to get involved in a multi-level marketing scheme and get evicted from a home I could never afford in the first place.

CONTRACT COUNTDOWN: 88 days

Goons And Henchmen

Why is it that only bad guys can have goons and henchmen? When mafiosi and Nazis and third-world dictators have a few people around who like them and are willing to do what they say without question, those people get the title henchmen. When somebody in charge needs something done, the person they send to do the job gets called a goon. But, in an odd twist of terminology, when the person in charge is not a crime lord, dictator, or cult leader, their faithful are called supporters or followers.
   I don't know about you, but I'd rather have henchmen. A few guys to go around and do stuff that I need done. Like wash my truck or do the dishes or get the dry cleaning. I don't have much dry cleaning done now, but I assure you if I had henchmen to do my bidding I'd take pants and shirts there more often. I'd have goons only when I've earned them.
   Which makes me think, does a CEO of a corporation have goons or supporters? What about the least-drunk hobo in the railroad car, henchmen or followers? Those self-help gurus on PBS? I'm guessing they have goons, you don't make PBS money and only have henchmen.
   And what about the henchmen and goons themselves? They're people too, husbands with families who've taken to gooning to put food on the table. From everything I've seen, heard, and read, goons and henchmen don't really get benefits. No 401K for them, no term life package, no health insurance where they can see a doctor in-plan for a $10 co-pay. They're contractors, and not even W-2 contractors, they're 1099 contractors, responsible for all their own stuff. Nobody's got their back. Who's fighting the good fight for them? Who does things for them when things need doing? Who henchmens the henchmen?
   I think I've found a new Hollywood charity. Please, won't somebody think of the goons?

Mmmmm... Pie Charts...

I've been hitting the job search pretty hard for a few weeks now - I know, I know, it's disappointing for me too - and I can see that it's going to take some time. That time will allow me to ease back into the work routine, long hours spent away from home, the couch sadly neglected, the refrigerator door grossly under-used. I've been trying to think of what I would look forward to at work, aside from the birthday cake, and the list was woefully short. And then I thought a little bit more and I had it.
   I look forward to pointless technical innovation.
   You'd think there would be plenty of that in the non-corporate world, what with your Twitters and your iPhone apps and android what-nots. But some of the pointless technical innovation in society eventually proves useful somewhere - Twitter about the Iranian elections, for instance. But only in the corporate world can you get technology that presents itself as helpful which is anything but.
   Pie charts, for instance. I don't know how much programming time has been wasted getting pie charts easier and easier to produce, and yet I've never seen a serious presentation that actually uses a pie chart. Or a bar graph, or line graph or any of the bloat that spreadsheet programs list as 'features.'
   What about the presentations themselves? Power Point, Keynote, whatever, I've never seen, been shown, or handed a stack of presentation slides that wasn't a total waste of time. A waste of time to produce, a waste of time to explain or read aloud, a waste of time to e-mail. But there are people whose entire job is to produce Power Point presentations, and they think what they're doing adds value. Big-four consultants, I'm looking your way here...
   How about security access doors? You have to swipe you employee ID to get inside. And if you read the fine print in the documents you sign to get that ID, you're not supposed to let anyone in unless they swipe their ID too. Find me one person who abides by that provision, even the head of corporate security. If five people go out for lunch, only one person swipes all of them back in the building. Might as well just prop open the door with a rock.
   I could go on, but it's getting close to time for my afternoon nap. Gotta grab this opportunity while I have it.

Not Cool Any More

This morning I was thinking about what to have for breakfast and I realized that all the options I considered were healthy. Good for me and heart-smart. Special K cereal, apples, a whole wheat English muffin, for God's sake. Time was I would have been looking for cold pizza, or Doritos, or cookies and ice cream. And I would have found them, too.
   What happened to me? When did I finally start listening to my mother?
   Somewhere along the line I became concerned with eating properly, with lasting long enough to see another sunrise. No more living fast and damned be the consequences. If I wasn't so lazy that I like to walk to work, I'd probably live out in the suburbs somewhere, on a cul-de-sac with everybody else, concerned about property values and whether my neighbors mowed their lawn the way I liked.
   I'm not cool any more. And for those of you who know me who might say I was never cool, I say 'shut up,' let me have my moment.
   There's another thing. Back in the day, when I was cool, I used to be able to pack all my stuff and move in 24 hours. Nothing I had that was important to me, or nice, or expensive was more than I could stuff in the back of my truck. That's not the case now. I have nice furniture, appliances, office supplies and equipment. I have an iced tea maker, for cryin' out loud, and I like it. I'm not going to leave it behind.
   I spent ten years as a corporate weasel, and I think some of it rubbed off on me. Either that or I got old. Nah, I'm blaming the corporations. The bastards co-opted me, made me one of them. One of me.
   I have the feeling that the me from eleven years ago would probably want to kick my ass now. And he'd be right.

Robotic Seniors

I've written before about how the Japanese concern me, what with their penchant for talking toilets and their creepy human-like robots. Well now they've gone too far again, this time with human-assist mechanics intended for old people. Japan has a lot of old people, and they're only going to get more as their population ages, so recently they unveiled three new mobility assist devices. Two strap to a person's legs to help them walk, and the other is designed to sit on and zip around. The first two look kind of silly, but that's no concern if it helps people get around, and the other one... well, I just don't see how grandma is going to balance well enough to use it.
   But the point is that once again the Japanese are messing with the natural order of things.
   See, the thing about getting older is that you get wiser and sneakier. Craftier. You've seen more things and had more experience, so you're better equipped - mentally - to get one over on people. The trade off is you get feebler, sometimes slowly, sometimes alarmingly quickly. But now the Japanese are inventing stuff to help old people stay stronger for longer. A noble pursuit, at first glance, but think about it for a moment. With these things strapped to them, old people, naturally sneakier to begin with, are going to stay strong and vital far longer than they otherwise would. I'm not sure I want a crafty, cybernetic codger who can kick my ass.
   Young people are stronger but stupider, old people are smarter but weaker. It's the way of things, like the change in seasons or the slow decline of NBC as a viable TV network. If we start making old people into Six Million Dollar Men and Women, what's left for the young people of the world? Around here kids in their twenties are already pretty much worthless, the one thing they have is their youth and vitality, if you take that away Lord knows what will happen. I'd say there could be revolution in the streets, but there'd probably be a squadron of elderly peacekeepers with their cybernetic parts ready to dispense justice with a good helping of common sense advice.

Non-Laboring Day

I had someone ask me recently what my plans for Labor Day were. Since I have every day off from work now, I explained, Labor Day was just another in a long string of nearly-identical days. As I've written previously, sometimes I forget whether it's a weekday. And besides, Labor Day is now a signpost for fund-raising telethons and an excuse for retailers to have yet another sale.
   But I got to thinking about Labor Day, what it's supposed to mean and how it came about. It arose from populism in the late 19th Century, spurred on by growing awareness of robber barons' exploitation of all their workers, especially children. Workers got their own holiday, which was good for them, but kind of quaint now, and certainly outdated.
   Or is it?
   Most office workers today wouldn't think of themselves as laborers, and in the strictest sense they aren't; the heaviest thing most of us lifted in the office was a coffee cup. However - just because you don't sweat doesn't mean you're not oppressed. How many of you feel the pressure to put in more than eight hours a day, even though you're a five-day-a-week, forty-hour employee? How many of you take work home every night, or work on the weekends, every weekend? How many of you have bosses who put the screws to you not because they want to get the job done, but to look good to their own bosses?
   At some point in the past ten or fifteen years, corporate America adopted the idea that their workers are 'resources' to be 'managed' instead of people to be led, and that the company demands total loyalty, to the detriment of employees' personal lives and even their health. While at the same time corporate 'leaders' lie, cheat, steal, and betray their way to fatter and fatter paychecks, based on nothing but the fact that they can get away with it. And the concept of leading by example? Vanished, like a coin palmed by David Blaine in one of his terrible TV specials.
   The next time you stay late to finish a document or log in from home to read your work e-mail, ask yourself why you're doing it. Is it because you really want to, or because you're afraid of the consequences if you don't? If the answer is the second one - and it probably is - you deserve Labor Day as much as dock workers in 1899 did.
   Just say 'no' to corporate weasels, it's the only way they'll get the message.

Modern Aesop - The Fox and the Ants

Once a Fox found himself in charge of a very large corporation. He was paid out of all proportion, not only to his contributions, but to his talent. The Fox was not very good at his job, but he was extremely good at hiding how bad he was at his job. He took credit for everything good that happened, yet blamed the poor Ant workers for everything that went wrong. He enjoyed far more than his fair share, not only of coins, but of food, leisure, and praise from other animals who found his leadership remarkable. But the Ants knew the truth.
   Then one day the Fox's incompetence became too much to hide and the Jackals from the press corps began nipping at his heels. They asked the Fox questions he wished they wouldn't, like why he had agreed to let the Donkeys in finance leverage the company's assets 35 to 1, or why Fox had lent so many coins to unworthy Sheep who couldn't possibly pay them back. The Fox held a press conference and blamed his Ants, saying that if the Ants had just worked a little bit harder none of the problems would have happened.
   Great Jupiter then commanded the Wolf to purchase the Fox's corporation, and the Fox retired to green pastures with other clever Foxes, taking his urns full of coins and leading a life many times better than the Ants whom he had left with all the problems he created by his own incompetence and greed. And Great Jupiter did nothing to punish the Fox, and the Judge Gorilla did nothing, and the Ants could do nothing on their own without the help of Jupiter or the Gorilla, so the Fox continued to enjoy the his ill-gotten fortune.
   Then Fox had a heart attack and died on the golf course next to his Vixen trophy wife. And the Ants were satisfied with this decree of the Fates.

Ah, Look At All The Germy People

You know what I've noticed, being 'between assignments?' Aside from how empty the gym is at 2 PM, or how astonishingly bad daytime TV is, or how panhandlers just aren't 'in the zone' outside of morning and evening rush hours?
   I haven't been sick.
   I swear it's true, and knock wood to keep the streak going. You hear about studies of workplace illnesses, and about how the office is just one big, infected cesspool of viruses hopping from person to person. Well, it's true. I haven't been in an office in three months, and I haven't had one cold, not one sniffle, not one headache or sinus infection or sore throat. Not one.
   And it's not like I'm a hermit, either. As a matter of fact I've probably spent more time in the company of other people - and more people besides - in the past three months than I ever did when I was working. I just haven't contracted any illnesses from them.
   So if you're constantly sick at work, if you always have a stuffy nose or a chest cold that just won't seem to go away, the solution is clear. Quit. Put in your two weeks' notice and then get the hell out and get yourself better. Would you rather be healthy, or would you rather be oppressed by an unfeeling, uncaring, corporate leviathan? Your call.

What I Miss About Work

There are many things I do not miss about work: commuting, self-important do-nothings, pointless rules that people feel the need to follow without question, evil executives who spout platitudes while lining their pockets with investors' money. The toilet paper in the office bathrooms. But there is one thing I do miss about work:
   Birthday cake.
   It's been two and a half months and I haven't had any birthday cake, I'm going through withdrawal. Store bought or homemade, it doesn't matter to me, all I want is to celebrate someone's birthday with a sugar rush in the afternoon, right around 2:30 PM, after lunch and close to going-home time but not so close that you have to rush to finish or clean up.
   Yeah, sure, I could make my own cake, but it's just not the same. There's nothing quite like getting a visit in your office from someone with a birthday card, it brightens your morning because you know that in a few hours you'll be getting cake. For free. Maybe some ice cream too, if people in the office like the birthday boy or girl enough.
   Maybe I can crash one of the office buildings nearby, somebody there has to have a birthday today...