Soulless Corporate Jobs (goes with the utilities thread)

[Nordic]

Barracuda, you should try Hollywood. You might shoot right to the top. I'm not joking!

The last time I had a "real" job was in 1995 through early 1996, for "Microsoft Press" in Austin Texas. Except it wasn't really for MS Press, it was for a company whose name I can't remember who subcontracted call-center jobs. Then we were actually hired by a temp agency. The pay wasn't enough to live in your Mom's basement. It was the most depressing job ever, especially considering I was far older than most of the kids there, most of whom were in college. One girl was 17.

We could take calls from people who wanted to buy books from MS Press. They would ask questions that we were in absolutely no way qualified to answer. Also, the customers would be looking at the company website, and we didn't have access to that website or any other. Sometimes they'd get really angry at us when informed of this. Like it was our fault.

These total strangers would give us, total strangers, their personal credit card info, which we could easily have been writing down on our own little slips of paper, and would order these books.

They did random drug testing for this job. Because god knows you don't want someone smoking pot in their spare time when you're paying them $7.00 an hour to answer phones for a subcontractor of a subcontractor of Microsoft. One of the guys who was absolutely super-good at the job, and who actually had READ many of the books and who actually KNEW what he was talking about was frog-marched out of there like a criminal for failing his piss test. In Austin, where you can probably pick up enough THC to fail a test just from walking down the streets on some nights.

It was a disgusting and appalling experience, and I got so depressed that I started finding myself unable to get out of bed for it. Finally they fired me, or I should say an angry worker at the temp agency fired me and told me basically that I'd "never work in their town again" (meaning their temp agency, and they were franchized all over the country). Oh gosh, really? Right after that I got a job on a little indy film, had a great time, met my new girlfriend and a bunch of cool new people, and was off for the next 14 years or so.

Compared to other work environments i've seen, it really wasn't that horrible. The worst place I've ever seen was a car-battery factory in Minnesota. You couldn't even breathe in the place, there was like crystalized acid in the air that would burn your mucous membranes as soon as you tried to take a breath. I don't know how anybody survived that place. Then there was the stockyard outside of Denver ..... But I didn't work in those, was only there to film.

[Nordic]

Okay, I'll do another one.

I used to do temp work, back when I was in college. I could type really really fast, so I could always walk in, do a typing test, and be sent out to assignments pretty quickly.

One time they sent me to a company called "Chem Lawn". It's exactly what it sounds like. A company that you would hire to come around every month and spray your lawn with chemicals. Great!

My job was to call people on a huge endless list, most of whom were existing customers (!) and ask them if they'd like to buy some kind of new special something. Can't even remember what.

Well, half the people I would call would start screaming at me for having sprayed their dog, their cat, their children, their laundry on the line, with these nasty chemicals, and really REALLY wanting me to do something about it. They'd tried to call in so many times, never gotten anywhere, and here we were calling them back to sell them something new. I was just a clueless 18 year old with absolutely no knowledge of the company other than there was a phone sitting in front of me and a printed list of a bunch of names and phone numbers. It was really horrible. The realization that I was working for a bunch of mega assholes didn't exactly sit too well with me.

At the end of the day, which was one of the longest work days of my life (I mean it was only 8 hours but felt like 80) they asked me if I wanted to come back the next day and I said "no". No fucking way.

Had a ton of temp jobs back then. All kinds of weird stuff. One for a port-a-john company, you know, the toilets they bring to construction sites. This was in Minneapolis. The guy that ran this place was quite wealthy, strutted around in his suits and parked his Mercedes Benz right outside where all could see it in a special spot. I just kept thinking "dude, you rent out toilets". Ugh.

[Project Willow]

Wasn't sure where to put this...

http://www.truth-out.org/brainwashing-corporate-way/1308937274

Brainwashing the Corporate Way
Friday 24 June 2011
by: John Pilger, Truthout | News Analysis

(Photo: Reza Vaziri / Flickr)

One of the most original and provocative books of the past decade is "Disciplined Minds" by Jeff Schmidt (Rowman & Littlefield). "A critical look at salaried professionals," says the cover, "and the soul-battering system that shapes their lives." Its theme is postmodern America, but also applies to Britain, where the corporate state has bred a new class of Americanized manager to run the private and public sectors: the banks, the main parties, corporations, important committees, the BBC.

Professionals are said to be meritorious and non-ideological. Yet, in spite of their education, writes Schmidt, they think less independently than non-professionals. They use corporate jargon - "model," "performance," "targets," "strategic oversight." In "Disciplined Minds," Schmidt argues that what makes the modern professional is not technical knowledge, but "ideological discipline." Those in higher education and the media do "political work," but in a way, that is not seen as political. Listen to a senior BBC person sincerely describe the nirvana of neutrality to which he or she has risen. "Taking sides" is anathema; and yet the modern professional knows never to challenge the "built-in ideology of the status quo." What matters is the "right attitude."

A key to training professionals is what Schmidt calls "assignable curiosity." Children are naturally curious, but along the way to becoming a professional they learn that curiosity is a series of tasks assigned by others. On entering training, students are optimistic and idealistic. On leaving, they are "pressured and troubled" because they realize that "the primary goal for many is getting compensated sufficiently for sidelining their original goals." I have met many young people, especially budding journalists, who would recognize themselves in this description. For no matter how indirect its effect, the primary influence of professional managers is the extreme political cult of money worship and inequality known as neoliberalism.

The ultimate professional manager is Bob Diamond, the CEO of Barclays Bank in London, who got a £6.5 million bonus in March. More than 200 of Barclays' managers took home £554 million in total last year. In January, Diamond told the Commons Treasury Select Committee that "the time for remorse is over." He was referring to the £1 trillion of public money handed unconditionally to corrupted banks by a Labour government, whose leader, Gordon Brown, had described such "financiers" as his personal "inspiration."

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Rest at the link.

http://www.truth-out.org/brainwashing-corporate-way/1308937274