Soulless Corporate Jobs (goes with the utilities thread)

[Project Willow]

OK, I want to know how many soulless, mind-numbing, cubicle-warren, grey-walled corporate jobs you've endured if only to put food on your family (quoting the W here half for comedy's sake).

I also have recently had to take some rather desperate measures which lead me to write these words:

I have to say that having just done a stint (actually it's not quite over yet) in a shiny tower of corporate hell where the most central, integral and personal aspect of my being, my creativity, was squeezed mercilessly to a state of soreness and dryness, (I was, for all intents and purposes, treated as a vending machine) by people whose only sense of value is green inked paper, I think I'd feel less violated if I'd spent the time selling access to my nether regions on a street corner not far from the nearest prison.

I'm not being hyperbolic either, I really do feel physically, psychically and spiritually violated, and wasted, and I don't think the paycheck to come will make up for this feeling in any way.

For anyone who is required to sit daily in a cubicle farm in the dead-hearted middle of some money churning conglomeration, you have my unending pity. These are spirit-forsaken empty places. I wish I had not again encountered them in my life time, although I think I have a greater understanding of the disaster in the Gulf.

I don't imagine I'm alone in that kind of feeling given the community here, so please, take this opportunity to expound and purge your own, uh, compromises.

[semper occultus]

I'm ambivalent to be honest - my cubicle job is getting out-sourced to India - it doesn't feel too much like a liberation at the moment....but who knows it may be the best thing that ever happened to me - bit early to tell

[matrixdutch]

I work in a corporate IT enivironment...I am looking into a union job and starting from the bottom.

[beeline]

.

I've had only one of those jobs, a paid internship in the marketing department of a large law firm. It was the worst ecperience I've ever had, especially when the lady that hired me got promoted, and my new boss turned out to be a complete airhead.

There was one time when we were sending a direct mailing on the part of one of the partners, I think it was about 1,000 letters. The body of the letter was the same, but the names and addresses on both the letter and the envelope were specific to each recipient, and had to be matched.

I had a method where I folded the letter in such a way, that if I lost track, I could easily peer into the top of the envelope to ensure the name on the letter matched the envelope. I'm kind of ADD, so prone to this type of mistake, I was basically covering my own ass.

Anyway, it turns out that I had class or something that afternoon, so the dummy had to take over after I left. So she stuffed the rest of the envelopes, but guess what, she miscounted somewhere along the way, and was not using my letter-folding-system, even though I showed her how to do that before I left, and had to re-open every letter and envelope to make sure the names/addresses matched. She realized her mistake at 4:30, and everyone in the department had to stay an extra two hours to help her correct her mistake. Naturally, since I wasn't there, I got blamed.

I got canned about two weeks later, but I really did not give a shit, it was such hell. I did go to the lady that hired me, and explained what happened, and she did give me references for my next two jobs, my current job being one of them.

[Cordelia]

Well, a steady paycheck even from an airless cubicle looks kind of inviting right now--but probably not for long. I'd forgotten my brief stint with Telecheck (the check guarantee co.and collection agency that got into trouble with the FTC), probably because I was asleep during most of it. I wanted to study art but needed an undemanding, mindless job and my neighbor suggested I work the graveyard shift with him at Telecheck. He said I'd probably have to work regular hours to be trained but once I was, there'd be just the two of us, no dress code, few calls and lots of time to study or sleep. There weren't any cubicles, just rows of computer stations with workers in their teens, twenties and on up to retirees in their seventies, but there was no age discrimination; everyone was treated like a two year old.The managers were all in their twenties and took turns sitting at the elevated supervisor's platform looking down at us, monitoring our calls and everything we did. They'd notify us when we could take a break and we had to clock out before we went to the lounge to get our coats or lunch bag. I was 'written up' for once asking to use the bathroom (that was something you did on your break).

After about three weeks I 'graduated' and joined my friend on the 11 to 7 shift. We'd be busy until midnight, when stores on the west coast closed, and then we'd turn off the elevator music and he'd plug in his amp and practice guitar, or we'd listen to rock over the loud speakers. After about two, there were only sporadic calls from bars; I'd try to stay awake a little later each night but I never made it past four. My friend would wake me in time to get myself together before the morning supervisors got in at 7. Then we'd walk home and sometimes my husband would drive by on his way to work and wave. It was pretty bizarre--I never got used to it; it was like living in the twilight zone and I quit after about a month.

That was long ago--I can't imagine what it's like now. What irritates me is talking on the phone to people who work these kinds of jobs and they have to read from an f'n script. It's like talking to a robot instead of a human being. I really don't understand why they're given exact words to speak and when someone departs from the script , I lap it up and enjoy chatting with them because I'm so appreciative--like they've given me a gift.

[Peregrine]

Oy, I dunno if I could ever work in a cubicle or corporate environment. My reaction to that sort of job offer is pretty much on par with this guy:

[Project Willow]

but there was no age discrimination; everyone was treated like a two year old

That's a great line Cordelia.

I'll just say I'm happy to be done with the assignment and back now to my regular schedule which consists of working for my own clients and getting ready for First Thursday.

For those cube farm dwellers who don't necessarily jive with the OP I just assume it's the crowd/crew as makes the difference, but what do I know?

Peregrine, fellow business owner, I hear you. There is a fundamental issue I have with organizations of any type, especially those that I do not happen to run myself, and that is taking orders. Never have done well with being bossed about, not at all.

Gee, I wonder why? In my particular case I believe that I received enough follow or die or be tortured orders before I was aged 9 to last an entire life time, or perhaps that's only part of the issue. Most artists have issues with authority.

[Laodicean]

Worked for a privately owned plastic manufacturing company (plant). They made plastic jars and caps. If you go to a GNC and look under the cap of one of their products you might just see their logo.

Privately owned = family owned. But it was run like a corporation. Probably because it was. An LLC. But they found a profitable niche in the market. Competitive prices but with superior customer service.

Anyway - I worked customer service. Input the purchase orders, check on orders, deal with irate distributors - order this, order that - ship out free samples...blah blah blah. All from a nice confining cubicle. Didn't even make $10.00 /hr. If you were "in" with the family, you made your way up the ladder. If not - do your fucking job. And don't even be 5 mins late. 30 mins for lunch. One 10 min break during the day. 8am to 5pm, Mon-Fri was the shift.

Fingerprinted scanners to clock in and out everyday...even for breaks. Cameras staring down at me while I got that 10 min. to smoke that cigarette.

Have to admit - at least I wasn't on the floor molding the plactic to make the "Products". Uniformed slaves, most of them stoned off of sniffing prescription pills.

Yeah - I was lucky. Highlight of my tenure was a trip to Chicago to this plastics convention. A night of drinking at the hotel bar with my boss (Director of Sales/Marketing and former Persian Gulf Vet [Bush I] in the Air Force) tell me "You are so fucking stupid! If you don't like this country, fucking leave you idiot!" In front of the entire bar and a fellow co-worker. He wanted to fucking knock me out. Word of advice: never talk politics/religion with an "idiot" boss at a hotel bar while out on convention for the company.

After I left, a friend of mine told me that one of his friends that worked on the floor tried to hang himself in one of the tool rooms at the plant. A supervisor found him in time and called an ambulance. He made it. Still sniffs the pills though. He went back to work for them a month later.

I see the family driving around town all the time, now. They sold the plant and now own a number of restaurants and a marina on the lake. Drive around town in their BMWs, Harley Davidsons, and Hummers.

Yeah. Capitalism kicks ass.

[barracuda]

Ha! I had a hateful dream-crushing, pressure-driven, meeting-intensive, idea session of a corporate gig for the better part of a decade. I loved it! The only job I ever enjoyed more was being a lifeguard on a beach in East Keansburg, New Jersey for a summer.

I got hired away from a boutique shop by a very nice lady who noticed my rippingly fast computer abilities and suave demeanor as one of our clients, and she set me up at her department in a sweet little cube farm at corporate headquarters on Sand Hill Road. I was cranking out production work there for about a year and a half when she was backstabbed by the department head for the crime of being too smart and too good at her position. She was making everyone else look bad by demanding a certain level of quality and professionalism. Big mistake. They had security frog-march her out the door to avoid a classic office flounce and called me into the department head's corner window office for a sit down, where they told me they needed someone to take over my friend's workload. They wanted me to fuck her and join their tired and tawdry Nordstrom's attired plot as the fall back position for their scheme. I could see the deadline- and memo-driven fear behind their beady little pig eyes, ao I sat up straight, stuck out my chin and told them I expected to assume both the salary and the corner office vacated by my mentor in order for me to comply with the larger needs of the bottom line. They whispered in each other's ears, and smiled - I was in!

I moved in that day. Once the six-figure take had removed the sting of my betrayal, the perks came fast and furious. Plane trips to Vancouver for the shoot. Hotels in Dallas (where you could still smoke in the elevators) to perform usability testing on the new web app. Lunchtime workouts with Larry Ellison. Stock options that actually vested and paid. My name on an office door that shut closed for private one-on-ones. Elbow rubbing with the mucky-mucks who gamed the stock price to scam the cream off the top of the annual report for themselves. A devoted staff at my every gesture. The regular team building week watching the whales breech from a beachfront villa on Half Moon Bay.

I did absolutely nothing. I produced nothing but smoke. Pointlessly tendentious memos containing just enough of the latest office lick-words. Tedious and unused metrical analyses of project kernals which never materialised as anything but sandbox mockups. Slick dark-roomed presentations for tables full of Italian-suited fuckwads who were momentarily enthralled by my sterling comps and my easy, self-deferential way of flirting with the help. And I talked. I gave my opinion on every aspect of the operation I was asked to, and if I wasn't asked, I volunteered. I was made of ideas and snappy repartee, some of it even mimicking depth or usefulness. Occasionally, as if a parlor trick, I would create a comp right in the midst of a cross-department brainstorming session on my huge top-of-the-line Apple laptop, making the vague outlines of some middle manager's next marketing flop coalese before the eyes of a room full of putzes even more useless than myself. I could draw your portrait in Adobe Illustrator using a track pad while you dosed during the VP's powerpoint, and email it to my buddies seated downtable. Everybody loved me.

Three years after I took over, I was awarded the glass desktop travesty that is the Employee of the Year award: a monsterously hideous and shapeless engraved paperweight, accompanied by a check for five grand and two plane tickets to Club Med, presented before a 3000-strong, teeth grindingly jealous and falsely congratulatory gathering of Judas salesmen by the CEO himself, that swanky semi-billionaire fraud, as the camera snapped and I beamed rainbows. I still have the picture.

A year later, they laid me off, part of the seasonal downsizing that inflates the profit margin on the annual report. I held no ill will. They didn't even need to hold my elbow as they marched me out of the building. I handed them my badgekey gratefully. I knew it couldn't last forever, anyway. I had a better resume than my boss - and that's the kiss of death, you know.

[Cordelia]

^^Hell, Barracuda, I thought Willow meant working at soulless, mind-numbing jobs where one didn't ascend the corporate ladder. All other work listed on my curriculum vitae follows the trajectory of your one experience, except that I was never laid off; usually a competing firm’s head hunters tracked me down and lured me away.

[barracuda]

It wouldn't be the first time I've gotten the thrust of the assignment wrong. But no headhunters ever came for me, Cordelia - even to the people who worked for me or promoted me, it was apparent that my presence among them was an unholy abberation, inexplicable through normal channels of rationalising.

[Project Willow]

Hmmm, so it's only mind-numbing and soulless if you don't enjoy it, even if it's a corporate, cubicle, produce-nothing, make-people-miserable position? I have seen the enemy.

[barracuda]

Oh, yes, I definitely learned that it is possible to completely enjoy the gradual trash-compactor disintigration of your very humanity. In fact, I came to believe that this is one of the driving forces of contemporary American life.

[Simulist]

I used to have a soulless, corporate job.

Fortunately, I developed a brain cloud.



"I know he can get the job but can he DO the job? I'm NOT arguing that with you. I'm not arguing that with YOU. I'm not ARGUING that with you. I'm not ARGUING that with you Harry! Harry... Harry... Yeah Harry... but can he DO the job. I know he can GET the job but can he do the job?" — Mr. Waturi

[stefano]

I've had two.

One was customer service for Verisign, answering the toll-free helpline and emails to the support address. Boring, boring work, decent pay (for a 24-year-old), and biannual distribution of tee-shirts and mugs and shit. Actually must have been quarterly if I count the tees I still have with obscure coding jokes on them. Quite an interesting lesson into the social mechanics of a huge US-based company, and what working at one does to you. We had ID cards and a hand scanner, privacy policies about email, team-building days, a party planning committee, team leaders, and these little occasional treats like bagels on Fridays (I think only one place in this city makes bagels and we must have been their best client), the tee-shirts mentioned, dinners now and again and so on. All the US bosses were Vice-Presidents, there must have been thirty of them. Crazy.

Oh, yes, I definitely learned that it is possible to completely enjoy the gradual trash-compactor disintigration of your very humanity. In fact, I came to believe that this is one of the driving forces of contemporary American life.

Yes yes. I think of that job whenever I read something on The Onion about Area Man. I got fatter than I've been before or since, driving to work, eating rubbish food in the canteen, getting a takeaway on the way home and plonking down in front of the TV. A few times I even had McDonald's breakfasts. That was just over a year.

Then I did a marketing job for a multinational furniture moving outfit, got paid quite well but was working until eight every day basically reworking the theme of "your stuff is important to you so get us to move it", poring over stock photos of happy kids playing with boxes, couples beaming stupidly in their new house and so on. The CEO had a sort of idiosyncratic style of spelling and would work over the copy to fuck it up after I'd finished. The most borderline surreal job was designing a colouring-in book explaining to kids how a move goes. The office was in an industrial area so more shitty lunches, and an even worse drive in and out. Eighteen months.