Corporate America

Finally I don’t think they followed what I stated in my report, because if they had, none of that jealousy would have occurred. I was not supposed to go under the Chinese Girl, though the Sweet Chinese Girl was supposed to. Now they have alienated the Valley Girl, the Spanish Guy and I. Though, to be really honest here, I don’t really care myself, since really I’m leaving, that was the reason, the opportunity, I was looking for.
The Valley Girl is much nicer to me today, she feels I should as disgusted as she is. She’s been trying to get it out of me, my complains, my dissatisfaction, she’s moaning all morning herself, almost destroying her desk and the wall separating us. I won’t give that satisfaction, I won’t say anything to her. I will need give her again the opportunity to gossip about how I feel to everyone. I’m going back in this office this afternoon as if nothing happened, obedient and submitted to Master Bitch Chinese Girl. They will be quite impressed, because I am going to put a show of it. Taking pleasure in making her feel like the boss she is now. She would not believe her eyes herself, they must have discussed that I could probably freak out and that it would not work. They must be expecting it, and it won’t happen. First thing I’ll do is to report her on everything I am doing and what I should do next. As submissive as a low-life like me should be.
I’m back from work now. I so wanted to buy a bottle of wine tonight, but this is when I discovered to my astonishment that my garage Mobile does not sell wine, beers yes, but not wine. I fell down on my knees and I asked the clerk, why? Oh why? Don’t you know what I could have written tonight with wine? After a day like this? Do you know how many beers I will have to drink before I can even write one good line? He was obviously not interested in my dilemma, going to Seven Eleven or not?
I didn’t, I was already late for having worked overtime, proof-reading the latest brochure of my Senior Manager. It took me forever, when I was finished, his four pages were completely full of my comments. I almost added a post it note on top of it to say: this brochure is a mess, never seen anything like it! And you know what? The Sweet Chinese Girl came to me 15 minutes before the end of the day and said: the whole office proof-read that brochure, it is your turn now. And after everyone made all their comments, I still found over 100 problems and obvious mistakes. It can only main one thing, something I suspected for a long time, no one ever really proof-read anything when they are asked, and the proof is that they do it in 5 minutes, when I take over an hour.
And now, let’s have fun. This is what I wrote to the Master Bitch Chinese Girl at work this afternoon, with her answer. And in between, I have added what we actually really meant to say:

 

Hi (Chinese Girl),

 

-Hi Master Bitch Chinese Girl,

I look forward to working with you.
-Oh God, how are we going to survive this without killing each other? One of us will be out the door before the end of the month, that much is certain.
Here is what I am doing right now (…)
-Let me kiss your thin ass so we can at least give this nightmare a chance. Even if both of us know too well just how we are doomed!

 

Once I have cleared that backlog, I will let you know so we can start working on our next project.

-Let’s wait as long as it is actually possible, without alerting the bosses, before starting the war.
Hopefully sometime tomorrow, if this is acceptable.
-Hopefully never! Some sort of miracle will happen and you might get sacked before we get started. You or I being run over by a bus would also be acceptable.

 

In the meantime, I am at your disposal for anything you wish me to do,

-Let me be and we’ll be fine. Don’t talk to me, and we might survive. Cross me, and I’ll destroy you.
or if you wish a meeting to get more details about what I am doing right now and how we should proceed in the future.
-I’m really pushing it. I must be desperate. Oh dear, this will turn ugly.
If there are specific ways you would like me to go about producing these events, I would be most interested in learning them, and more than willing to do it your way.

 

-What a laugh! You’ve got no experience whatsoever, you have such a temper, many customers complained against you. Acting like you would be tantamount to suicide, and yet, you have been promoted. Isn’t that always the way? And you know what? I am about to start my own business, so I actually meant it a bit, God knows, maybe you have learned to cut corners like hell, and I might learn a thing or two from you, who knows?

Regards.
Mycroft Holmes,
Thank you for the update.
-Don’t worry, I’ll have plenty time for more meetings with you where I will just love to make you’re a life a living hell, questioning everything you do, barking orders at you, I’ll turn you into my new slave and I will love every second of it. Digress even once, do not respect my authority for even a second, I’ll report you and get you sacked so fast, you’ll never know what hit you.
It is much appreciated.
-I’m gonna love torturing you!
I am still in the process of collecting information and hope to have the time to go over current and upcoming events with you in the near future.
-Mmh, perhaps I’m not so sure if I am ready for the war just yet. I am a bit frighten that you might not accept that I’m your boss after all, and since this is quite new, you could actually cause me some trouble and damage me somehow. Let me think some more about how I will go about turning you into a pussy.
I am sure we can learn from each other's experience and skill-sets,
-I understand that you have 9 more years experience than me, I know you’re better than me, and know more than I’ll ever do. I’m sorry I am now your boss, but you’ll just have to accept it and do as I say. I’m gonna enjoy every second of it, believe me.
and make the process much more efficient.
-I’ll make you work so hard, I’m going to ask from you the impossible, and when you will fail, I’ll only be to happy to criticize you to the bosses. Isn’t life ironic?

 

I look forward to working with you as well.

-You will fail, I can tell you that much already. Wait and see.

 

Best regards.

Now I wonder when will be our first big problem. And what she will do then. Jump in the bosses office immediately, after talking it over with the Valley Girl no doubt. They’ll both be my bosses, there is no two ways about it.
By the end of the day, the Valley Girl had already accepted her faith, her jealousy was virtually already dead. Lucky her. I thought that the promotion of the Chinese Girl over her might have done the trick, destroy their friendship, since by definition these two should clash. But they went into the corridor to talk it over for over two hours, and the Chinese Girl must have told her that they were equal, she was responsible for the Iranian guy after all, and their events are six times longer to produce than ours. She was already fine by the end of the day, I could barely believe it.
And somehow, tomorrow when the Spanish Guy comes back from his afternoon of sulking, the Chinese Girl will quickly bring him back to reality, and everybody will be happy again, except me. Such an insult, that my boss had to take his kid’s glove to announce it to me, turning around a bowl for over an hour before finally spitting out. And I had to say it myself, with more sarcasm that I wish I had: in a few word, she’ll be my boss, we’ll have a great time together, and then I exploded in a furry of laughter. He must have understood right there that it would never work, and yet, he made that mistake. He’s got only himself to blame, I suppose.
I give it two days before we are right back in his office, with her complaining that I do not listen, I am late, I am not doing well, I do not respect her authority. And this is something I learned the hard way today, I have now a new spy on my back, she is now studying my computer screen every minute of the day, wondering what it is that I am doing, if perhaps I am wasting my time. Great, just what I needed, another damn spy.
I have not even told you the worse yet. This Friday the walls between us will disappear for a whole week, I’ll will be virtually sitting over the Valley Girl. I’ve considering taking a whole week off, however it is not feasible at the moment, considering that I may announce to them that I’m leaving in ten days.
I know my bosses will blame themselves for having put me under the Chinese Girl, they will obviously that this is the reason I’m going back to London. It is not of course, however it certainly wash away all my sins and guilt. If they’re capable of doing that to me, they certainly don’t deserve me working there. As it is so obvious that it cannot work.
And yet, what else could they have done? It must have looked quite logical to them, I don’t know their company well enough to take over, over the girls, they would not have accepted it anyway. There would have been a mutiny. And since I’ll be working on their biggest events, the ones the girls have already done before, it makes sense that they would be over me. Somehow I would have found a way to make it happen differently, you simply cannot alienate your employees like this. And yet, it was perfectly logical. And yet, unacceptable. Thank God I just don’t care, this would have killed me if I were not leaving.
Ok, I think I might have drunk enough beers to start writing the serious stuff.
21 March 2006
Today has been an embarrassing day, and a long one too. For the first time the Chinese Girl came to my desk and ask me what I was doing. And that is despite the email I sent her yesterday detailing what I was working on right now. It was embarrassing because I was not certain if everyone knew that I was sort of demoted and was now under her. Well, it was clear then that she was my boss, wondering every second what it is that I am doing.
She wanted an hour long meeting where she told me everything I will have to do, how to do my job basically. And I had to listen as if I was a newbie who never produced a conference before. No need to tell her that I know the job, she knows, even if she acts like I don’t.
At least she sent me all her files, the ones I suspected were much better organized and maximized to achieve a good marketing campaign than what I have been using under the Senior Manager who does not care much about marketing or anything else, but write more conference programs. No wonder he never has sponsors, supporting organizations or any attendees for that matter.
I also made a mistake, a big one. The Sweet Chinese Girl came to me, asking me to take over the admin of my own events, and I said no. At that meeting I was told that it would now be my responsibility. Great, demoted, my new boss is virtually a newbie who thinks she knows everything, she is also very bossy and over my shoulder at all time, and now I have more responsibilities. In fact, that was the missing piece, the only thing about producing an event that I was not doing, the admin. I was doing already half of it, but now, I do everything on all my events, which also pushes me to produce my own for my own company.
Still, today I felt like announcing them that I was leaving in a month. As some sort of protestation. Of course, I can’t. I have first to talk about it to my financial adviser, and Stephen. But the fact that I was leaving at the end of next month was all I could think about when I was suffering in that meeting. It is not going to be easy. She also expects twice more work that the Senior Manager, because she is a control freak and needs to know at all time where we are at with our events. This is when we start producing more bureaucracy than actually producing events.
I have also become a bit more realistic with my business. I think now that I will produce conferences very much like my big competitors, however I will charge exactly 50% less than them. I will also make it clear that the venue will not be an expensive one and meals will not be provided. I will however tell them that the content and the quality of the events will be the same.
Which leaves me with one decision, which field of interest, and which conferences to produce first? I immediately understood that most of their events are so niche market, I could have something more general. I don’t have the database to be niche market. I also discovered that if I were to choose Telecoms, even after all these years, they have still the same speakers presenting at these events. They might remember me.
Telecoms seems like the right choice, but I don’t feel like it. What about finance? Law? Life Sciences? Energy, renewables, public sector… not sure. I will have to concentrate in one field only. Maybe technology would do? It did not work as well as Telecoms. Maybe I should go for something different than what my competitors are doing, however, if it was at all successful, they would be organizing conferences in these fields. I need to do some serious market research, I can only do that once I am back in London however. And it may take a while, while my time will be counted.
I wish I could do paranormal and pure sciences, space programs, high-tech technology, these are interesting fields. Maybe I should take a risk. I will not after all charge £3,000 to attend. But could they afford £700 or even £1,500? Good question. Market research once again… without it I cannot decide, I would flying blind. Lots of work in perspective.
I think I will be imaginative, and produce conferences people would have never thought of doing, and somehow I feel I will turn them into success. For example, how many post offices are there in England? Why not a conference for all the owners and employees of post offices to assess how to work better and make more money? Just another crazy idea, could be for the automotive industry, all these car salesmen, huge or small. That would interest Stephen. There is no limit. I just have to find a list of all the associations in the country, call them all, ask them if they feel there is place for a conference in the market, what it should be about and if they are willing to help.
But I have to be careful, a conference about the car industry, if successful, would put me in a situation where for many years that’s all I will be doing, something I have little interest in. I think I should stick with my original idea, and charge bit more than I originally planned. £200 instead of £100. And if that turns out to be a mistake, I’ll offer everyone a 50% discount. That’s how I will catch my fish. I’m very excited about all this now, I’ll find a way to start my business!
22 March 2006
Despite all my efforts in the initial two days, despite my first meeting with the Chinese Girl where everything went well, despite my nice email saying that I was looking forward to working with her, it took me less than one minute today to annihilate my entire future with that company in the U.S. Sixty seconds is all you need to destroy everything.
I was stressed, that damn brochure had not gone to print, the printer was taking hours, and every five minutes she was behind my back asking me what I was doing, why it took so long, etc.
At some point she came, she attacked not once, but five times, and I was trying to contain myself, justifying myself, but then, she attacked me on a trifle, a stupid thing, which would never have been an issue with anyone else in this office.
I had enough of being humiliated like in front of the whole office (we are sitting each other), she had completely alienated me. I completely freaked out, and I left the office. She said: sit down, we are not finished! I said yes we are, I’m getting out of here, for at least five minutes, I’ll be back.
She jumped in the boss’ wife office, God knows what she said in there. Unmanageable, unreasonable, not willing to accept my authority, taking forever to do anything, we’ve got a problem: insubordination. The kind of problem which can only have one issue: here is the door, have a nice life somewhere else.
Somehow I feel I have not heard the end of this, and I have to wait a whole week before telling them that I am leaving one month later. Unless she backs off, and get off my back, this turn sour much before the end of next week.
AS she wanted all this to be so public, I certainly fought back in a very public way. I practically shouted that she came here and attacked me, and that her management style was very different from what I’ve been used to in this office. I said I had been here six months, and I had no problem. And now I find I have to justify everything I am doing every minute of the day. Being criticized in front of everyone every five minutes for something I did wrong. I simply cannot even make one phone call without having her next to me, criticizing it! As a result I can no longer do my job. I have lost all motivation, I do not want to call anywhere anymore. I also said: look, don’t worry about me, I have done so many extra hours for my two last events, working on weekends, I will get the work done! What a mess.
All I could think of while she was spitting on me was: how long before I can go to lunch? How long before the end of the day? How long before I leave this country? And also, what my boss said initially: I expect you to listen to her and obey everything she says. I failed miserably. If they had any doubt if it was a mistake to put me under her, now they must be certain of it. And yet, I don’t expect them to change anything to their new structure, he fastest I can let them know I am leaving, the better. But I have to wait until I get paid and have the money in my hands. Because knowing them, they might very well not pay me, to compensate for having paid my plane ticket, the immigration lawyer and one month accommodation.
Her style of management is like a teacher in a kindergarten. And despite all my efforts to contain myself, it is unsustainable, I can’t remain passive in front of such injustice coming from a control freak. I don’t want to know how the rest of the day will go, or the rest of the week for that matter. I’m pretty sure that tonight, before I leave, they will call me in the office to discuss my burst, and I have nothing to say in my defense. The Manager always right, I have a problem, insubordination. Now, the only thing that could save me, is that in the last five months I never burst out like this, I have always been able to contain myself. And, I’m hoping it is not the first time that people have exploded like this in her face, then they might understand that she might also have a problem. But they’re in love with her, they wanted to promote her for such a long time, I have no doubt that if they have to make a decision, I’ll be the one being sacked. I just wish that I may be able to tell them that I am leaving, before they sack me. Because then, I will not be able to mention on my CV that I worked in Los Angeles. It will be six months completely wasted. I can already hear future employers asking me: why did you leave your job in Westminster, what have you been doing for that six months there? Very suspicious, thank you, but we don’t require your services here.
I really wonder what kind of boss I would be, if I start that business and end up hiring people. One thing for sure, I have learned enough about what not to be, and I just hope I won’t turn out to be a control freak losing all my employees every week.
I’m back now. The day from hell is finally over. And if think this was bad, tomorrow will be even worse. I left 4 minutes before my time, to make sure they would not come exactly at 5 pm and asked me in the office. I have noticed that they always ask me to come in at exactly 5 pm, and everyone who has been sacked, has been told at the end of the day.
I did not give them the chance. I know this is all they have been talking about all afternoon. All the employees, and all the bosses. As soon as the crisis was over, the Chinese Girl jumped in the bosses office, they in return went immediately to lunch to discuss it, then they had a long meeting this afternoon to talk even more about it, and obviously after all that, if they have not taken a decision on this case, I would be a lucky bastard indeed.
In fact, all these meetings must have meant that they had a big decision to make, I could very well lose my job tomorrow. In a way it would be perfect, and yet, I would have preferred to leave them instead of being shown the door. Very ironic that I was going to announce it within a week, such bad timing!
I have cleaned my files at work (I deleted all my personal files), I have put in a little mountain all my personal affairs, I could now leave this office forever within 30 seconds, less than it took me to destroy my promising career with the big plans they had for me, as they said last week. I have also noted that I don’t need to bring any of my stuff home, I could leave it there too. It will be less embarrassing than for the sales guy, who in six years had so much stock accumulated in his drawers, on his shelves and on his walls, that I reckon he must have needed three boxes, and a good half an hour.
I have been sacked many times before in my life, am I the exception? Every time though, it was not obvious, many times I left just before they were going to sacked me, when I felt that this was it, I had somehow once again crossed the line. I don’t know many people who have not been sacked at least once in their lives, and I don’t know many people who have not been facing this situation at some point. In fact, I know almost nobody who loves their jobs and have no problems whatsoever. And I’m afraid to say, perhaps there are no solutions to these problems. Not in our actual social system of hierarchy, that’s for sure.
So, tomorrow my great dream of Los Angeles might end for good. And I would not have needed to make a decision about staying or leaving. When you have no choice, it is much easier to accept. You are less likely to feel guilty in the future. I will not have any regrets for leaving, I never made the decision to leave in the first place. And even if they don’t show me the door tomorrow, even if it is I next week who announces my departure, at least I will make that decision knowing that I did not really have a choice.
If I were wise, tomorrow I would be sick, telling them that I had a big fever and could not sleep all night. Which is most likely to be true anyway. It would prevent them from sacking me, they might forget about it on Friday. It could also very much play against me, convince them that I need to go. So I have to go and face whatever disciplinary they intend for me. Maybe that is what they have established all afternoon, their new disciplinary procedures, I know we have none. Usually you need to make one big mistake, and they kick you out. Why bother with disciplinary procedures when you can do that with any employee?
What kills me most, is how the Valley Girl and the Spanish Guy seemed to have enjoyed the show. The big entertainment. They feed on that, like vultures. I met the Valley Girl in the corridor, and she made a big smile, a weird noise, and some weird face like the ones you see on cute squirrels. She’s anything but a cute squirrel, and yet, it must have been her embarrassment of seeing me there that created that reaction. And for the Spanish Boy, he seems to have spent the whole afternoon asking questions to the Chinese Girl, proving that he could work very well with her, to the point of making everyone who saw this sick to their stomach.
Of course, if the Spanish Boy knew the definition I have for people like him, he might reconsider his actions, and wish for a bit more autonomy and dignity. He is only an assistant after all, and still is after the new structure. He is a Yes Mam kind of guy, and spends most of the day kissing the ass of his Manager. That makes him a creep from my point of view. And the word is not strong enough. A loser might be more adequate, since through his lack of personality, he has been trying hard to prove to everyone that he was cool, when he is just a poor kid without any real potential. I could be wrong, and I hope for him that I am, God knows what he will accomplish in his life. Right now, he is a sucker, and unaware of it.