Corporate America

11 February 2006
I don’t see the point of writing anymore
I don’t see the point of writing this anymore. I left a comment in someone else’s blog, and two feedbacks were quite negative. I realize that I will never please everyone, not even sure if I can please anyone with my writings. Have I come to Los Angeles to finally understand that it was time for me to abandon writing altogether?
I know why it took me so long to start a new book of my poetry kind of things. I did not see the point then, and now that I have started it, I think I will abandon it. I will most probably continue to write this blog, but I don’t think I will continue to put it online. That is how I feel right now, I will make a decision in a few weeks, perhaps days.
I am not certain if I wish to have another book published. I certainly don’t want to read critics or stupid comments about how screwed up I am anymore. It is too destructive and saps all my small remaining energy and motivation. In fact, I am really struggling to find a reason to even continue living.
I don’t like this world, I don’t like the people in it, I don’t like what I have to do to survive, to pay for my rent and food, I don’t like this life. Leonardo asked me yesterday if I would lose my wish to die if I were to become rich overnight. Maybe, because then I could isolate myself completely from everyone else, this world, and I would no longer have to work 9 to 5 in a job I hate. Then maybe I could live a better life in my total ignorance.
But then, what would happen when I sit at my computer? I’m not sure if suddenly I would start liking life. I could very well be as depressed. Maybe it is time I start considering taking these pills that would put a plastic smile on my face. Help me pretend that life is wonderful and love is the glue that links everyone together. I’d rather die.
I am exhausted. Dead tired. I cannot do anything anymore. I spoke with Stephen today and he agreed that I should remain one more month in L.A. than originally planned. So I am here for two more months and 20 days. He also said that it was time I got my ass into gear, and start contacting people. Something I have been dreading, and I don’t even know where to start.
What is the point of coming to Los Angeles when no one knows I’m here. I’m so convinced that rejection is what awaits me everywhere, that I don’t even want to bother trying. I don’t want to be a wannabe writer in Hollywood. I think I must have landed here by accident. It could have been Denver or Cleveland, it is Los Angeles. And that is all there is to it.
Sounds improbable, and yet, it seems to be the only conclusion. Unless something happens before I leave, a miracle, falling from the sky, since it is unlikely that I will try to meet anyone or try to sell my ideas and scripts.
Well, now I have met Leonardo, God knows, maybe that is enough. And I got the determination to start my own conference company. If any of these projects go ahead in time, then it would not have been wasted.
However I can’t stop thinking that there was something more that was supposed to happen to me in Los Angeles. A firm contract or the beginning of something huge that should be instant and concrete. Not “possibly something might happen in years to come”. No. It makes no sense.
I know I have at least this blog, but then again, this will not be published. It might end up on my website one day, when I feel the people concerned are too far away from me in time and place to affect them or me. Was it worth coming to L.A. just to write a diary about it, for nothing in the end but hurt the people I have met?
14 February 2006
Human nature is so predictable
It is no longer a choice that I have, how long I will remain in Los Angeles. It is really how long it will take them to get rid of me. Could be before the end of the month.
I am now definitely on the black list of the Chinese girl, and she really went for it. At this time she is going around the whole office to tell everyone how bad I have been, and accusatory as she said. And her voice must be quite strong to have been able to get the sponsorship guy sacked overnight after six years, despite the fact that he was excellent at his job. I have no doubt I have not heard the end of this little altercation between us.
And all I did was to point out that the sponsor I am trying to sign right now, sponsored one of her conferences, and unfortunately after all this time their blurb and logo are still not online on our website. If they find out, they will quickly realize that what they paid for, we did not do it, and hence, why would they want to sponsor again, or perhaps they will want a freebee.
My god, the consequences of pointing out that a logo was not online… if I had known, I would have kept my mouth shut. Of course, now the Valley Girl is also involved, and took her defense, when there was no need to. I have no doubt what it is that they will be talking about at lunch time. How big a monster I am, a threat, and how quickly I need to be eliminated. Pretty sure that if they don’t verbally come to a plan to achieve that, it will be implicit and as strong. They will both work against me from now on, they’ll try to get me sacked.
Unfortunately for them, I am not working for them, or on their events, even if I am going to San Francisco to work on the Valley Girl’s event at the end of this month. I am pretty sure she will find a way to get back in the office afterwards with the most negative feedback about me. I will have to do everything she wants me to do without question.
Anyway, they might succeed in getting me sacked before then, who knows. They don’t waste time. They are so on edge, they have so much work to do, that the smallest hint that they could be incompetent brings the war on. And they have ammunitions, yesterday I add more problems with the Director, even if I can’t remember what it was about.
I have ammunitions too, she is explosive. I’m not the first one she was rude to, I was not the first one facing the sack because of her, the same for the Valley Girl. Surely by now the bosses will understand that they are the problem? Not the rest of the planet? Somehow I cannot count on that, a superior is always right, never the assistants or the ones working for the Managers and Directors. The low life ones, as I am right now from their point of view, are always the ones to go.
I’m surprised that the Hispanic guy is still working with us, being right under the Chinese girl. It is a tribute to his qualities, being not threatening at all, very laid back, nice guy, hard working and, yeah, a yes mam, yes sir type of person, which I’m afraid to say, I am not.
Let’s see how far she can go with this, when all I did was to point out that one of the sponsors did not have its logo and company profile online, and could lead to losing a sponsorship deal. Somehow I’m sure she will succeed at making quite a story out of this.
I wonder how fast it will happen, how quickly I will be called in the office. This afternoon? Tomorrow morning? I’m ready for it, I feel safe about it, I hope she will destroy herself in the process and free her assistant and any future ones from suffering her temper and behavior.
There is no denying that she is excellent at her job, and this is why she won over the sponsorship guy who just could not stand her anymore and must have exploded at some point, even if no one told me about it, I only heard some rumors. But eventually, if we have to sack half the company for those two managers, as it has been so far since I have arrived three months ago, then being excellent and under pressure is no longer an excuse.
At the very least, if the bosses still want them there, they will understand that I am right in this matter, and she is just continuing her little game of getting everyone sacked as soon as someone crosses her even for one long minute, which is enough to create a story as large as a two hour film. And unfortunately, it will certainly not inspire me a film script. It would be the most common and boring story ever, happening every day all over corporate America.
I don’t feel like going back to work this afternoon, that much is certain. I did not need that stress today. When she talked to me, accusing me of something that was still unclear, I hurt terribly. I remained silent. I went back to my seat and understood that I played with the devil and was now in a terrible situation.
I saw it all before with the sponsorship guy, I saw him doing the exact same thing after he spoke to her and she lashed into him. I thought this could not happen to me since I am not working with her, I was wrong.
Maybe this time around I will get out of it unscathed. They will all talk about it, feel pity for her, see me as the big monster, since she is the one going around destroying me, whilst I am very much passive in all of this. It is not my style to try to get people sacked for banalities. But the next time around, that’s it, I’m finished. This is the joy of having a full time job that everyone hates, working with people who simply just cannot stand each other.
Maybe I am the problem, after all, I always had trouble with everyone I worked with in the past. That is why I need to start my own company, it is clear that I am just incapable of bending, be a yes sir type of person. Shut up and just do my job. Again it is leading me into trouble, and I feel powerless because it is unlikely I could ever change my personality.
I’m back from work now. When I left at lunch time to go back, I was already thinking that I had to apologize to her, even if really I did not have to. If anything, she is the one who should apologize to me, I thought. But this is not how it works, you apologize for an easy life and you do not expect an apology.
The only problem, I was thinking, is that I was apologizing way too late, she probably already had the time to destroy me completely in the hour I went for lunch. The damage had been done.
When I arrived at my desk, she was really active about the sponsors on that particular conference, as if suddenly she had been told to look into it. Of course, all that meant was she went to her assistant and told him everything he had to do.
She was kind of close to me while she spoke to him, and that reminded me of the Director when he felt guilty, and suddenly was going to Isabella hoping to get me in the conversation and show me that he could also be nice. So I could still think he was not a bastard about the fact that he shouted at me that it was too late to call the sponsors now, when he was wrong.
I was right, she was trying to speak to me. I was not interested. And for a second there I was wondering if it would be appropriate to apologize, it could make things worse. I kind of lost my guts and I thought that perhaps the best way would be to forget all about it. But not me, I set myself to go and apologize, and I did.
She was creamy and nice. She apologized herself for over-reacting. I could barely believe my ears. I was not expecting that. She thanked me for letting her know that this sponsor did not have its logo online and that I should always tell her in the future if I find such a problem. She only said that I could have been a bit more discreet and just come to her and let her know. Fair enough.
I was so amazed, I thought, my god, the girl is really something to be able just like that to understand that she was wrong and apologize to me. I’ve been used to people who would suddenly turn against you and would never give up until you were sacked.
Even the Valley Girl, her accomplice, who that morning told me quite rudely that I had to book my own flight to San Francisco at the end of the month, because she did not have the time since it was too complicated now that I had decided to remain there for the weekend, changed her mind in the afternoon and decided to book that flight for me.
Wonderful, these girls have a conscience. When I left for lunch as soon as I could, 11 am, they noticed and felt bad. They probably believed I was sulking. And then they took pity and changed their mind, and decided to be nice for a change.
That was my initial thought. But I’m not stupid. I know what really happened whilst I was at lunch. They both got together, they pumped each other against me, they went to see everyone in the company to let them know how bad I had been, and to get everyone against me. And when they reached the top management, they were met by a brick wall.
The bosses can only think in terms of money, and identifying that a sponsor’s logo was not online after weeks, especially when they were too late to even be in the brochure, means losing a lot of money. Not only we would have to reimburse them for that conference, but we would lose the deal on my conference, and God only knows how much money we would have lost with that company over the years.
In the eyes of any obsessed money grabbing person in the upper management, I was so right to point it out, they did not even want to hear her out. They must have told her that she was very incompetent and should make sure that all her sponsors are looked after. That is why she was suddenly feeling defeated and was making sure everything was done when I came back.
And why they were both creamy with me, must also be because they were told to be. They must have gone in there asking for my head, and they must have been told that it is their head that would be on a platter if they did not go back to work and did not realize that I was damn right to point it out.
Just as I predicted, she has destroyed herself in the process. This time, I knew they would not listen to her, even if I was not completely sure. Bosses sometimes can be so unpredictable and unfair, or blind. Not when it comes to money though. And the Valley Girl was just a bonus. She is always snooping around and getting mixed up in all sort of problems, creating them when it is not necessary, and she was also burnt. And then she became nice.
The way I described all this, you probably think that I enjoyed all that. It is not true. I had no idea she would freak out like that when I told her about the missing logo. That she would feel attacked and try to destroy me in the process. I know she is volatile, I knew she would be trouble one day, I did not think this would do it. Which means, she does not need much to go overboard and create a crisis.
And now that I remember it, the crisis with the salesman, that I thought I had not been told about, I think never happened. It was not a crisis, it was him responding back to her when she was freaking out. I was there, and to be honest, almost nothing happened. And it was enough to get him sacked.
I did not enjoy it, it was more stress than I needed. And it is far from being over. Now I am definitely on their black last. I won, but that is all there is to it. Now they will love to hate me. They will not miss a chance to cause me trouble. I knew from the beginning that it was inevitable, because I know how they are, and I knew I would not let myself be walked all over by them.
Less than a minute after I apologized to her, in hope that it would gain me a few days of peace before the big war, she was already talking to the Black guy to let him know everything that had just happened. He too was much nicer after that. He strikes me as a fair person, but he still must be quite strong. I don’t see him ever coming to me to tell me something, he will instead tell everything to the bosses and they will talk to me.
I don’t know if he was on their side. The fact that the Chinese girl went to him, is because it was to him that she first told the whole story. She made it sound like it was not only her that I was accusing of incompetence, but him also, because it was his responsibility to put that online. And when she told me how angry she was at my behavior, she also defended the Black guy, saying they were both very busy and could not care less about me and what I said.
So it is not him who calmed the girls down. If anything, he is the one who went to report it to the bosses immediately after she spoke to him. So for a moment there, I’m pretty sure she was able to get him against me. Until, that is, my apology.
As he is fair, for him it was a nice conclusion and I think the fact that he was overnice afterwards probably did not mean that he will hold it against me. I hope I am not wrong here. I cannot afford to not have him on my side, even if I am trying to avoid him and hide from him.
What do you think? Do you think my assessment of all that happen in my back for the hour I went to lunch sounds like it could very well be what happened? Of course, you would need to have heard everything they said that was hinting to all that, and I have not here told you all. I think I am very close to the truth. I have seen that kind of behavior way too many times in my past jobs to be blind to how far people are willing to go to get you sacked or destroy you in the eyes of others. This is human nature.
I can only thank myself for not being like that. If there is a way to turn my enemies into friends, I will always choose that way. If I can make sure any problem does not escalate any further, I will do everything in my power to make it so. And then, I will always forgive and not hold it against them if I can see they regret and want to be my friend. In this case, they don’t want to be my friend. They will now work very hard to make my life hell. Human nature, once again.
And now you understand why I can’t stand working with people in an office environment, why I can’t stand that job, it is always like that. Whether you are in Canada, in France, in Belgium, in England or in the United States. We are all the same, there is really only one personality for everyone on this planet.
That was only one situation that I described, many happens like that every day, and each day it is with someone else. And it does not only happen to me, it happens also between them all the time. Sometimes it is serious, other times it is not so important, and yet, it is enough to build a canyon between all of us. To the point that we are now going to work simply to get paid, and meanwhile we are trying to survive as long as we can before someone pushes us over the edge. And most of the time we are powerless to stop it.
Oh God, what will it be tomorrow?
16 February 2006
More tension at work
Tension has been terrible at work all week. And today was perhaps the worst of all, luckily I was not involved in any of it. A new guy starts on Monday, perhaps the one who never came back after his first day, the one I thought was badly chosen. Well, he may be the one starting on Monday with a salary of $50,000 a year.
He is already dead, I know that much. I give him one month. Why? Because the Valley Girl was so pissed off today, she talked about it all day with the Chinese girl. And at the end of day, she could no longer contain herself and she shouted that not only he is very young, but on top of it he has no experience, and has the same salary as her. Even though she will be his boss.
I was amazed she would so openly state that loud, in front of me (and the Chinese girl), how dissatisfied she was with that situation. It is clear to me that she will do everything she can to get rid of him as quickly as possible. And now I believe that the last one, the one who left two weeks ago because she had enough of the office, might actually have left because she was under the Valley Girl and she must have made her life a misery.
The future will tell us if I am right, it is clear that the newbie won’t last. And then, I have proof that it would be a direct consequence of what the Valley Girl said today.
And the interesting stuff does not end there. My boss’ wife came to the Valley Girl, and she said to her that she had to work him hard, because he was young and inexperienced, and she had to make sure he would be doing something. Considering his salary, I can understand.
I could not sleep at night if I had 20 employees with salaries ranging from $30,000 to $60,000 a year, and I thought that for one second they would not be pulling their weight. Then again, I had another proof that management plays mind games with us, and she is close enough to the Valley Girl to let her know: work him to death. Never mind if he leaves within a month.
There were many other problems today, of course I was not privy to it. When my boss’ wife left, she said to the accountant: I hope tomorrow I will find you with a better attitude! Or perhaps she was talking about someone else in the office, I’m not sure.
I had only one problem yesterday, with the Senior Manager. He freaked out because I did not stop everything once his latest brochure needed to be proof-read, and that a few hours later I still had not read it. So he made a big speech about it for five interminable minutes, in front of everyone else. I felt very humiliated, and I just said: OK.
Again, if I had pushed that one, and if it had gone further, to upper management, as I’m sure he reported me already, my bosses would have understood that instead of reading his brochure, I was in fact contacting one last time all my sponsors before my brochure went to print. Again I would have won. But it never reached that stage, because I did not argue. I said OK. That was the end of it.
It was the first time he felt the need to freak out about me. So I cannot really say that he is that terrible. I did not take it personally, he is a good person. He just felt that it was important that I read his brochure. Then again, he could have just said so very nicely, as he usually does when he tells me something that I still don’t know about the company and how we do things around here.
This panic attack from him suggested to me that the story was more serious than usual, and had already been reported to the bosses. And this is how negative stuff goes back to upper management, and positive things never get reported. And this is how your bosses get to feel that you are incompetent even when you work your ass off.
But who cares, this week this has been the least of my problems. I have a bigger one to confront tomorrow. I should have read my brochure and reported all the changes to be made already. Unfortunately I did not have the time yet. And I should have worked on that tonight. But Leonardo came here to pick up the film script and the DVD of the film I worked on, and hence, I did not do anything. Tomorrow will be again a big free for all.
I am also very unlucky, because the woman who did the design of my brochure, she had never done one before. And so everything is so wrong, it looks nothing like all the other brochures we have. I had to write 12 pages of comments to try to see how she could make it better, and I have not even yet fully read the first page! What a waste of time and money, for each brochure we get designed.
That is why that when I will start my own company, I will have a template, and I will use it every time, and I will do all the design of my brochures. And if I have to get my employees to do it, they will use my template, and it will look nice and it will take no time to produce those brochures, because I will show them how to do it.
I also noticed today that the two managers were getting closer to me. The two girls were trying to get me in their conversation, to include me, to get me to become their friend. Though it is nice that perhaps I have misjudged them, I had to work on my brochure, so I could not indulge. And anyway, it looked artificial and forced. So I went to the toilet, and when I came back they had disappeared.
It may be that, out of what happened this week, they will respect me a bit more. If it is the case, I am truly happy and surprised. We’ll have to see what happens in the next weeks to confirm or deny this new theory.
Oh, I also have to say, that after reading that brochure of my Senior Manager, I felt revolted. It had no sponsor, no supporting organizations, and it was so badly written, it was the worst conference program I had ever read in my entire life. I truly wondered who in hell would want to attend that conference. I did not say anything, I just observed and learned.