Corporate America

I’m back from work now. I came that close to destroying the Senior Manager today, I might have done. Our nice and cozy little working relationship might have come to an end today. I could not remain silent, my name is all over his conference programs, and now I realized that both conference programs I worked on are completely identical to two other conference programs of our main competitor in the US. I mean, even when I started in conferences, I knew we were all copying each other from company to company, even if I always made sure I was not, but blatant rip-off like this, same number of panel discussions, same subjects, same speakers, come on, there is a limit. I might as well tell our competitor: hey, I am stealing all your hard work, here is my name in neon light, come and sue me!
So I asked him by email, if it was wise and if we thought we could get away with copying so obviously our competitors programs? I got back quite a dry answer, a lot of bollocks, justification without real arguments. I also told the Valley Girl about it tonight, while she pent an hour slashing the company and everyone in it, and God knows how she can get away with it. Which means, in less than a day everyone will know the Senior Manager has just been stealing programs from our competitors, and now I understand how he was able to write programs in one hour. He never needed to do any research. And somehow I believe he has the blessing of my bosses, and they must know, and they must not care.
I also understand now why we could not send the program featuring the invited speakers, because then it would have been obvious we copied our competitors’ agendas. All of this is making me very uneasy, it is not right. I don’t really want to put my name to any of this. Heck, I did not even want to put my name to content I thought was bad enough, and now I discovered it was stolen and everyone knows in the industry. I am even ashamed to send the agenda to potential speakers and sponsors, I wish I could write in bold that I did not write the program, I’m just an assistant.
I really don’t know right now if pointing it out will get me into trouble, I’m sure the Senior Manager is not pleased with my discovery. He was kind of hiding the brochures or our competitors, many times I had to ask for them so I could see potential new speakers and sponsors to invite. He always refused, or ignored me. So he did try to hide it from me.
The truth is, even if the bosses did not know about this, if there is one thing you can be certain of, is that in any company, no one cares about what you do, and no one knows. They would not read our conference programs, can you imagine them starting to read our competitors’ brochures? You could get away with it easily. And I’m not sure where we would stand legally about all this. Usually, if you are to copy others, you would not make it so obvious. You are definitely asking for trouble at some point. Not sure how he or we get away with it.
And now I am wondering to which extent we are simply blindly stealing from our competitors. Maybe this is the law of capitalism, corporate America, who knows. Hollywood has been stealing blindly for years, I feel that many of my film script ideas on my website have been copied, even if I cannot prove it, even if they were intelligent in the way they went about it. They obviously have an army of lawyers to make sure they cannot be sued, which we don’t have right now.
At some point today I did not mind telling him, I needed to know if it was known, if the bosses thought it was acceptable, if we should really do this. I was ready to resign if that got me into trouble, because I am an ethical person, I have morals, I have integrity. And I refuse to get into trouble because I pointed that out. Even if obviously I am just asking for trouble by denouncing it. I’ll have to continue, try to wash my hands from this, but it is not going to be easy, I tell you.
I also finally understood today what the Valley Girl meant by the statement that the people working there were anti Corporate America. In my mind, where I am working, is corporate America. But not so, apparently. For a start we can go to work in jeans and T-shirts. And she says it is also much less stressful than working for a big corporation. I find that hard to believe. She also said that we pay the price for the little bit of freedom we have. We have much less benefits and security. I feel it might be a hard price to pay, just so we can wear jeans at work.
Somehow these Californian hippies, Greenpeace and all, who hate wearing suits and ties, have convinced themselves that the hell we are in, is freedom, compared to their past lives in the real corporate world of America. Well, I guess I cannot judge, since I never worked for these corporations, my experience is limited to Canada, Belgium and especially London. And somehow I feel I must have a pretty good idea already, or is it really that worse in the US?
1 March 2006
Finally, something more tangible that you can put your teeth into. After four months, and one day at an event, if I still did not managed to gain the trust of my co-worker, it would mean that I had been and will remain forever an outcast.
As the Valley Girl said, I am rough around the edges, but I am still a likable person. I feel she trusts me now, it would be hard not to, I have been chanting her praises for days now. To gain her trust, yes, but also because I am beginning to appreciate her for who she is. A likable person, and I was not lying when I thought she would be a great actress in one of my future film scripts, at least on paper, if it never goes to screen.
I don’t understand these Americans who have been living in L.A. for generations, still trying to convince us that they are Europeans. German, Irish, Italians, British and even French ancestors, when really, they are so typically Americans, it almost annoying how they fit the stereotypes we have of them.
I had some confessions, from the Valley Girl at least, nothing that interesting to report, even what she expressively told me not to write about in my book. She asked if she could tell me something that I could be able to keep for myself, not even talking about my co-workers, but specifically not talk about in my books.
And yet, it was so insignificant, even though for her it seems it means a great deal, that I already forgotten what it is that she told me not to talk about. Some alcoholism in her parents, they kept her loans that they got for her to study, she did not go to private schools due to not enough money in a divorced family, can’t remember now, but there could be drug addiction in there somewhere. Big deal, must be the story of every family in America. It certainly match what Leonardo told me about his parents, and it certainly matches my own family. Big deal.
There is no denying that me and the Valley Girl, we share a lot of the same history, tastes, experiences, etc. We are very much the same, I have to say. We are both neurotic, a professional conscience which does not match our treatment at work, a bit of a lack of confidence in ourselves and abilities, when really, we are probably much better at our jobs than millions of people out there in similar positions. And yet, we are full of doubts, because we believe the lies of management.
She really opened up to me tonight, even though we did not have much time, except for three cigarettes outside after our 16 hours day. I paid her only compliments, and I did everything she asked. The only freedom I afforded myself, and it was probably my only big mistake, is that I disappeared many times for 20 minutes into my room, to freshen up. I’m sure I will hear all about it in the near future, but I’m sorry, 16 hours straight for me, cannot be done with at least one good hour spent in my room splashing water over my face and time to myself to think a bit. I would have my own company, and I would still take that freedom.
Of course, it does not help that every single time that I disappear, everything goes wrong, that I am not there to help, and my absence become a crisis to the point that I am being blamed for the acts of God. Today it was that the minute I got into my room, the electricity went down, and that means going back to every break out rooms to make sure the equipment goes back online as soon as the electricity is back. And just my luck, there was a change in the rooms whilst I was sitting on the bog, and of course, without me there, they forgot all about it. I was pretty much the one who kept everything together today, keeping track of time and everything we had to do. If I disappear, everything goes wrong and I am blamed for not being there.
And they all passed their little comment, including the Black Guy, and I had to say: dear me, I did not know that every second I was not there was accounted for and reported back to the bosses. Hopefully that will calm them down for doing just that, going back to the office to say that I was not there every second of each 16 hours day.
I had a lot to say about the hotel. Everything about it is wrong, not even counting that we have lost electricity at least four times today and that no one in the whole building was able to connect to the Internet all day. Think about it, our delegates are the richest people in the world, most of them have close to one billion dollars to their name. And yet, this hotel in San Francisco must deserve two stars at most, only because they have done nothing to renovate it since the 70’s. The carpet alone gives me a headache, there is nothing vegetarian on their menu, and even though I am on the third floor, my room looks like I am in the basement without a window. I guess I have been spoilt with five stars hotels all around Europe in the last decade. And yet, I can’t blame my bosses, it costs us $25,000 dollars instead of $50,000, and instead of meeting a brick wall of a contract filled with unreasonable demands from the hotel, the kind of demands which will make us spend $50,000 no matter if we manage to only confirm 3 delegates, we actually enjoy people who will do anything to get our business. It just does not fit the profile of our delegates, the richest people on the planet, who have been used to the seven stars treatment, in five stars hotels. Something not many people get to know about in their lifetime.
I have to be commended for being able to still lie through my teeth, and pay all sorts of compliments to the Valley Girl about how she managed the whole thing, despite being drunk at the end of the cocktail party. No wonder I bonded with the girl to the point that she shared her own insecurity with me. No small feat, I tell you, to gain the trust of people who did not like you first hand at the beginning because of your rough edges.
I did not manage to get many confessions from the Black guy, except that he is happily married and has two children. That much I learnt from him. What I learnt from the Valley Girl, is that he is very religious and has faith in some God or other. Perhaps this is what I felt when I said that I thought he was a fair person. Not sure though if he is fulfilling the watch of God himself, hen he spies on us like I never had anyone spying on me before. It has been difficult, since he has this tendency to hide in the next room to listen to what we say, and then to report it all back to the Los Angeles headquarters, to the bosses. So I always had to be on my best behavior, and yet, for me, this is near impossible, since I don’t care for consequences of my actions.
What else, his father was an alcoholic, and because of that, he does not drink at all. What does it mean? He was beaten up? I will never be close enough to him to find out about it. Other feature, he loves his cheeseburgers and is a private man. He would rather spend the night in his room alone, order his usual cheeseburger like Elvis Presley, and… pray I guess. What a great life…
Something is even more disturbing. It is that when you are in a hotel at a conference, you cannot really tell in which city or which country you are in. They are all the same, whether you are in Paris, London, Prague, Rome, Budapest, Amsterdam, Cannes or San Francisco. And it is always a nightmare. I wonder if I would get to love it the day they are my own events, for my own company. Things would be different then, I’m sure. I will see dollar sign on the forehead of each delegate, for once, that should motivate me, as the capitalist monster that I would then be.
Life is so simple when you are not making thousands of dollars for someone else, or a faceless corporation. When you are not working for making other richer, but work instead at your own survival. You might get more stress and worries when everything goes wrong, which invariably happens at conferences, but at least your stress is not about how your boss will kill you for your own incompetence, when everything happens pretty much out of your control no matter how carefully you plan your events.
Conference is a heartless job, and it is certainly not easy. As a proof, none of the people I ever worked with, could even begin to earn that much money for any other job they could have. No other job would give you that much of a salary without any proper and adequate study to back up your competence. It can only mean one thing: we know it is hell, we know you cannot stand it, but here is three times the salary you would get somewhere else, please, continue a bit more and hopefully you will get used to it, or put yourself in such a situation financially, that your only choice will be to stuck with us for the rest of your life from fears of not being able to pay your mortgage or your car. They quickly get us by the bollocks, because of course we spend and live at the level of our salary, we think this will remain forever, when in truth, it will require quite a change in the standard of living we have been used to, to lose that job.
If you are close to the $100,000 mark a year than zero, it only means one thing: you’re in hell, you do not possess your soul anymore, and you do not have happiness. And yet you are successful and people envy you. Makes no sense. Yes, you do travel around, go around the world, you do like I did tonight, order enough food to your room for a party of five, when stress will only let you eat half of what a normal person would eat. The company pays, why not order for 20 people? We deserve it! Despite all that, we are all on a diet, and we are all running towards becoming the fattest people on the planet. Viva America! Bring in the millions, to make it all worthwhile!
And these conferences make it look so damn easy. You go to these conferences filled with venture capitalists with a simple and stupid little idea supposedly able to revolutionize a certain field somewhere, you ask for a billion dollar hoping there are some private equity people in the room, you promise a return of investment of 3,000%, you get your money, and the worse thing is that you actually do deliver on your lies and hopes. So easy! Give me a billion tomorrow morning, I will turn it into a trillion within a year. If I can believe all their lies, that is.
Makes you wish you had invented the next step in the production of efficient computer chips oh wait, no need to invent it, you just need to invest in it, and it becomes your invention. Everyone will collect their millions, so everyone is beyond pleased. So easy, you wonder why we waste our time becoming doctors and lawyers, when really, this is peanut compared with the wonderful world of finance. You don’t even need to worry about the Stock Exchange anymore, we all know it was long dead even before 9/11, it is only bonus that we can now blame it on Osama Bin Laden, when we all knew it was not making any money to anyone for a long time, as a system that appeared to have reached the limits of its normal life. Really makes you wonder who is truly at the source of the destruction of the two towers, very convenient at any rate. And it only killed 5,000 people, nothing compared with the 20 millions the Belgium people killed in Congo not long ago for God only knows why. Is it less? Is it more? I don’t know, and I don’t care. These are crimes against humanity that I never heard the Belgium people apologize for. And that would not bring back the dead anyway. So who cares? Let’s just order more food and more wine, so we can forget all about it, and do it again, and again. In God we trust anyway, it is after all our logline printed on each dollar, makes it more acceptable to kill to get it, isn’t it?
One million deaths is not enough to get me rich, a billion would make it worthwhile, if I get a dollar for each life, that is, the true value of life on this planet, one big American dollar. Of course, it will cost the rest of the people billions of dollars in warlike stuff, but that is of no consequence to me, as long as I get my billion dollars in return for a billion deaths that I directly caused. In God we trust, and don’t you forget it the day I drop a bomb on your head.
2 March 2006
I had such a perfect day yesterday with the Valley Girl, no mistake whatsoever, we bonded together, she even liked me. Of course, it took me less than 24 hours to destroy it all.
The last three hours of the conference have been the most difficult ones of my entire stay in Los Angeles. The crisis I was so desperately trying to avoid, I walked right into it. And I guess I have only myself to blame.
I just mentioned that the huge conference we were organizing about financing the Internet was a big risk, since the dot.com era is over and just about everyone lost their investments. She exploded, she shouted that she could not believe that I would shit like that on other people’s idea. I was not sure if it was her idea, though now that I think of it, it was perhaps obvious that it was. So of course, she spent the last three hours speaking against me to everyone, I had attacked her on her softest spot, her competence, once again.
She will go back in the office and destroy me, and there is noting I can do about it. I’m beyond caring anyway. It is clear that it was unavoidable. I tried so hard, and yet, I have failed miserably. It was like, it had to happen, it was destiny. And now that event will flop completely, and she will blame me for it, because I pointed out the obvious.
She said I did not know what I was talking about. Perhaps she does not know that I have been producing conferences for six years in telecoms and the Internet. However, it is true that it has been 4 years since I read anything about it. However, somehow, I doubt very much that any venture capitalist will want to invest millions in any Internet company, unless somehow they could convince us, as she said, that they will produce the next eBay or Amazon. And even then, who would be crazy enough to believe them? I hope it will succeed, even if it would mean that I did not know what I was talking about. Anything for an easy life.
I am now alone in my room, it is kind of creepy, and I am dead tired. I cannot even walk anymore, none of us could after three days like that. Putting together a conference is always a nightmare, it is going through hell. Every time it is the same story, just have to survive as unscathed as possible. And hope that once in the office, it will all be forgotten. What happens at a conference, we had a saying, must remain at the conference. I did not had the time to tell the Valley Girl that, and anyway, she is such a gossip, no matter what I could have said, and especially with the Black guy there, the spy who reports everything to the bosses, tomorrow morning everyone will know every single stupidity I have said in the last three days. Not sure how it will be on Monday, when I return. But as I said, I don’t care anymore.
One thing I did like this time around though, was to think about when these will be my own events. It would be totally different, it could still be hell, but it would be my own hell. And it will change everything. It motivated me to go ahead and start that business. I have also learned there that it has to be something I care about, the content, the subjects, it cannot be corporate bollocks, or else, I will fall asleep in the room, and I don’t want that. Well, let’ just say that I did not care much for what these people had to say, it made me wonder what was the point of producing a conference like that, if not simply to make money. It should be more than just that, it has to be something that I truly want to learn about, my own motivations, a reflection of my own twisted personality, and it still gives me a lot of ground to maneuver in as I have many interests. We’ll see.
I was very depressed an hour ago, I bought a bottle of wine for $25, and after one glass I already feel much better. Sad that I will probably go to bed early, I could have been inspired to write some more tonight.
Tomorrow I would like to leave San Francisco and go to San José. I would like to visit the huge haunted house of Mrs. Winchester. I would love to have a conference there, I wonder if it is possible. But before I can organize conferences in the U.S., and figure out how a Canadian living in London can actually produce international events without falling into a bureaucratic nightmare, I better first concentrate on London. I reckon I can find a cheap hotel around Heathrow Airport, around the corner of where I live.
I can’t believe I am in San Francisco, and yet I don’t fell like it. I don’t want to go anywhere, I don’t want to visit anything, I certainly don’t want to go out to a club or a gat bar. I must feel very old with my 33 years to wish to remain home in the gay capital of the world. I’m so tired and depressed, maybe I should just go and throw myself off that bridge where everyone apparently jumping from every year. Is it from the Golden Gate that people commit suicide in San Francisco? Perhaps I should go and kill myself in Mrs. Winchester’s house. After all, it has been constructed to accommodate ghosts, apparently. Sounds perfect to me.
I wish I could call my baby, I miss him so much. What I would give to be with him again, and start that business together. Always remaining at home with our family of animals. He bought a dog now, a terrier. I told him many times before that if he were to do that, I would leave him. But now I find it acceptable, because I have left him for over six months and he suffered a lot as well. I just hope she does not pee and shit everywhere and does not bark all the time. I could not stand that. Our flat is so small, and we already have five or six cats, a dog is just too much right now in that zoo of his.
Surprisingly, his mother was very pleased with the dog, it means for her that Stephen is definitely not moving to America. And anyway, I have no desire to remain here either. The sooner I am out of here, the better. I miss London too much. I miss my cozy life with Stephen and our zoo. I guess I needed to little trip to Los Angeles to finally understand what it is that I have. And I did not need to lose it all before understanding it. Which is a plus.
3 March 2006
Today was the birthday of Stephen, he is now 46, closer to 50. Soon he will have good reason not to have sex anymore, he will say that he is impotent or something, or too old for that. I woke him up when I called, he was sleeping with four cats and a dog, I guess he does not need me anymore, one of us is kept warm at night.
I just came back from downtown San Francisco. I stopped at Powell Station and walked around for two hours, visited China Town, met two French-Canadians now living in Texas, and was again frightened by the number of beggars everywhere. Some of the old architecture is quite impressive, they are mostly inhabited by the richest corporations of America, which are undoubtedly banks, who have been making billions of dollars on our back since forever, and unfortunately there is no way to avoid dealing with them. It is one of my big dream projects one day, to start a real cooperative bank only to help people, a sort of non-profit organization. And somehow, I feel it will be ruled as illegal. I wish someone with the means would do it, I’ll be their first customer in line.