Corporate America

Despite my mistakes, despite the consequences, when I was thinking back about it, I was actually proud of myself. I was proud to have stand on my two feet and told the bitch what I really though of her management skills. Yes, I shouted it, I freaked out, I left the office, I lacked the respect Manager’s are due, I was insubordinate, I will be sacked for it, but I will not take any shit from anyone, I will not let anyone walk all over me just because I need the job or the money. I have some self respect, I have my dignity, and this less than I can say for everyone else in that office who suffer in silence and accept how small they are.
I just finished reading a book by Dan Brown. It gave me some sense of finality. I have reached another stage of my crisis. Astonishment by my own behavior. I simply cannot believe or even understand how and why I acted like this today. It was so out of line, that even though earlier I did not really they would kick me out, now I virtually certain that they will.
I was way too extreme, so loud as well, and so melodramatic when I left the office the office and came back later. And her word, saying that I was not professional, and this what she told my bosses, of course, it is over. They cannot let that pass, impossible. So what the hell went through my head?
The thing is, the behavior of those girls, and they can get away with it, is even more puzzling. You have there those two women with the most strident voice, pushing, pushing, pushing all the time, walking around, talking without thinking, causing problems after problems just for fun, and creating big crisis out of nothing. And you are supposed to stand there and be alienated completely all day long, until they dig further and then you lose your mind, and you are no longer responsible for what you do. In my case, not being a violent man, it was done on words. More unlucky bastard in that situation might have decided to hit her! Crushing that little perfect Chinese face until it shuts up. And at the end of the day, they get away with the verbal abuse, but you don’t. You are the one who overacted, crossed the line, insulted them by saying what you really thought. And then they report you, you’re gone, and they move to the next victim. Talking, pushing, alienating, being unreasonable, etc., until they themselves explode as well, and then they’re gone.
I feel a bit ore reassured that the exact same thing happened to the Sales guy. It is not just me. Nearly a dozen were sacked since I started, all at the hands of those two girls. And if they sack me tomorrow, I will tell them. I will tell them that I don’t mind leaving, but as my last report as your Consultant Management for one more minute, let me tell you, in the interest of your business, get rid of those two girls, or else, you’ll never find anyone willing or capable of surviving longer than six months under your roof. And as a last prediction, I will tell them that the Valley Girl has already made it clear she was jealous of the new guy, the Iranian, and she will definitely try to get him sacked. And so I will them, when the time comes to decide if you should let him or not, do yourself a favor, keep him, get rid of her. And see if six months later that kid does not shine and make this office a real success.
Of course, he has the great advantage of smoking pot or whatever else all the time, I think he is stone most of the time, not sure on what drugs exactly. So when the strident voices are ringing in his ears, he probably only hear a distant cry, and it does not affect him in the slightest. Lucky him. I wish I drank myself to death the night before, I might have been able to prevent myself from reacting the way I did today. It’s too late now.
I acted very unprofessionally today, I admit it, I regret immensely. And yet, I will not apologize this time I am asked to apologize. I will not fight it either, I will simply pack my things and go. Try working all the overtime God’s sent, rushing to reach deadlines, working like crazy for months on end, and having this annoying person suddenly coming to you, digging, suggesting you’re not doing your job, wasting time, being incompetent, in front of everyone, in this strident voice, humiliating you when you were virtually just demoted by being moved under her. And let’s see how you would keep your calm in that situation, without some powerful pills to induce you to some ort of zombie state. I knew it was going to happen, she knew it was going to happen, my bosses knew it was going to happen. Or else, we would not had a little conversation of two hours about how I was expected to obey her in all, that she was my boss, and that one day it will be my turn. No thanks. You asked for it, it happened. Not just sack me and let me be. This is six months of my life completely wasted, one of my biggest failures in life, and I will have to live with it for the rest of my existence. Living in regret for that day where I simply could no longer stand it. That famous minute where, after months of being backstabbed by just about everyone, I exploded. And now, don’t even ask why, don’t try to understand the real chain of events here. Just protect your little perfect Managers, just eliminate the recalcitrant, the marginal.
And that is how my new company will be called: The Marginal. Very appropriate. No one will ever have a job title in my company. Identified tasks, yes, but no titles. It’s maybe nothing, but it is a symbolic start. Now, how could I get of this system of hierarchy? How can I avoid all that crap that made my life such a misery in the last 30 years? It is not going to be easy, it will have to be done, decided, built as I go along, and the name of my company should remind me at all time to try to do things differently, try for a little of happiness now and then, and a lot of leeway.
I need to make sure, that if ever this become a huge empire, my company will be one where everyone will be pleased to work for. And it is not with nice words and company charts of rules and regulations that you accomplish that, or by stating in your huge PR and image campaigns: Our People is our Biggest Asset, because we all know it is a lie and that you would move quickly to kill anyone opening his mouth, just like I did today. And we should never have reached the point where I could no longer contain myself. This is it, this chain of extraordinary events, this pressure building up for months, until it needed to be released. No good. How could this be prevented? Very difficult.
There are solutions, I will find them. And I doubt I will find any answers in any of those books about How to Develop Great Management Skills. It obviously does not work, or else, we would smile once in a while. It is like Karl Marx, nice in theories, could never work in practice. Because it seems that we never take into account human nature when we develop these grandiose schemes. And human nature does not forgive, it is unpredictable, uncontrollable, it is a bastard.
I had the solution, I written it all in my dozens reports. It would have worked for this company, but they chose to ignore most of it, and many more people will lose their job there before this year is over. I am only one in a series, granted I’ll be the one leaving the most spectacularly, but I am still only one in a series. And if this does not prove that this company is the problem, then what does? All of those unemployed people? Tell that to the judge.
At least I am not leaving empty ended. I have two more books, perhaps three. Never been so productive in so short a time, again I have been living at a speed unlike any other human being. And still found the time to write so much about it despite the fact that I don’t have any time for myself, I’m not sleeping anymore. It is just unfortunate that these books I have spent so much time writing are not the publishing type, and so will never be published. So again, it is still kind of a big waste of time. It is still a nice consolation, I did get something out of that hell that was for me Los Angeles.
23 March 2006
It is such a great day today in Los Angeles, the sun is shining and warm, the palm trees are so inviting, even the traffic seems less aggressing than usual. It is beautiful. Obviously nature has no idea of what is in the making in these offices.
I have not heard of any meeting at the end of the day yet, but they never tell you until it is time for the meeting. Whether there is a meeting or not, tomorrow I’ll be sick. I already mentioned it to the Chinese Girl, that my brain was not working, that I thought I was sick.
I just spoke with Stephen in London, that was a harsh phone call, where he has been everything but on my side. He talked to his mother about our idea for a business, she freaked out, put him in contact with some financial adviser, and discovered that it would cost at least £2,000 just to register the company and have an employee, me. So now Stephen is adamant that we will not start a business. He is suggesting that I remain in Los Angeles for as long as possible, not come back at the end of next month. Or he says to contact my previous in London and resume my job there. I would prefer the option of remaining here in that case. And since he does not appear in any hurry to get me back to England, I might as well, today at least, forget about him and this option. If I have to start this whole business on my own, without him, I will seriously consider it.
Now I’m truly depressed, backed into a corner, my life has gone to hell. Of course, it was not the time to speak to him, he is under a lot of pressure himself, he will find out tomorrow if he gets back his job or not. Maybe once he knows his own faith, he might see more clearly about my own. At the moment, there is only darkness on both sides of the ocean, three sides actually, all the oceans of the world.
It is already time for me to go back. This is going to be more difficult than I thought. God only knows what I will be saying here tonight when I come back in a few hours.
All right, I’m back! Do I still have my job? Well, let’s build some suspense. I received an email before I left home from my boss, asking me to go into his office as soon as I got back from lunch. Fortunately for me, it went directly not into my spam folder, but my second undesirable emails, the protection from Outlook. I never read emails reaching the second spam folder, I know it is all pure crap. And sure enough, that email belongs there. So, I was not freak out just before reaching the office. And then, even before I read his email in my inbox at work, he came to get me.
I was so humble when I entered his office, it was a dark contrast from my yesterday’s outburst. So, we sat down, he asked me what happened. So I told him that I felt I had been demoted, it was difficult to accept orders from the Chinese Girl, and she did not make that transition very easy. She instantly took control, patronizing, accusing me of incompetence, basically she was not very professional, she was rubbing it in. And then at some point I just exploded. I said I was sorry, that I do intend to work well with her, and that it would never happen again (until next time, that is, not sure how I will be able to stop myself).
He was so nice to me, I could barely believe my ears. A complete change from when, at Christmas, he was asking me why he was paying me $1,250 a week if I was not doing anything (when in fact I was working like crazy), and asking me to work all over the Christmas period (only three days off in all). I know he can be harsh, unforgivable, to the point. But he was sweet, making sure he was not going to make me explode again, maybe he thought I could very well react like I did the day before.
So in all I told him her management skills were not that great and she had come up to me very hard. She was not very professional, the exact same thing she must have told them. I did not go any further, I did not say anymore that I needed to. I actually I praised her more that I wanted to, saying that she was very efficient and that together I was certain we would achieve great things. He was very pleased to hear that, he exhibited some expression, with a smile, that I had never seen before. Satisfaction, for a decision well made by promoting her.
So I was safe, I was not going to be sacked. I was starting to wonder if I could actually get away with murder, perhaps I should have hit her, like every fiber in my body was stretching for. I am only joking here, I am not so unethical, and I can control myself. As my friend Leonardo said tonight, they obviously finally realized just how important I am for their new structure in that company. They must really feel that I am worth something, or else, I would be out the door by now. So I take this as a significant admission that my services have been at least to their expectations, hopefully more. And now I am right back where I was, it will be difficult to announce that I am leaving next week.
Something I said in that meeting, which I would not have said, Stephen told me to say so when I called him at lunch time. I said that I felt this was a demotion, which has made the whole process of the Chinese Girl becoming my boss much more difficult to accept.
He was surprised by this statement, it never entered his mind that I could have a reticence working under her. It certainly right there explained everything. My outburst, his incomprehension, his blindness that it was coming, and it was obvious to everyone but him. Maybe that explains why bosses need many consultants before making any decisions, and yet, they manage to always make the wrong decision. Because consultants have no clue about what really goes on, the interactions and little mind games lasting for months on end.
How could be a demotion? I was a Management Consultant, I am now an Event Producer. I was first directly under the Director, then under the Senior Manager, and now under the Conference Manager without experience. And yet, she knows everything about what needs to be done, I know nothing. So this demotion is more psychological than anything, it is mostly also because of whom I am now under. A woman out of control who has already tried to get me sacked before, for no good reason.
In all this, I thought someone not affected by it all, was the Senior Manager. Now I understand his predicament. He is as good as dead, the Chinese Girl succeeded in destroying him, and as she is taking over all his conferences, and the two persons he was supervising, every day she makes greater discoveries to prove her point. That he was plain incompetent and was not doing anything that we were supposed to do. I have so much to do for my first two conferences now, it is madness. No wonder he did not care about any of it. I also know that at any given time, he was dealing with 10 conferences, how could he remember everything? I know my boss was always having these meetings with us, where he would tell us all that we had to do all of these things, and get that next brochure to print yesterday. In these conditions, of course we would never had the time to do all that the Chinese Girl is now asking us to do.
It is the second, in as many meetings, that my bosses put the Senior Manager down. The first time, two weeks ago, they said that he could speak anymore because of his speech impediment (that I reckoned they cause by freaking him out), and he was also always talking bollocks. I defended him then, I said that everything he ever told me was justified and he knew what he was doing (of course, I did not know we were supposed to do ten times more on each event, including the whole marketing).
Today my boss said something that made everything click. He said that in December, less than a month before a conference, the contract with the hotel had not been signed, and therefore, we could not hold the conference in that hotel. They had to pay a huge fortune to another hotel in New York to hold that conference, and any profit for that event just evaporated. Now, if this is not gross misconduct deserving an instant dismissal, I don’t know what is. He is lucky to have survived it. However now he has been striped from his title of Manager, he will no longer produce conferences, he will do whatever else, research or something I heard.
And now that I know that, I understand that I caused his downfall. In my ignorance, I showed all is mistakes and all his shortcomings. I cannot here mention them all, but I can mention the most significant ones. I told the Valley Girl that his conference programs were just copies of our competitors events, even the speaker line up was stolen. Well, it now seems that she work very hard telling everyone in the office, in particular the Chinese Girl who seemed to have been collecting all the right reasons to destroy the man, and finally take his place.
And what made it all worse and complete, his destruction, apart from every time the Chinese Girl asks me to do something I have to say that it is the first time I hear of this, is that very reason I exploded yesterday. What I thought as insignificant, and that she was so insistent was not, was right at the heart of the problem.
The Senior Manager told me last week which hotel m conference would be at. I assumed he signed the contract and sent it back. So when I called to find out why the conference was not in the system and that a delegate could not book a room at a discount, and when I was told the contract had not been signed and returned, I interrupted a meeting between the Senior Manager and my boss, to ask if the contract had been signed. It has not been. You can imagine the impact it had on my boss, considering what happened in December.
So not knowing anything about anything, when the Chinese Girl came to me to blame me of having called the hotel, before speaking first with the people in the office about if the contract had been signed or not, I had no clue why this was so important. Big Deal, the contract had not been signed yet, it was going to be in the next five minutes, and the hotel was going to update their system. It was not important, why was she trying to blame me for something, accusing of something? Why was she creating such a fuss over such an insignificant thing? I shouted many times in the office, so loudly that every other offices in the building must have heard, that I assumed that the contract had been signed, all right? The Senior Manager told me it was that hotel, I assumed he had signed the contract. He had not, so what, big deal! Little I knew, that by shouting that, I was making it even worse for the Senior Manager. I don’t know if he was in the room when I exploded, I don’t know if he heard all that. It must have been one of the most painful moment of his life, that’s for sure. I was not the one pushing this, it was the Chinese Girl, making a big deal out of this when I felt it was not necessary. I now understand why it was necessary to make a big deal out of it, and I certainly sealed his fate by exploding on that very final point of the Chinese Girl. The whole thing almost got me sacked. It freaked everybody out, including the Chinese Girl. It was another big crisis over a damn unsigned contract about a venue. The guy is finished. I did it without knowing, without having a clue, or else I would have never have exploded like this on that very point. I would have done anything to protect him. And I defended in that office in front of the boss. I said that he was a good manager, and we were in constant communication by email about everything I had to do, and I never had to wait to learn what it is I had to do.
Now I feel bad. I destroyed the man. Obviously because he was careless. He destroyed himself really, I just, I would have liked to protect him, because he is nice, he has a family, a huge house that now is worth a fortune, but a huge mortgage to pay. He’s been there 10 years, he needs this job, and since he never told me anything about his situation, I inadvertently made all his shortcomings shine into the light. Giving the perfect opportunity to the Chinese Girl to prove it and take over. Now I feel bad. I even shouted that her management skills were very much different from what I had been used to, when I was very much left to my own devices. And now she wants to know everything I do at any given minute of the day. Well, that was the point that cost him his position, he is not manager material, my boss said.
And at the end of the day, I asked the Valley Girl, are they sacking him? She said she did not know what was going on. She has been much nicer to me since the promotion of the Chinese Girl. She said that obviously she did not count for much in that organization (I sure hope not! She tried her best to destroy everything in the last few months), and then I said I did not either, and then we looked at the cubicle of the Chinese Girl, and she said: except her.
The Chinese Girl is efficient, she does not waste her time. And if she destroys you, it is because she feels you deserve it. The Valley Girl destroys people’s life out of being bored I think. She likes to cause problems for the heck of it or when she feels she is threatened. Both girls are highly dangerous, but the Chinese Girl does not realize what she does, when she is pushy, she shouts all the time as her normal voice, so nobody is surprised when she is actually freaking out, out loud, it is natural to her personality. Bad management too. She is the lesser of two evils. That company is doomed.
And now let’s talk about the Sweet Chinese Girl. I’m so pleased she is my only ally with Isabella in the office, and that they are good friends. The Sweet one is in the same predicament as me. We were both under the Senior Manager, and we are now both under Master Bitch Chinese Girl. We have both moved into overdrive when she took over, and we have so much to do, we just don’t understand why we are not simply declaring Game Over, and leave right on the spot.
At some point during the day, after yet another email from the Chinese Girl to both of us, about other stuff we needed to do about already printed conferences, the Sweet one freaked out a bit. And the New One kind of joked and wrote a note: don’t quit! She put that message on her computer screen, and then the Director saw it. They had meetings about it, they freaked out that the restructure might not only cause me to leave, after my outburst, but now it was the other Sweet Chinese Girl. We were both on edge, after the Chinese Girl ram in there asking from us the impossible.
So the Sweet Chinese Girl was called in the office, she was asked if she wanted to quit or what? They were begging her to stay, and she had to explain it was all a joke, and how it came to be, that suddenly she was panicking because of the Chinese Girl. And so it looked bad on the Chinese Girl, it sort of proved that my explosion was justified, since both the new persons under her, it was suggested, were about to quit or be sacked because of her inexistent management skills. No doubt this helped me no end, and my boss told me they talked with her about that, about the way she handled us, and that she needed to be more careful.
And what did she do after all that? She sent another email to both the Sweet Chinese Girl and I, with the worst of all! Something extraordinary, a list that long of things to do, not once, but twice, 10 long time consuming marketing piece to produce and write, for two conferences each that the Sweet One and I are now responsible for. When we now nothing about the topic of these events, that was the job of the Senior Manager. Well, if the Chinese Girl has any vague intention of quitting, I know now it has become a certainty. Especially the way it came: I know you are sinking under everything you have to do, but stop all that, and please before the end of the day produce these 20 marketing pieces for the media partners! There were two hours left in the day. We both left right on time, meaning, we’re not ready to do any overtime for Master Bitch. Otherwise, we would still be working all over the weekend.
I don’t know what is going to happen next, I don’t know how it will go next week. I don’t even know if I will leave in a month. It is quite possible that I will remain longer. Stephen is obsessed with money, my return would mean he would have to support me, he can’t, so he is pushing for me to remain longer. So I might, I don’t mind. Makes no difference to me, I kind of enjoy my life in Los Angeles, even if it is nothing particularly special or revolutionary. I like my flat, I like the weather, and as long as I know that my bosses will let me get away with murder, than I know I am appreciated. I also know that if everything goes wrong, I can leave at any time, without regrets. I am in no hurry to enter the next phase of my existence. So if Stephen has not calm down tomorrow, after finding out if he still has his job or not, I stay here another two months minimum, perhaps longer. He should be careful though, too many months here, and I might never go back to England. Another great relationship which would have been destroyed because of a lack of money. That fear that we might not survive, when I know damn well that there is always a solution around the corner. Money or the lack of it should never stop anything, especially not love.