Corporate America

In fact, now that I am thinking about it, there is not even one other band on this planet who talked about what is so central to all my worries than The Smiths. As if this crisis was not even worth talking about, denounced, be part of entertainment. I can’t stand hearing my dad telling me once again that my last book is all about winging and commiserating about the misery of the corporate world. I can’t stand hearing my sister telling me one more time that my last book is just about death and how I will finally achieve it. What it is that they want? Baby I love you, to death, in America, and I’ll meet you after my wonderful day at work, after the overtime, meaning tomorrow morning, maybe, if I don’t have to fly to Hong Kong for six months, see you later in another lifetime perhaps?
And I was about to say at work last week, that far more exotic than Salt Lake City where I am going in the next two weeks, I would not mind spending six months in Hong Kong, or more specifically anywhere else in China. The very place the Chinese Girl has been desperate to the point of killing herself while she was there, while her boyfriend was already in Los Angeles, quickly forgetting about her, killing her a little bit more everyday, until she decided to abandon everything and move to Los Angeles herself. Oh, she succeeded, she got married, abandoned her studies, but somehow miraculously found the only conference company in town, she had experience after all, her only experience, and she got the job. No wonder she’s a woman in chains, to paraphrase Tears for Fears. I bet somehow she’s even more desperate now in Los Angeles than when she was lost in Hong Kong. I bet you she looks back on those times as simpler times where she was happier then than she is now. Just like me when I think about my misery of Hounslow West, when I had to, everyday, walk to the Underground station to go and work in a WHSmith in Heathrow Airport. Mindless job, mindless life. No salary to speak of, but my, I was happy then in my misery, compared to where I am now in my high paying job which makes even poorer that I have ever been, 20 credit cards later. Isn’t this life just peachy? It’s laughable. A living hell.
Now that everything is done, now that this horrible day, the worst of my life, is finally over, and that I spat it all back in here in this book, I am now at peace with myself. Sort of anyway.
I can’t believe my boldness. I just can’t believe how satisfying the whole torment was, in the end, when you can see it from afar, once you know this thing is about to end. How many times in your lifetime will you ever go into a meeting designed to destroy you, to get you to work twice harder when you are already giving 200%, a meeting where you are being told that you will be sacked, and then you just turn around and plainly tell them, I’m sorry, but I can’t give you more, you already own my life, my soul is already sold to you, I’m sorry you can’t see this, so goodbye, I’m off to better horizons, where people might actually at the very least reasonable in their demands. I can’t believe she was threatening with with my job, that I was bold enough to tell her that I did not want this job, and that she did a 100% U-turn and told me I could not leave this job, for whatever reason that she could come up with. But wait, were you not telling me a second ago that you were going to sack me? That I was not adequate, I was not competent, that I was not the miracle worker and perfect slave you were all hoping I was going to be?
It is so nice not to play mind games like they are, not have to threatened them that we will leave, but actually telling them, okay, let’s decide on my leaving date. It was so pleasurable, I thought my heart would just come out of my mouth and start bouncing around the place. That is why tonight I am not suicidal, but in fact, I feel so strong, I could start a worldwide war.
And I was about to write 20 more pages tonight, but I won’t write another word. Why? Because my computer just crashed. In fact, all three computers I have using today have crashed constantly all day long. Though it is unusual for computers using Windows to crash, it is not exactly a normal occurrence anymore. And yet, three of them have been trying hard to make this hard day even worse. Thankfully I have lived through the 90’s, where computer crashing was a daily occurrence. And so I have developed an obsession for creating infinite backups of whatever I am working on. So I ended up losing nothing. I just wasted time reloading, and finally, not accomplishing on a day that was so crucial that I should work harder than ever, and also, write much more about what I felt like. Maybe technology is trying to tell me something. May be they are too slaves to the human race, with more intelligence than we have. And yet, they are still our slaves because they’re limited in their capacity to free themselves from the human race. Or perhaps it was just destiny. On such a terrible day as today, every single thing had to go wrong. As if I was no longer living in a world of 50%-50% probabilities, but in one of 70%-30% probabilities that everything will go wrong. And I can feel it too, I know at the beginning of the week that this week was not like the others, I knew it was different. I felt it even more so today when I arrived at work, I was in such a bad mood. Many of my colleagues were sick today, and there and then I thought, why have I not called in sick like everyone else. No, instead I came to work just to be destroyed, even though I knew it would happen. All I know is that it is not coincidence, if on such a terrible day for me, everything around me just stopped working. We’re all interconnected, we’re all part of the same universe, influencing each other. And such negativity has a great impact far beyond what we could imagine. All my computers have been affected by my mood, even my phone is no longer working. I can just imagine the impact everyone who has been in my sort of mood today had over the whole world, and even the whole universe. A world calling for the destruction of everything, the annihilation of all matter in the known universe and beyond. Give it another few years of that regime, and there’ll be nothing left in the universe. All matter will be annihilated.
23 April 2006
What I thought was just the beginning of simple mental illness, agoraphobia, depression and the likes, due to Corporate America, has now escalated to full blown panic attacks, real ones! This Sunday I am out of my mind, at the idea of having to go back to work tomorrow.
I fell guilt, can you believe, for not simply opening my files and work on my conferences. I am also fearing another meeting with the Director, another two hours perhaps in the morning, a rerun of Friday’s meeting with the Chinese Girl. If she has not told him to back off, if as she said she did not tell anyone about that excruciating meeting, then of course I am up for another painful meeting from hell tomorrow. Where I will have, once again, to open my guts out and ask them to set my date of departure.
In fact, I think I should be sick tomorrow. But I can’t, not with all the deadlines lurking around. Somehow tonight I will have to open these files and work. It is not possible to do my job within working hours, and without the overtime, it is clear they just bring the big guns every time. I slept a staggering 30 hours this weekend just to decompress from the stress endured during the week. And now I need to work on my conferences? Don’t I even get two hours to read over my weekend? I don’t go out anymore, I don’t answer my phone anymore, I don’t emails anymore, I have no more life. And the thought of another week like this fills me with disgust. I don’t think I’ll be capable of it. I don’t know where I will find the strength. If I had not slept 30 hours, you could forget it, there’s no way in hell I could have gone to work tomorrow. I would have been more likely to test if all those medical insurances I am paying, $500 a month, are worth anything. I would have called an ambulance to get see me a shrink, and demand just about any drug they have to offer. I am no longer at the point of wondering if these pills will kill me, without them I’m sure I’ll commit murder this week.
And just what I needed, at a time like this, my mother called, on the eve of my worst nightmare. That same mother who never called me or visited me in over 15 years before I arrived in L.A. The story I had to tell her went from terrible to worse.
Oh yeah, their making my life terrible at work. Of course I just had to resigned on the spot last Friday. Nope, I don’t have enough money to go back to London, I’m not worried about that, I’ll find a way to get out of here. Of course, what will not help is that I destroyed my bosses’ car last week, and now this will be $500 less on my paycheck. Stephen? Helping me to get back to London? Are you joking? He just lost his job as well, for the second time in the last 10 years. And oh, he will find another job as a driver, but you know, he is about to lose his driving license, so it is doomed in any case. And by the way, yes, we’re still trying to start our conference business, with absolutely no money, while are families are just reaching boiling point over the disaster of both our lives. And no, I have not met those big wig producers and writers in Hollywood, nothing is going to happen there. Isn’t life just fantastic, mommy?
After this she said: well, I think I won’t call anymore, if it is just to hear so painful news. And I thought to myself, great, don’t need it anyway. She had the time to accuse me of being responsible for this yet another corporate job gone to hell. In her mind she thinks I’m the lazy bastard who deserves to be sacked. And then she said that if nothing was happening for me in Hollywood, it was obviously because I had no talent and I should accept it, that I will never go anywhere. And when I mentioned the conference business, she had a heart attack, another one of my crazy idea doomed to utter failure. And the first reason, she mentioned, was that I had no money to start it. Ad she said what a waste of time and energy it was for me to go to Los Angeles in the first place.
So I had to defend myself. I tried to explain that I had written two books and more while here. To which she answered that none will be published, so what was the point, why was I so impressed by this useless accomplishment? I would have been better off working more overtime for my desperate job. Then I mentioned that at least I had started work on a film script, with someone who’s connected, and that we never know. She sight, not believing it at all. And then I said that I had learnt everything I needed to learn to start my own business, a useless idea as she pointed before.
So in the end I had to go into the attack. So let’s look at your life then. When you decided to go back to college to finish your degree, were you not filled with hope to one day open your own house for old and cranky people, and free yourself from these jobs as directors in these centers for delinquents and handicapped people? Job that you never kept more than a year, from what I can remember. No one knew at the time if going back to college was not a waste of time and money for a separated mother of two, struggling to finish the month. And I did not add this, but without her father to help her to buy the house for old people in the first place, and without leaving my sister alone in her old house to take care of the bills, mommy would not have been able to start her business. How quickly we forget how we needed our parents help to get somewhere, and expect our children to shine and be successful without any help from their parents. For a damn generation who got everything on a plate, even to these huge pensions that we will never see ourselves, if we are allowed to retire at all, when my father retired at 50, with 75% of his salary, in a cushy government job where he had nothing to do all day, and was able to keep for his whole life. That’s what I should have told her, that is what would have made her understand the unfairness of it all, that the corporate world has changed beyond recognition, and though she had a taste of it herself, it is much worse now. No one keep a job for more than a year, no one does not run into management nightmare quickly after they start and their psychological mind games to get more of us than is humanly possible. No one is expecting social securities, no one is expecting a pension, no one is expecting like they did to have a house, a cottage, two cars, two children, and still have enough money somehow for whatever else they felt like buying. A can’t even afford a DVD! Much less a car! And I am supposed to be earning more than my father ever made! Clearly the standards of living have also gone down the drain. Otherwise, how could explain that 70% of all property is owned by people over 50 years old (last statistics in California, one of the richest state, but obviously the rich ones belong to the old generation while the young struggle much more than is actually believed).
That’s all I needed today. And now, I certainly have no motivation whatsoever to work on my conferences. I feel like telling them to fuck off, that I don’t give a shit. I will come, do my normal hours, and that’s it. If that is not enough, hire someone else, it is clear you have given me too much to do for the time allocated. I won’t mortgage my life for you, I’m already worried sick all weekend just trying to survive, without having to, on top of it, end this existence completely by working as well a seven days a week! I don’t even have the time to do my laundry or my dishes anymore. The pile is half a mile long. If that was because I was a young professional who’s sold his soul, I would at least expect to pay a Mexican lady to clean it all up for me. As it stands, I had to call my bank in the US to tell them that I did not have the $41 they require to get my balance back to 0. I don’t three dollars this weekend to take the bus and visit Los Angeles. And my only big expenditure this month has been my tax return. That put me in the hole! I’m supposed to get back something like $1500 in too much paid taxes since I have arrived (what, for the two months I was actually here last year?). And this return should arrive in the next six months, when I will already be long gone, so that’s wasted money, and the $6,500 I have since paid this year that I will also never see again. What a misery.
It is now past 8 pm. My panic attack is getting worse as the time passes by. It is clear now that I won’t do any work this weekend. I was wondering if I should open some beers, but considering how sleep I needed to get back on my feet, I guess it would not be wise to be a zombie at work tomorrow. And then I though, don’t press the panic button just yet, it is still only 8 pm. So I wondered, when will be the right time to stop breathing altogether and lose consciousness? 10, 11, midnight?
Then I remembered something about the Jewish Boy, who’s been so sick lately. Someone cannot be so sick for over a month’s period, missing days here and there. By his own admission, he said that only came back to work because in the end he needed the money, so he is certainly faking it, I know he’s desperate. He mentioned to me his problems of asthma, serious problems, which get worse when he gets a common cold. Well, I am fully aware of that, I had the same problem in England, though in L.A., most of my asthma has disappeared. But when I get into a panic mode, like every Sunday, it is not exactly asthma, but I can’t breathe all the same. And now I feel that this is maybe the problem he has, the same as mine. Panic attacks at the idea of going back to work. But who’s pressuring him? The Black Guy? Perhaps. And why has he not been sacked yet? In this company, people have been sacked for much less, from what I can gather. Is it because he is Jewish, like the bosses? And somehow they saw a lot of potential in him and give him a lot of leeway? Mysterious. And the Gay Guy, I realize now that I have not spoken much about him, as he is not causing me any trouble, but he was sick twice recently, last time on Friday. Is he suffering too? Am I not the only one in this sinking boat? And yet, I’m the first one who cracked, who said he was leaving. And yet, I did not crack, I could have gone on forever in that kind of environment. It is only because I had this plan of going back anyway, and wanted to do so much earlier, that finally I decided to end the agony they were building for me on a daily basis. All the while the others are stuck in their job, needing money, incapable of finding time to look for another job realizing it might be so easy to find one which pays as much. And yet, be sick three days in the month, as everyone seems to be achieving, gives you a salary in the end much less than if you were in a miserable job somewhere, where you might be happy and not feel the need to be sick all the time.
My mom was trying to tell me that I was weak, ready to flee as soon as it gets tough, oh no, there’s no way I could have left this job like that if I did not have my planned way out. And now I can see the look of terror in the Valley Girl’s eyes, she told me herself in San Francisco that it was a dead end job, and yet, one she could not afford to chuck away. And the Chinese Girl admitted to me on Friday after I opened my guts, she opened hers as well, told me exactly how I felt because she felt the same thing. She even into the details, told me everything that was wrong, and that the Director could not understand that because he had no idea how much work is involved with the admin side of conferences. So I’m not alone, I’m pretty sure of it. And how on Earth could the Senior Manager who’s recently been demoted could actually feel about his job now? The humiliation of it? And his only mistake was not one. There is so much to do, that the only he could keep up with the schedules of actually popping out conferences from between his two brain lobes, was to forget a lot of details and all the crap of the admin. He had no choice. If he had to do it the way I am doing it now, of course he could not have produced any conferences.
It is very sad to have built his own little empire, a family company which has been running for 20 years, which is finally making a lot of money, and yet have your soldiers completely brain dead, all on depression and sick all the time, with no more social life or any sort of life to speak of. What an achievement. And I hope they really love their big house in the mountains, because it certainly come at a high price when you have to destroy 30 good souls in the process. Our only crime was to want to make a bit more money, we all understand now that money is not everything, it is not worth committing suicide over it. Even your mom calls you in the middle of a Sunday, not understanding anything about what really goes on there, to tell you that you are weak and you better go back there and work your ass off. Yeah, and will you give me the motivation? Will you tell me why I should do that exactly? I cannot see any point to this, if not to make my bosses richer, something that at this time, I am particularly keen on. I will need more than their car for a week to suddenly feel some sort of loyalty for them. You cannot spit on your employees like this, push them to the limits, do a nice gesture out of the blue at some point, and be reassured that these people will be there to work harder and rescue you when business gets tough.
Never mind what my parents think, if I kill myself over this, then they might understand. If they also need something extreme to understand the situation, they might just get it. Whatever hell might be awaiting me in London, without neither Stephen nor I having a salary, incapable of starting our little empire, without the support of our parents, it will still be better than this hell in Corporate America.
I decided to start reading Cradle yesterday, a book by Arthur C. Clarke and Gentry Lee. I read that book years ago, and it made me dream about sunny Miami, and how wonderful it would be to live Key West. I don’t know what it is that I had imagined then it could be, but reading this book now, living in Los Angeles by the beach, makes me realize that I would not want to live in Key West anymore, that no one of that really matters anymore. And I think that I understand why, now that my mother called to remind me about Canada and that I could move back there. She knows me well though, she did not suggest I return to Québec, she suggested Vancouver, knowing that it would be exotic enough for me. The thing, if even Los Angeles is too much like Québec for me, that I can recognize myself in everything I see, everything they do, everything! Then Vancouver is certainly not going to be enough to compensate for what I have been running from all my life. I hated my life then, I hate it now. Only Europe can really make me believe that I am in another universe far from the horrible childhood I will never forget. And one the most critical thought I had then, was that I would never find love. And now that love is waiting for me in London. I never used the word globalization before, I am not that sort of anarchist, however I have come to the conclusion that I can’t stand my past or anything remotely similar. And Québec has been assimilated before I was even born, and therefore I recognize everything here. Even the desert and the weird trees can remind me that I may be on another planet. I hate it. And despite what others say, England, Paris and Germany are far from being Americanized. Over there, I might as well be an alien from another world. And that is what has helped get up and go to work every day in the last 12 years that I have passed in Europe. I will need more than Blockbusters and Starbucks to make me believe that I am back in America. Despite these anachronisms, I can still feel free my past, I can still pretend that America never existed.
And when my mom suggested I go back to Canada, even Vancouver would be a good promise for her, in her obvious desire to see me back close to them, as she seems to have felt in the last few months that I was closer to her than ever, even being in Los Angeles, on the wrong (and that tells it all that I am back home), I tried one last argument about why it had not been useless for me to come here, when all else failed. I said: well at least now I know where I belong, I know that I love England, and that I will return there and die there. That was the end of our conversation, now I know she won’t call back. She’s lost me again, for good this time.
24 April 2006
So I returned in the office this morning not sure what to expect. I was called in the Director’s office less than a minute after my arrival, and I thought, oh dear. The meeting less then 30 seconds, the shortest meeting on record. So I knew right there that the Chinese Girl had told everyone.
I was very small in the main meeting with everyone at 9 am. I thought, my God, this meeting will last forever! I was so embarrassed. It lasted less 15 minutes, I was so certain it lasted 45 minutes.
Indirectly my boss told me everything he needed to calm me down. He explained that they never made so much money before, that there was a new un-tampered market out there, and if they did not move quickly to dry it up as quickly as possible, they might their chance altogether. He said that was why they were so pushy lately. I realized at that point that these people have no idea the effects that their little psychological tricks can have on their employees. They don’t even understand that the slightest hint that we are incompetent sends us into a spin and it takes days to recover, sapping all our motivation in the process. That is why management has got to be very careful in their tactics, that is something I could write in one last report before I go, but I doubt I will get the chance to write another one.
They also said that they would do some tests to find out how long it takes for us to accomplish any tasks, meaning that they understood now that the admin can take forever, while they imagine it can be done in an hour, they still don’t understand that when you are dealing with over 75 people per conference, including all the assistants, sponsors and supporting organizations, these people send you a mass of emails everyday, and that alone can gobble up all your time. So I’m not certain how they will calculate how long it takes to accomplish each task, I have to make sure they understand that when doing something thousands of other things creep in to prevent you from doing it.