"Corporate America, Eat Me!"

by John H.
2001.06.18

Let’s start out by polling the reading audience. How many of the readers work in some sort of corporate office setting? If you answered no, good for you, your soul does not belong to the devil. If you answered yes, ask yourself another question: Have you ever uttered the words: "Hi, Mr/Mrs. Boss, nice tie/dress you have on today"? If you answered no, again congratulations on not being one step closer to hell. If you answered yes however, stop reading and kill yourself.

I once worked in a corporate office. A large one, which is currently exploiting the "blue collar" workers of this great land of ours.  You may want to know the name of the large, money-hording corporation I once worked for. Well, I’m probably not allowed to say since I am basically bashing them relentlessly, but lets just say they make steel and they’re building is a permanent fixture of the Pittsburgh skyline.

During my stay at this corporation, I was subject to more ass kissing per square inch than all interview’s conducted by Howard Stern combined. I mean, the ladies had to keep "powdering their noses" to keep the brown stains from ruining their day. I had a fellow employee tell me: "You should tell [boss person a] that he has a nice tie on." I replied with a grin "why would I do that?" Their response "It can’t hurt." IT CAN’T HURT!

How does telling my jackass of a boss, he has a nice tie on, make me a more productive worker? How does that prove to this horse’s ass that I am intelligent and willing to work hard. It doesn’t. All it does is show that I will stoop to any level to attain that "corner office" or that "big promotion". Or it maybe taken as some sort of gay sexual advance to this man. Either way, it’s not a message I want to send.

And the meetings I had to endure. Man, oh man. I’ve never sat through more hours of boring stuff that, half the time didn’t even apply to me or anybody else in the room. But this corporation wants to keep everyone informed and to make everyone feel like "a valuable part of the team", all useless words to make the simple sheep follow the herders. But yours truly saw straight through all that.

No ass kissing for me. Instead I tried to prove my worth through good old fashion hard work. But through sitting through all those "pep talks" about working hard and doing a good job, I came to one conclusion: Corporate America has a different definition of "hard work".

I guess hard work to them means to kiss a lot of ass, say all the right things to the right people and when in trouble, point the finger at the weakest target.

My stint at this corporation (AKA house of the devil) ended when my boss incorrectly blamed me for something that she told me to do. She instead tried to bully me, thinking I would cave, take it like a man, and retreat to my cube. Oh no, I stood up for myself and when I did, she declined to discuss the matter any further. She basically showed me that I was right and that she had no other evidence for her argument other than "I’m the boss and I’m always right" crap. So after my little confrontation with the bride of Satan, I felt pretty good about myself.

I knew that I had not conformed to the corporate ways. The next day, I found out my contract was not renewed (a fancy way of firing me).  How about that? Stand up for what’s right and you end up grabbing your ankles and taking one for your moral character right in the ass. But despite being fired, I learned a valuable lesson.  That lesson is, having the bride of Lucifer as your boss and the spawn of Satan as your co-workers is not somewhere I want to work. So, basically I have two words for Corporate America, EAT ME!!!