(unknown, employee)
Here is the post that I didn't post the other night. I have deleted some of the more vitriolic criticisms.
Today was my last day at work. I had put in my two week notice and they got so excited they fast-tracked me into oblivion. It's no big surprise. The only real surprise for me concerning this job is that I've lasted as long as I have. I've had good friends manage me throughout the last 5 years and I wouldn't have blamed any of them for firing me, at any time, without warning or notice - "on the spot", as they say. I am not what many would consider a model employee. Most would not even consider me an "employee" were it not for the legality of the thing, the appearance. I'm certain that many must have assumed that I was a "plant" sent from internal affairs. Why else would I incite disruption and thumb my nose at both process and authority...
Why?
It is their obligation to treat me with a modicum of nonsense that makes the world what it is.
I speak at work much like I write here. You can imagine the effect.
I should say, I spoke at work... I write here.
They were quite lucky to ever have me work for them. Truly. If they could get me to do anything it was nearly a miracle. I was the standard Apple "genius", only two useless letters more than an Ape, surly and discontented, destined for better things, just minutes away, always condescending (that means "to talk down to"), and ever pretending that I was proud of being a genius, a real team player. A brown shirt to the juggernaut of different thought.
What an insult, the command to "Think Different", nobody even seemed to notice.
If you ever want to examine the absurdity of something look carefully at its parallel, or its opposite...
"Act The Same" , "Think Different"
To think at all is the difference.
Last year the company made $400,000 in profit off of each employee. That is, if you were to divide their total net earnings between each of us, which they did not. It was them cutting our benefits in a legendary year of earning that was so galling, so precise, so openly cynical and contemptuous of the very asset they claim to value the most, their people. Steve Jobs never believed in charity, ever. It was the first thing he axed when he regained control of the company he founded, never to return in his lifetime. He honestly believed that making the highest price computer available on the general market was his contribution to mankind. It shows. He will be worshipped by those who have never known better, never thought otherwise.
I have been an attendee to private indoctrination rallies where the blue-shirts chanted "change!, change!, Change!, Change!, CHANGE! CHANGE!!!"
Yet very few among those crowds were chanting for themselves. They wanted to grant the company they worked for unquestioned access to unquestioned obligation. Sounds vaguely familiar.
It seems an odd coincidence that BUY and KILL will be the callings of our culture, our two great national mantras.
Think, Dissidents.
Have you ever noticed how similar the words employee and amputee are... Estragon and Vladimir. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern. Simon and Garfunkel. Apple and Exxon. Fight or Flight.
Good and Eviling.
Thin Differential.
Ok, enough.... One day I might tell the story of an aging innocent among young savages. If strength is granted, as strength is needed. A romantic has very little place there. The most astonishing thing is that they've sold the world on the very opposite of the idea that raises them.
I feel as if I am entering a bright white room, empty except for me.
I know this feeling will pass, as it does not reflect reality in any meaningful way whatsoever. But I suppose that I am blind to the expectations set upon me by those whose expectations I have filled.
You might laugh. You might not. But I am thinking of the next place to take a vacation. I could use one. I haven't led a pious life, but neither have I deprived myself of pleasure, even when it was painful.
I believe that money will only come to you if you spend all of your time making sure that it does, and acting that it should. Otherwise, money will mostly run away from you. If not run, then it will leak. That's why wealthy people work so hard. Somebody must look after the interest.
Who is going to tend to all of these god-damned breaches....
