You gotta love The Onion. The photo at the bottom of this post sums up perfectly my experiences working for 3 years in corporate America. I swear the upper management at the company I worked for hated independent intellectual thought and fun with everything in their core beings. The 1927 German film Metropolis comes to mind.
Here are a few fond memories I have of my time at said job:
- A coworker got called in to the BIG bosses’ office to have a stern talking to about the “alarming” frequency of her email exchanges with her HUSBAND, who also happened to work for the company at the time — big brother was SERIOUSLY watching you at this company.
- I was moved to 4 different desks/cubes on 2 different floors of the same building within 1 1/2 years. On the plus side, they did let me keep my red swingline stapler, though.
- My boss (who was actually a really cool person so I was very disappointed with her for this) sent me a STERN email about how work computers were to be used for business-approved websites only, even if it was possible for me to access other sites on the “allowed” list. Thus, another “big brother is watching you” example. (For context: most employees had no internet access at ALL, and the select few who did have access could only get to a few select sites on the “approved” list, and these were sites that they had to have in order to do their jobs. So no yahoo, no newsok.com, no anything).
- Extremely disturbing (indirect) sexual harassment directed at me, such that I was bawling my eyes out a few times. I need to find out the statute of limitations on that, b/c I think I actually have the guts now, 3 years later, to maybe say something about it.
- The sense, ALL the time, that my coworkers, bosses, and everyone around me, were ALWAYS watching me, looking over my shoulder at my computer screen, and listening to my every word on the phone and every conversation I had with those around me. I am not being paranoid. This was really happening. There was a mass paranoia in the corporate culture at this company that I really didn’t understand.
- Gossip. Constant backstabbing mean-spirited gossip… Now, I know people will say that this is an inherent feature of any workplace with a lot of women in close contact (and all that other sexist crap that I don’t buy in to), but it’s NOT. I know from personal experience that that argument is BS. That argument is sexist to its core. I work in an office now with about 10 other women, and the gossip where I work now is NOTHING like it was at this company. My office now is wonderfully positive and gossip-free by comparison. I don’t even blame the individual women I worked with at my former job, I blame the company’s culture. I blame the highest leadership. It was an institutional problem, not a problem with individuals.
- Terrible timecard system that nickel and dimed you and ripped you off. (The skeptical pessimist in me suspects that this was NOT a coincidence).
- After I left, I heard from a few ex-coworkers that they actually tried to BAN MUSIC AT PEOPLE’S DESKS for a while… this was in the form of headphones, iPods, small radios, small speakers, etc. It was an absolutist policy… No matter what. Apparently that only lasted for a few weeks and the backlash was so bad that they caved a bit.
- I was HORRIBLY underpaid, and so were almost all of my coworkers. This company rapes their employees with low paychecks, all the while posting great profits (at least during the years I worked there). When I moved to the public sector I immediately got almost a 20% raise… I now make almost TWICE as much as I made when I started at that company in 2004. This company does not value its employees.
(For balance, a few good things the company did: yearly free health screenings for all employees, random bonuses ranging between $100-500 every Christmas and sometimes occasionally throughout the year in response to economic crises, community involvement in things like charity races and the like………. but most public sector jobs do all that plus more)
This was just my personal experience with corporate America and the company I worked for. I don’t claim that this is how it is for everyone, or that ALL large businesses are evil, or that capitalism isn’t a great thing (it is!), but this is how it was where I was at. This is just my story and my observations of the company I worked for. I experienced the depths of human misery at that job (I was crying alone in the bathroom on a regular basis I was so miserable), and it was as close to an Office Space type experience as I can envision in the real world.
Everything I have detailed above is all true. You can ask my husband, my parents, my doctor, or anyone who knew me while I worked there. I was in a deep depression at the time. It saddens me so much the way some companies get away with mistreating their employees. That was just the effect it had on me. By comparison, my public sector job now is like working in utopia.
Please don’t misread me and think I’m saying that all companies do this. I see the value in capitalism and I think that privately-owned businesses are a good thing. I know there are lots of private corporations and businesses that are wonderful places to work, but this particular company did not fall into that category. I would love to hear stories about the ones that are good. It will help to give me hope in humanity and the corporate world (which, admittedly, I aspire to never return to).
Office Internet Crackdown - from The Onion
June 27, 2009 at 8:26 pm
OH MY GOODNESS. Did you sue someone? Do you intend to do so??
YIKES!!
LM
June 28, 2009 at 4:19 pm
No, I didn’t sue. I would have been happy just to get his a$$ fired. He wasn’t my supervisor or anything, just a coworker. And no one knew about it at all but me, no one witnessed anything at all and it would have been my word against his. My job situation at the time was such that it would have been VERY uncomfortable for me if I had said anything at all. Also, the corporate structure of that company is sexist to its core. Thus, I sucked it up and didn’t say anything.
Now I feel like I failed women everywhere for not doing anything about it. I wonder if I could still do anything. It’s been about 3 years. But like I said, it would still be his word against mine, and the situation was SO nuanced that he could easily just deny that anything ever happened. It was so subtle. I’m pretty sure there are other women in the company who might come out of the woodwork and back me up on it, though. He was not a well-liked person. I don’t even know if he still works there.
June 28, 2009 at 7:38 pm
There are great places to work for and horrible places to work for…in both sectors. I think it depends more on the culture of that particular office than anything.
My (public sector) employer has an Internet policy. Using too much bandwidth will land you on the Internet Top 50 list, and earn you a stern verbal reprimand at best, an official written reprimand at worst (depending on how laid-back your boss happens to be).
And while it’s not as much of an issue where I am now, my last job (still public sector) was the worst hotbed of gossip I’ve experienced since junior high. If you screwed something up, half the office knew before you did. There were some horribly vindictive people there, too.
That being said, I hope to never work in the private sector. I value the (relative) stability and security that comes with a public sector job. And I like that our objectives don’t include making a profit. It lets me feel just a little more smug and self-satisfied at the end of the day. That’s just me, though!
June 28, 2009 at 8:13 pm
Sarah, point taken about good/crappy jobs in both sectors.
In any of your public sector jobs, was there ever a big brother type sense of paranoia, or a sense that someone was always watching your every move? I mean, did the management ever actually monitor your specific web history or emails (not just bandwidth)? Did they try to look over your shoulder at what you were doing on the computer? That kind of thing went on ALL the time at my corporate job.
I love how the guy in the Onion pic is looking all paranoid and scared… that’s how I felt all the time, even when I wasn’t doing anything wrong.
“Having Fun: It’s No Laughing Matter”
June 28, 2009 at 11:26 pm
Pity you did not sue. Your loss. If you are working with scum like you have described you should have.
Read my blog, it writes about some pathetic punk frightened rats and crude vermin (in human bodies–shock) who scurry around the Internet afraid of their criminal behinds being caught.
Interestingly enough they have the temerity to write, exist in the open and actually roam around on the web in the hope, I think, that they will be transported to another world in which they will not answer for their vile disgusting acts. These buffoons are empty headed fools who are much like the losers you have described in your post.
My phones are illegally wiretapped, my email read etc etc. by this scum bag low life nobody named SHAY RILEY aka Halima Sal Andersen aka Evia Moore aka Gina of the “Black Female Interracial Marriage blog” google it . This vile scumbag pathetic female has so many aliases and is one of the raging low lives online whose time should be ended soon.
Well, the good news is that this woman is a failure. All her efforts at using the lives of other people for gain have failed miserably and will continue to fail. She tried to have a paying blog which folded. She tried to sell material which failed. Her books based on a fabricated interracial marriage (her husband is an ugly black, really dark criminal gutter snipe named Akbar Shabazz of Project 21) have been mediocre.
She like other criminals who practice pedophilia and other forms of online Predatory conduct will continue to be routed by God.
This woman is a mother see her on the website http://www.akbarshabazz.com. Considering her criminal conduct, it would not surprise me if she and her vile sociopath of a husband sexually molest those children. The whole family is a real mess. I hope this matter eventually gets into the hands of child welfare authorities because the probability of sexual molestation and abuse on those children based on the criminality of these online felons is QUITE high/ Those poor children have nothing to look forward to in their lives. Their mother is a low life scum bag who tries to prey on other people.
The great thing about God is that he calls on us to hunt down evil no matter what it takes. Phhht endless flexing of criminal dogs gets nowhere, Good always trumphs evil.
So Grace, you better know that when accosted by nonsense as you have described, it is not enough to blog and cry blood over it. There are Shay Riley’s and akbar Shabazz’s in every corner as is the way of scum wet rats, the issue is can you destroy their criminality or will you continue posting and feeling satisfied with your rants?
Try prayer. It will help.
Blessings!
June 29, 2009 at 11:54 am
I felt incredibly paranoid at that job. Not so much because of the Internet (although if your bandwidth usage landed you on the Top 50 List, they would also have a printout of each and every site you visited), but because of the general atmosphere of the office. There were people (some supervisors, some just coworkers) who would monitor everyone else’s comings and goings. What time you came in, what time you left, what time you went to lunch, how long you were gone, etc.
Some people would use this information as ammo, in case they ever got in trouble for something. Then they could say, “well, so-and-so is lying on their timesheet.” Other people were just nosy, and apparently had too much time on their hands.
It was a poisonous environment. I’m so glad to be out of there.
June 29, 2009 at 4:44 pm
Glad to be out of there you say. Well, he who runs away lives to fight another day. There is no point walking away from nonsense which seeks you out because it will be right there to make your eyes sore. Walk away only if you want to be in a location with more light. Otherwise, best to stay and get rid of the maggots.
Look, there are charlatans in every work place and criminals bastards and pedophile women and men online and off line. That is life. As I wrote in my response, the great thing about it is that God is on the throne.
Someone like this Shay Riley aka Evia Moore aka Gina aka Halima Sal Andersen etc. is a bonafide abject failure. She failed in every endeavor because she is a common criminal and God abhors evil guttersnipe wanna be something through criminality punks.
A criminal like this woman is a horrible thing to unleash on children and she has those.
Hopefully, if she is a pedophile, all this will come to light as law enforcement does their work.
Meanwhile, I will watch this loser criminal clown fail and keep failing. Books? Delish mish? Failure. Marrying this and the other, mediocre nonsense. 15 minutes of fame based on misrepresentation, criminality, fraud and blatant lies a waste.
My greatest sympathy is for the children who this woman and her criminal husband Akbar Shabazz sirred. What hope do they have in the real world since all they have is their criminal parents to look up to.
It is a horrible thing to imagine.
Pray today, pray for everyone steeped in evil for God to rid them of this vileness.
Blessings!
June 29, 2009 at 4:52 pm
PS: In your case it sounds like you might have acted a loser, maybe?
You know, you have to be careful what you do online and elsewhere there are many Shay Rileys’ out there (of Black Female Interracial Marriage Blog) just as there are pedophiles, child porn distributors and online Predators who do nothing but hide and quiver in their vomit hiding their identities in order not to get caught and have the law throw their corrupt vile behinds in jail!
Maybe the company of these low life scum caused you to have some of their traits?
Shay Riley is one of the many vermin/losers/criminalenterpriseattemptingfailures out there. People who whore themselves and their lives to criminality and imagine they will succeed. People who create children in vile unimaginable bile like situations. Children who will amount to nothing like their parents.
Losers who run around like wet rats hiding in their pathetic antics, never comfortable, never free always in the knowledge that they and their vile lives might be opened up sooner than they thought.
I pray that woman is jailed and those children she is destroying daily, saved. Every passing day makes the likelihood that they will become useful members of society less and less likely.
Criminals breed criminals that is all there is. What a horrible life for those children. What a hopeless existence.
LM
July 1, 2009 at 11:20 am
Also just to add. Psychopaths like this Shay Riley aka EVia Moore aka Halima Sal Andersen– have no moral compass, commit crimes are incapable of any depth or recognition of the viciousness of their antic… remorseless hoodlums.
These phlegm of pig type folks are little better than human dung. We can easily categorize Shay Riley aka Evia Moore aka Gina aka Lisa Vasquez of the “Black Women blow the Trumpet blog”and “Black Female Interracial” as a RAGING Psychopath! An online hog. A vile pile of virulent dung. Disgusting and vile!
For this reason and the continuing vile criminal and perniciously vicious conduct of this animal human, Shay aka Halima Sal Andersen, lying online criminal bastard, I believe the most important thing that anyone can do is to join forces with me and stop this vagrant from running around online and divest her custody of those children.
Those children are the future Charles Manson’s of this world if they are not removed from this vile failure. This horrible woman who is a rat unremorseful hoodlum ensconced in human skin.
Remember, this Shay listens to my calls through illegal wiretaps, activates the microphones on my computer, reads my email and generally this low life criminal committed and keeps committing heinous crimes which I believe she should pay for.
What I find most interesting is that this criminal and unfit parent abject failure of a loser assumed, I believe, that she could listen into people’s lives and do so without consequences, ever? What a blithering pathetic scum sucking loser.
As I have said on my blog and will continue to say Shay Riley aka Evia Moore aka Halima Sal Andersen is a criminal but also a failure bar none.
She had 15 minutes of fame based on virulent lies and callous misrepresention to the public. Since then she has tried to sell online and failed. Ran a website pretending to be a white man who preferred black women “www.blackmenwhopreferblackwomen”.. and ran into hiding later when the utter inauthenticity of that site and the investigations became apparent.
She, Shay Riley aka Evia Moore has written some criminal based inauthentic mediocre nonsense “self help” books that go no where. Who buys them? Few if anyone.
I wonder who this low life thinks she can help when she is a thug. An online thief, a pretender, a lying money whore and common crook. She needs to be helped by the authorities for a start.
But above all this Psychopath is failing miserably in child rearing.
It bears repeating but Shay Riley aka Halima Sal Andersen, a CRIMINAL VILE PSYCHOPATH should not be allowed to bring up children. She is a criminal and those kids will emulate her (if they are not doing so already–I strongly believe they are)! She will unleash criminal fiends on the world if she is not routed and jailed.
There is no room anywhere in the world for tolerance of this level of criminality.
This online VAGABOND, nobody, low life, abject failure in alll things should be jailed. Those children have no future except the jail house. Assuming they are not being sexually abused and molested by these psychopaths (such amoral criminals are incapable of knowing right and wrong. Hey, in my case for nine years these bastards listen to me and so I believe a scum bag like Shay Riley of the “Black Female Interracial blog” is more likely than not to be a Pedophile)
This woman, this online vagrant is utterly and completely amoral.
A loser who hides out on line, pulling down website after committing aberrant acts. An online Thug.
I hope she gets caught, exposed and routed soon.
Amen.
July 1, 2009 at 1:03 pm
Hmm, the comments on this post seem to have nothing to do with this post.
July 1, 2009 at 1:50 pm
They are directly related to scum sucking low life wanna be Kong but are slimy little faceless online vermin, shaking fearful of being caught RATS. Yes, the same breed of despicable rodent, child pedophile like, weak THUGS, hoodlums, failures and low life common bastard PUNKS referenced in the initial post!
I would say the comments beautifully complement the post.
All the online and off line weak punks who start criminal and aberrant conduct are referenced.
I also think discussing an unfit mother Shay Riley aka Halima Sal Andersen aka Gina of “What about our daughters blog” aka Lisa Vasquez of the “Black women blow her fake “nonsense feckless predator” Trumpet. A crass crook who whores her life out for money being highly probably a child molester and Pedophile is right on the mark.
This woman is a weak nobody. A vile pathetic mistake of humanity. A vicious prevaricator. A NOTHING who uses the anonymity of the Internet to commit unthinkable crimes.
So yes, right on track. Shay Riley aka Halima Andersen is a low life lying nobody who should be jailed. Her antics are well captured in this piece.
Mistakes of humanity like this unfit spineless thug hiding online and sitting in the vomit of her acts is the foundational; piece of many of the acts described here.
AS I said, the only good thing is that the individual in question is an abject failure in ALL things she does. That is good however, she should be divested of custody of the children she is and probably has been schooling in the way of psychopath on line rodents of her ilk.
LM