BRAINPAN LEAKAGE

Continued from: Here, Have A Sanka ™…

Well, I promised a followup to the Sanka silliness, and here it is. In some ways it’s a bit fitting that this comes in the wake of me posting a status update on Facebook announcing my disdain for folks who do nothing but whine and bitch. Fortunately, I do plenty more than just whine and bitch. Still, everyone needs to let it out once in a while – just not all the time. But that’s a different blog, and trust me, it’s already in the works so look for it in the not too distant future.

But on with “The Bad Place”…

The first thing I should establish here is that I am not in any way, shape, or form afraid of hard work. I spent my summers back on the farm, and had plenty of chores to do growing up. I learned valuable lessons, not the least of which was that hard work does in fact pay off in the end. So, I never considered any place where I worked a bad place simply because it entailed work. I never felt like said establishment(s) “owed” me a job. I would perform my prescribed duties at 100% and if at all possible, push it to 110% or more. I never complained about overtime. In fact, I would often step in and take the overtime – UNPAID on many occasions – before I would expect someone on my team to give up their time off.

Now, with that established, we shall move on…

Before I started making a living – or, trying to, at least – writing books, I was a computer/printer tech. I did this job for a little over 25 years, and made some decent cash in the process. More than I make writing, that’s for sure… But I digress…

For just under 10 years – the LAST 10 years of my tech career, in fact – I worked at The Bad Place…

While it shall remain nameless on the pages of this blog, some of you likely know the place of which I speak. At least one of you, I know for certain, is  also a survivor of its “badness”…

It was, and still is, an ulcer on my life. Fortunately, it is no longer an ulcer on humanity because it crashed and burned not long after I exited the front door of the offices for the very last time – as an employee, anyway. I did go back and have lunch with some of the folks who still worked there because they were friends, AND the only thing that made the place tolerable.

You see, what made The Bad Place so bad was the owner. This guy had a self-centered, paranoid, “the world owes me” attitude that simply would not quit. I realize that a good majority of folks out there are probably saying the same things about their bosses even as I type this. However, lest I cause my dormant ulcer to flare and give me fits because of reliving that mess, allow me to simply enumerate a few of the daily issues with this wingnut and let y’all decide if I’m right in calling it The Bad Place…

I would also like to note that I am NOT making this shit up, nor am I embellishing it. I have witnesses…

1. Some days I wouldn’t have time to swing by the post office, so I would take my mail – pre-stamped, mind you – in with me and drop it in the outbox on the front counter. Many of us did. Stuff like bills, rebate coupons for diapers (the o-spring was small then). Then one day, things changed. Bad Place Boss walked in the front door and every morning would grab all of the outgoing mail out of the box. He would stand at the counter and go through it, sorting it into piles. After a few days of doing this he brought your mail back to you and demanded to know WHY you put YOUR personal outgoing mail in HIS outgoing mailbox. Easy to fix, correct? Leave a bit earlier from home and hit the post office. Well, I did that. When I walked through the door of the shop he was waiting for me. He announced that he had seen me drive past the shop and demanded to know where I had gone. Mind you, besides it being none of his business, I was 30 minutes early to work ANYWAY, so it’s not like I was showing up late. When I told him that I’d gone to the post office he accused me of lying because the post office isn’t open that early. BTW, he continued to inspect the outgoing mail on a daily basis just in case someone dared to put something in it that he hadn’t personally authorized.
2. He would throw away stuff that didn’t need to be thrown away. Like brand new parts. Seriously. A box of motherboards. Processors. The software he used for payroll. Just chuck it all right in the dumpster along with the junk that DID need to be thrown away. THEN, if he saw someone digging through the dumpster (which belonged to the strip mall, mind you) for scrap metal and such he would run out there and threaten to call the police on them. Why? His words – Because they shouldn’t be allowed to make money off of HIS stuff.
3. Weekly trips to the east side… The “east side” is an area across the river known for strip clubs. A minimum of twice per week he would leave at 10:30 AM to go over to the east side for lunch and return shortly before closing time, drunk and smelling like a whore house. Okay, fine… That’s his business not ours… The problem is, he would insist on telling us ALL about it whether we wanted to hear it or not. This also went for the women on staff too. The best part was that in his vocal opinion, we were all going to hell because we weren’t good Catholics like him.
4. Following in the footsteps of the above, twice per year he would go to Vegas for the consumer electronics show. He would leave for a week but only attend the show for 6-8 hours on one day. That span grew shorter and shorter over the years. The rest of the time was spent in sex clubs and with call girls. Again, all good. I’m actually in favor of legalizing prostitution nationwide. I don’t see anything wrong with it at all. But again, I had no desire to be subjected to the graphic details of his exploits with each of these women, all while hearing that I was going to hell because I didn’t believe in his God. Oh, and by the way – he’s married – I assume he still is, anyway – and I often had to have uncomfortable conversations with his wife when she’d call wanting to know where he was at lunchtime.
5. All of the above exploits were on the company’s dime. Yeah. His company, his money. However, when he is spending hundreds – sometimes thousands – on hookers and we couldn’t order parts from our suppliers because our accounts were way past due, it made it hard for us to do our jobs. And, of course, we were the ones the customers were yelling at, not him.
6. Eventually he just went ahead and hired a couple of long term hookers and put them on the payroll. Seriously.
7. When we couldn’t get parts, he would go through the trash and pull out blown parts. As in TOAST. As in NOT WORKING. Done. Exploded. No longer functional. Then he would sell them to customers as new.
8. When an angry customer with an exploded part he had sold them would come back in, he would hide in his office and expect us, the techs, to deal with it.
9. He fired competent employees in order to hire A) A drinking and carousing buddy and/or (most especially) B) The first short skirt that walked through the door with a resume in her hand, even if she had the secretarial and phone skills of a comatose baboon.
10. He announced to the entire staff one day that we wouldn’t be buying anything from a particular supplier any longer. His reasoning? We had bought quite a bit from them over the years and when he had a face to face meeting with our sales rep – a young, pretty individual of the female type persuasion – he didn’t get what he wanted. What did he want, you ask? A blowjob. He claimed she owed it to him for all the product we had purchased over the years. Speaking of blowjobs, he once told me to tell a female friend of mine that he would hire her to be a receptionist, IF she would give him one. In case you are wondering, I didn’t. In fact, I told her to go look for a job someplace else.
11. The daily shout fest. Bad Place Boss was big on yelling at everyone because, of course, everything that ever happened was everyone else’s fault. The company wasn’t making enough money because we were all lazy assholes who were  just there taking advantage of his good graces. The fact that he had bought his staff hooker a plasma TV, paid her rent, car payment, and tickets from company funds had absolutely NOTHING to do with why we had no money in the bank. And, the fact that we were unable to purchase parts for repairs because of said lack of funds shouldn’t keep us from billing customers anyway.
12. The aforementioned billing customers anyway thing – he would insist customers pre-pay for systems they ordered, then he would never order the components needed to build said custom system. Why? Because he would spend the pre-pay money on his hookers and couldn’t manage to pay for the parts.
13. Another favorite that is much like the above – as techs we would sell systems and often times entire networks – several systems, cabling, support, etc – to big companies. The IT folks with these companies would know us on a first name basis and would be waving cash at us, ready to buy. BUT the boss guy maintained control over all bids. Therefore, we would turn in the info to him and he would send out a bid to the company. NOT. We would get calls on a daily basis from folks saying, “I’ve been waiting for that bid for three months. I can’t wait any longer, you lost the sale.”… Believe me, we’d remind him on a daily basis about the bids. He’d either tell us he was getting right on it, or yell at us for bothering him about them. 9 times out of 10, he would follow up with heading out the door to see one of his hookers – of course, he would always strenuously remind us that if his wife called we were to tell her he had an important meeting with the “chamber of commerce.”

There you go… more than a dozen of them for you… I could go on, and on, and on. I kid you not. But this blog entry is long and depressing enough as it is. Sorry to say, there’s nothing actually funny about it either.

At any rate, I think you can easily see why I called it The Bad Place. And, why I am much happier being away from it.

Well, that, and I’m married to the hottest redhead on the planet and have the coolest kid ever. Sometimes, you have to go through hell to get to heaven, I guess…

More to come… (Funny next time, I promise…)

Murv

I hear that a lot.

And no, it’s not EKay’s way of saying “Are you through yet?” Sheesh, you people and your dirty minds…

Now, the truth is, I’m fairly certain I have waxed poetic, nostalgic, pedantic, and various other -ic sort of adjectives, on this particular subject in the past. However, I am far too lazy to go looking for that blog entry. And, since I am personally too lazy to look for it I can’t really blame anyone else for not chasing it down either. So, since I still get this comment tossed at me on a regular basis, I figure it’s time for a refresher answer.

So, here we go…

The “You Oughta Come” in question here is the countless number of times I am told by well-meaning folks, “You oughta come to XYZ festival/convention just to hang out,  have a good time, and relax.”

Now, before anyone gets their BVD’s lodged in the darkened recesses of their gluteus maximus, let me point out that I am NOT ranting, nor am I upset / angry / or in any way pissing and moaning at you about this. The truth is I sincerely appreciate the sentiment. I really do. The only point at which I become upset about this is when the person making the comment becomes upset with me because I won’t comply with their heartfelt advice.

So, allow me to explain so that maybe this makes sense…

As an author, yes, my “job” involves sitting behind a keyboard and typing. But, it also involves something else – promotion. This means I hit the road and travel across the country doing book signings and lectures. Many of these occur at the very events, or similar events, to the places I am being invited to come and relax. See where I’m going here? If not, please allow me to cite the following example:

I tried to go to an event one time, just to hang out and relax. True story. I arrived and wandered around as incognito as possible without going so far as to  disguise myself like Carmen San Diego in a trench coat and floppy hat. I bought a couple of things from merchants and chatted with folks about innocuous nothingness. Fifteen minutes into this endeavor I heard frantic whispering behind me. Then, I was tapped on the shoulder. I turned to face a person I had never seen before who said, “You’re M. R. Sellars!”

I lied and said, “You must have me confused with someone else.”

A nearby merchant picked up one of my books from her table, flipped to the author photo and held it up while laughing. “Nice try! But, you ARE him…”

I ended up doing a book signing and presenting two seminars, mainly because the organizers went around touting the fact that I was at the festival and was suddenly a special guest.

I went there to relax and hang out. Instead, I ended up working. Not that I don’t enjoy my work, mind you, but let’s think about it – I went there to hang out and NOT work… See the rub?

But, that wasn’t the worst part – Down the road, some other events heard about this. Then, I started being asked “Why” they had to pay my travel expenses and provide room & board for me to  headline at their event if that one didn’t. Obviously I was playing favorites and being an unfair, stuck up a$$hole… I’m here to tell you, it was kind of ugly for a bit.

And, yes… This really happened.

So, here’s my thing – There are a few basic reasons I can’t show up when folks say “You Oughta Come…”

1. As shown in the example above, it’s not very likely that I will be able to just hang out and relax, unless I spend all of my time hiding in my cabin / hotel room.
2. As amazing as it may sound, I don’t make that much money. So, I can’t just hop on a plane at a moment’s notice and fly halfway across the country to hang out.
3. If I show up at an event that didn’t pay for me to be there, then I torque off other events.
4. And last, but definitely not least, let’s look at the big picture – I go to countless of these events every year. They are more or less the equivalent of my “workplace”… So, me going there to relax is sort of like some guy who works at XYZ Widget Company taking his vacation and spending it in his office at, yes, you guessed it, XYZ Widget Company.

Now, this is not to say that I wouldn’t love to do some of these things. Believe me, I would. I have made some very good friends across the country and would dearly love to go hang out with them because they are a blast and I miss them.

I know. Sucks, doesn’t it?

More to (oughta) come…

Murv