Day: August 29, 2006

I am on the bus.  The short bus.  This is a military expression meaning that I don’t have to care about the people at work bitching about one another as after this weekend, it will no longer be either my responsibility or my fault if they can’t get along.
This is a very refreshing feeling.  As I have often thought, not unlike Randall’s comment in Clerks, “This job would be great if it weren’t for the co-workers.”  Nothing here is a bigger time waster than having to deal with the inevitable ruffled feathers that come with changes in the workplace.  Everyone here is CONVINCED that everyone else is getting away with something.  And they are.  Everyone gets away with something here because everyone has a card to play, either an “attitude problem” card or the “kids” card or the “I’ve been here for 10 years” card or the “I’m litigious” card.  We work for an exceptionally generous system that is hampered by lunatic rules.  If you know how to play the system, you can get paid for showing up and not doing a lick of work.  And when people complain about your slacking, you can claim you are being discriminated against.  And, as supervisors (being the ambitious types they are) generally change more often than their employees as long as you put forth a bit of effort for every new face, you can keep on slacking most of the time until you retire.  People who WANT to get ahead, do.  They look for new positions, they get the education required to advance.  But this mobility leaves most offices with a sediment of people who have settled and are exceptionally resentful when they see the other sedimentary types “getting away” with things.
It’s a lousy way to run a railroad.
4 more days.