fuck this job.com

My company stands in complete opposition to all the evidence for Darwin's theory of natural selection. For those that don't know, this basis for our thoughts on evolution postulates 'survival of the fittest', meaning that the best of a species rises to the top, breeds more, and ultimately, over a glacial sort of timeframe, changes it into something better. My company, on the other hand, reflects the complete opposite.

Here, you can guess a person's position on the org chart by how mouth-breathingly stupid they are, how blind they are to other people, and how their words and actions effect said people. If a person is quick-witted, cares about their job functions with intensity, is blindingly competent and a great applied psychologist, you can most likely find them in the mail room, or out in the field chasing down our out-of-house employees, or telemarketting. Now, at the other end of the spectrum, if you want stupid... I mean just... impossibly stupid, retarded stupid, you look at the management.

Somehow, I'm the single near-exception to this rule -- what with having a near-genius IQ and a working knowledge of a half dozen different job functions. I'm the "IT Manager", which is a joke, because I "manage" nothing, not even myself, due to my bosses incessant micromanagement (his favorite phrase: "Micromanagement isn't even in my vocabulary!". Yeah, dumbass... you don't know what the word means, and so can't figure out that you do it every day). I work for a covey of companies, manage a bushel of websites, and deal with support issues for a total number of people in the hundreds.

Every week, I get two to three weeks worth of work added to my plate. This is not hyperbole -- for every week of work I accomplish, I get double or triple as much to replace it. My priorities change every few days -- sometimes several times in one day. And that's just programming and infrastructure projects (first off, go find me any single IT guy who can both program enterprise applications and manage a multi-site network infrastructure as a single job function). See, I also have to be ready to jump up from WHATEVER I'm doing if, say, his E-mail is taking too long to download, or he can't get his new computer gizmo working.

Then, a few months ago, he fired the graphic designer. So now any time someone needs a flier or a logo or business cards, I'm in charge of creating them (using programs I don't even have installed on my computer like Quark and Illustrator) and having them printed.

And he constantly chides me that he wants me to be "more of a manager". He sets up two hour conference calls about shit I could have taken care of in 15 minutes. I interview people. He expects me to participate in committees, and fly around the country training people in how to use the intranet systems I've developed that power his companies.

Now, he has, all told, maybe a dozen partners, spread across four companies. Each of these partners feels that I am also their employee -- and to a man, every one of them feels that they do not receive enough support from me. Each one wants their own marketing pieces designed, have their own website requests and problems, and countless questions like 'how do I print an E-mail' or 'how do I save a file off the web'. Some of the especially obnoxious ones, such as a certain hopped-up insurance salesman whose name I shall not mention, try to throw me under the bus at every, single opportunity to explain their own incompetence.

Now, I live in New York, so I expect a certain level of multitasking in a job. I expect to have to work hard, to be under the gun, to have deadlines and to have to deliver, and I do. I've never left an unsatisfied client in my wake, ever. But most IT Managers (those whose titles don't have finger-quotes) don't deal with graphic design, and don't have to bang out thousands of lines of code a week. And most of them have these things called "employees" that they "manage" (thus the title), which allows for people to do the work they're good at, and increases productivity for all.

Instead, at this shitbag place, the word "IT Manager" is synonymous with "IT Department". I'm it. If it involves a computer, something that goes into or comes out of a computer, anything with moving parts and a USB/Serial/Network cable, or anything that gets printed on paper, or plugged in, I have to make sure it works. Without any help.

AND, those non-finger-quote IT Managers probably make around $150k a year, at a minimum. If you add in the salary of a graphic designer (I'll be conservative and say $35k), a programmer ($55k), and at least 1 junior level technician ($25k), that's $265,000. Plus they have benefits, like 401(k) plans, and vacation they can actually take without being called 15 times a day and made to feel guilty.

I make about $50,000 a year. I have the worst health insurance on the planet (no vision/dental/prescription), no retirement plan, and I haven't taken more than two days off in a row in three years.

Here's a prime example, the incident that sparked this entry...

I've been working since New Years Day. I came in on New Years Eve to work for a few hours, took that Monday off, and I've been working since. During the week, I get home at 7:00, have as many hours to myself as I can stay awake for, and go to bed. On the weekends, I make up for the sleep deficit, and come back into the office. I'm in crunch-time right now, because it's the beginning of the year, the budget is fresh, and there's important shit I want to get done.

This morning, I get an E-mail from The Man, basically bitching me out because two of the projects he told me were "unimportant, so just slap a band-aid on and get going on other stuff" came back and bit him in the ass. And I simply don't know what else I can do... I mean, how much do these blood-sucking leeches we call our bosses expect of us? How many fucking hours of my life, what massive fraction of the time I have on this Earth do you expect me to dedicate to you, for this pathetic fucking salary?

Now, for the rant. My favorite part.

Listen to me you fat fuck... I am so much smarter than you, that your pithy little, testicle-sized brain can't even comprehend the difference. The gap between us could fit planets, and that doesn't cover that I'm in better shape than you, I fuck hotter chicks than you, and I could kick the living crap out of you. I'm a musician, a writer, a double black-belt, a certified hypnotist and NLP practitioner, and a math wiz. You are a chunky cretin, fumbling around in a world of gaudy stimulus that you can't even begin to understand and reconcile with your crumbling, pathetic worldview. You are the residents of Plato's cave, making ape-noises over the shadows on the wall, never realizing that you might as well be pond-scum.

Furthermore, I'd wager you have a small little prick, the size of the grub you put on a fishing line -- and that the once a year your trophy wife deigns to fuck you, you can't even get it up without enough Viagra to explode a horse. All your pretensions of money and power don't mean shit, because you can take a toothless crack-whore in Soho and dress her up in Rennaisance finery, and she's still just a fucking crack-whore in an expensive dress. In much the same way, you surround your white trashdom with a mansion and a grossly overpriced car (which you take SHIT care of, by the way. I know teenagers who would be embarassed to have their car in such a state) and these stupid companies and no one realizes are slowly collapsing from within. You're king of a sandbox of retards and syncophants, any single one of whom would drop you in less than a heartbeat if a better offer came along.

AND, to continue, where the fuck did you learn how to manage people? What makes you think that randomly wandering around the office like a blithering goat-calf on mescaline, pointing at people and slurring, "You're not working hard enough!" is a good management technique? Did Tony fucking Robbins go on a coke binge and write up a book on, "How to manage like you're a mongoloid", and it was the only book they had at Borders on the subject where you could understand the words? People have these things called minds, and those minds produce thoughts, and feelings, and if you just blunder right over people, trample their egos, crush their minds, tell them they're pieces of shit, and then pat them on the back and leave, they WILL NOT WORK FOR YOU YOU FUCKING STUPID CRETIN!