Thinking Inside the Box: The Staff Meeting

The company I work for is such that we are subject to full staff meetings every month. Basically, this event consists of all us underlings filing into the conference room to listen to VIPs talk about how good life is and eat stale bagels. One time we had green watermelon slices, and that was by far the highlight of my sad little career.

Our meetings normally kick off with an unfunny joke by one of our corporate VPs. Of course, we all laugh heartily at his tales of talking animals and husbands who just don't understand their wives! Oh boy, comedy gold.

Once we've all stopped the forced belly laughs it's time for the special inspirational speaker. This month's guest was a biographer, talking about the book he was writing about a former organization president. However, rather than talking about our fearless leader's fundraising prowess and genial personality, we were instead regaled with stories of family depression and suicide. Yeah, just what one needs to get through the workday. See kids, success breeds disdain for the world!

So now that we're good and depressed it's time to really bring it home with the investments report. This section should really be titled "Somebody's Getting Rich, but It Ain't You!" As we all sit and silently stew about how our retirement funds do nothing but lose money every quarter, the investments VP goes on and on about how many millions and millions of dollars the company's coffers are raking in on dividends. One time, I asked if we could have some of that money and he gave me such a look that I'm pretty sure the next seven generations of my family will be stricken by some sort of gypsy curse.

Wrapping things up are the green tips and the open mic time. Our resident environmentalist goes to the podium and proceeds to give us helpful, simple tips to help save money and improve the planet. We talk about what great ideas they are and then continue to do what we've always done, because we can't very well allow ourselves to be inconvenienced for the sake of a few polar bears. The process repeats every month, and she slowly dies inside.

Open mic time usually consists of someone trying to either get us to give money for a cause, or telling us how their last cause raised so much money. When it's not that, we're asked to volunteer for some event where there will be lots of rich people, all of which are seemingly incapable of parking their own cars or seating themselves, so we'll have to do it for them. Next month, I get to be the vibrating footstool for the head of a major pharmaceutical company.

As I finish up the last bites of my bagel and we're dismissed from the meeting, I wonder if there's any way the last hour of my life could have been wasted any more. Then I think about the other seven hours a day I spend at my cube, and realize that the staff meeting was the most important thing I'll do all day.

I can't wait for next month.

Thinking Inside the Box: The Great Escape

Ever since the dawn of the soul-wrenching cubicle, we working peons have had little recourse against the corporate monolith that runs our everyday life. So in an act of rebellion, I recently plotted the most nefarious act I could think of, leaving at 4:55.

I know what you're thinking. "This guy is a rebel. I bet he's the type who drinks his coffee straight, no cream or sugar." Hang on tight while I blow your mind… I don't even drink coffee.

So before you stop reading because you just can't keep up with this craziness, hang tight, and follow me on this white-knuckle ride. This is the sort of wild act of rebellion you may try yourself one day.

The first thing to do when plotting such a daring escape is to plan an exit strategy. In my case, I had two options: a door near my cube or one on the other end of the office suite. Logic dictates that I should take the nearest exit so as to escape danger as quickly as possible, but that wasn't going to work. That route would have taken me right past the boss's office, the office manager and the reception area. That's a suicide run, and even I'm not that nuts.

As fate dictates, I was going to have to run the length of the office to make my getaway, which is going to take me right past two stool-pigeon employees who will be more than happy to blow the whistle on me. But I had no other options. I was going to do this… or die trying.

4:55…Showtime.

I gathered my things and shut down my computer, the first move to make was going to be the most dangerous. I needed to pop my head out of my cube and see if the coast was clear. And as any war vet can tell you, poking your head out of the foxhole is the easiest way to get bit. So I put my hat on a stick and dangle it over the top or my cube, no shots rang out, so I decided to have a look around.

A quick glance revealed a cadre of workers in the receptionist area, ironically all gabbing about what they were going to do when they go home that night. The only good news was that both the stool pigeons were among the group. If I could find a way to get them looking the other direction I was all but home free. I chucked a stack of Post-Its over their heads to draw attention away from my escape route. They turned, and I darted out of my cube, down the hall and out the door.

4:57

I made it to the stairway, but there was a sudden emergency. Someone was coming down the stairs, and if I didn't hide quickly they'd see me and likely engage me in mindless conversation well beyond quitting time. I had a split second so I dove under the stairs and balled myself up as tightly as possible.

The stairs are finally clear. I make the mad dash up and out the door to my car. Sweet freedom is fifty yards away.

I pulled out to the end of the parking lot, and now a left turn is all that stands between me and my emancipation. I looked to the left, all clear. Looked to the right, blast! A line of cars, led by a semi, and too close for me to jump out front. I'll have to wait it out.

The cars pass, but now there's a line of vehicles coming from the other direction. I can't win!

"Wait!" I thought. "An opening, I'm going for it." And I'm out.

As I revel in my success, I take a look at my watch to see just how perfectly my plan worked. But time itself laughs at me and the hands on my watch tell the story perfectly…

It's 5:01…failure.

Oh well, I guess this is a lesson to be learned. Next time, I'll leave at 4:50.

Thinking Inside the Box: The Lie

I love my parents with all my hearts, I truly do. If they needed a kidney, liver, right big toenail, left big toenail or swim bladder I'd gladly give them mine. However, all that love doesn't change one simple fact…

They are liars, liars with pants constantly on fire.

The lie they told me was not one of malice, but of ignorance, but it was just as crushing as if they had been plotting from the start to destroy me. It was as though my birth itself had been so traumatizing and painful that they had to conspire on a way to ruin me. The lie is simply this, "You can do anything you want so long as get a college education."

Judging from your shocked silence I assume you may have heard this line too. I actually believe this whole thing to be some sort of conspiracy sprung on our parents that they accepted without question. Forget JFK, Roswell and the like, we need to figure out who is behind this. It seems like everyone of the Boomer generation believed that a college degree would be the magic bullet forever. Heck, back in the 50s my research shows that a diploma got you the high-profile, money-making job as well as a nice house and a sweet car. Of course, my research methods involve watching reruns of Happy Days, but I do feel that to be the most accurate of all known methodologies.

The funny thing is, I never caught on to this little untruth, even as other myths of my childhood fell by the wayside. Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny were resigned to the fiction pile, and I even learned the harder lessons that life isn't eternal and the good guys don't always win.

That last lesson I actually learned from professional wrestling. Say what you will about the subtext of sweaty men in tights grappling each other, the whole thing is quite a morality play for an 8-year-old. At least the producers knew not to completely shatter my innocence, because the bad guy always had to cheat in order to triumph over the good and virtuous hero, and you still had the feeling he was gonna get his in the end.

Still, even though I learned so much I still stubbornly clung to the belief that all it took was good grades and a college degree and I'd be made in the shade. I don't know why I never caught on, it's not like the signs weren't there.

Obviously I wouldn't be a doctor or a lawyer unless I stayed in school even longer, but I didn't need that. I had the hazy sense of some middle management job that I'd work for 10 years before really climbing the ladder and getting into the upper echelons of a company. I could never see the point of the career center at my university, weren't there tons of jobs out there just waiting for people with a scrap of paper in hand and a turned tassel? C'mon people, the recruiters are just waiting for us young and eager grads. You know, I bet they line the walk out of the auditorium, handing out business cards and pleading for us to call them sometime. After all, twentysomethings with no real full-time job experience and no proven work track record are exactly what they're looking for, right?

As if my naïve ways weren't bad enough, I also assumed it didn't matter what you majored in. I drew this assumption based on the advice of professionals who said it wasn't about the course of study, it was about proving you could do the work and excel in the environment. Whoever these people are should have their credentials revoked, as I had to learn the hard way the only guaranteed work right out of college comes for accountants and engineers, history majors need not apply.

After graduation, seeing as I had no jobs lined up, I moved back home and continued the search. The first few months were met with frustration, but I tried to keep my chin up. Eventually I paid a visit to the dean of my university, who had been a good friend and mentor to me the entire time I was there. After spilling my every frustration to him he looked at me and simply said, "Brad, if you had come to me four years ago and asked me if you could get a job with a history and political science degree I would have said no, it's just not marketable."

And so I was crushed.

The lie had won. It carried me all the way through graduation, making me believe I could really "be whatever I wanted to be" while it sat in the corner snickering and I never once even bothered to ask what was so funny.

Now I dwell in cube purgatory, waiting to be cleansed of the sin of believing in something so false for so long. Hopefully it's not a 1:1 ratio for time served, otherwise I'll be in this box for 20 more years, and I don't think the Ryans are going to let me keep writing this silly little column that long. I may yet make it to where I want to be, but it's going to be due to working hard at what I love, and not to a mystical, magical piece of paper.

So if you're in the same boat as me, staring out over a sea of doldrums wondering where it all went wrong and how you could also buy into a lie for so long then join me in this pledge. Let us promise not to commit the same lie of ignorance and tell our kids that a college degree is a golden ticket.

Instead, let's tell them they need to go to grad school, at least that way they'll have a masters in uselessness rather than a bachelors, and then we'll have something to brag to our friends about.

Thinking Inside the Box: The Special Project

As a young go getter, I'm always up for a challenge. I enjoy new opportunities, and it's rare for me to say no when something new presents itself. That's why when my boss recently called me in to tell me that she had a special project for me I got pins and needles.

As most of you have probably guessed already, I should have known better.

A big part of my job is making sure corporate records stay clean in our database. That means looking out for duplicate records, closing records of business that are no longer in existence, and making sure that the information we have is current. In addition to our database, we have a whole file room full of corporate info, folders jam packed with all manner of information, some of it from the '70s.

In case you haven't figured it out yet, my "special project" is to clean out all of those files, and get rid of the junk. Oh thrill of thrills, my life's purpose is now laid before me.

Let us go through the steps I took in college in order to get the job of my dreams, shall we? First, I was told to keep my GPA up. Alright then, I think a 3.9 over the course of my studies is pretty acceptable. It could have been a 4.0, but my Econ class killed me. I'll never understand that stuff, which is why my wife controls the checkbook. She tells me economics is simple, only spend the money she gives me, I guess my professor didn't agree.

"Grades aren't enough," they told me, "you must expand your horizons by studying abroad." Sounds like fun, so I did a summer in Oxford, spending my days learning from the world's most brilliant scholars, and my nights forgetting those lessons by drowning in genuine Guinness. It's alright though, I found my way home most nights, and I held my own enough in the lessons so as to not look completely stupid, just the average, American idiot.

So my academics were all in order, but I was told extra-curricular activities and work experience would really pave the way. I got involved in student government, even served as student body president for a year. I also held several campus jobs (at my height, I was working 5 at once) as well as two internships. If I had more than 30 minutes to myself before bed every morning (that's not a typo) then I didn't really know what to do with it.

So I played by all the rules, did everything I was supposed to in order to be successful, jumped through every hoop and followed every piece of advice, and what happened? Now I'm sorting through musty old file folders, throwing away yellowed newspaper clippings and hoping that strange substance falling out is asbestos. Sometimes I see commercials on daytime television, encouraging people who have inhaled asbestos to call a certain phone number and cash in on a court settlement. Suddenly I feel the need to write that number down; as I begin to think that my cancer diagnosis is but a blood-spattered coughing fit away.

I thought my job was bad and my talents were being wasted before, now I realize it could have been worse… because it is. So this is what it's like to be less than worthless, to have all of your ability squandered because you have to do the job no one else would do before you. Wow, I had no idea I could sink to an even lower position. I'd rather scrub the toilets, as at least that would provide a clean toilet for someone to use. Instead, I'm thumbing through files that haven't been touched in 20 years because my boss doesn't like how they take up so much space.

Sure glad I can be using my youth and education for something so critical.

Thinking Inside the Box: California Dreamin'

This may come as a surprise to anyone who actually reads the mindless rants I put on paper (e-paper?) every week, but I fancy myself a bit of a journalist. As you may have gathered from my bio, I'm a lifelong gamer, and my love of video games and their culture led me to start writing for a couple websites not all that long ago. Last week, one of the sites flew me out to San Francisco to cover the Game Developers' Conference, and now I wonder how I'm ever going to go back to work again.

Before I get to the joys of playing and writing about video games for a week, let me go into the negatives. Why, you ask? Because I'm a cynic you silly goose! You really should know that by now.

First off, it rains in San Francisco… a lot, as in, every day. I did not know this the first day I was there, and spent my time wandering around a city I did not know soaked to the bone. Thankfully, I didn't come down with a case of Martian Death Flu and spend the rest of the week in a quarantined room with doctors in clean suits taking blood samples and saying things like, "Well this is new."

Aside from that, the conference was in San Francisco but I was actually staying with friends in Oakland. Now, I have nothing against the city, but we all have preconceived notions of places we've never been, and when it comes to Oakland mine include getting shot and mugged, just hopefully not at the same time. Really, the only thing worse than being shot and mugged simultaneously is having season tickets to the Raiders.

Everything turned out alright though, and I left Oakland with more respect than when I found it. I even rode the buses and subways and the worst thing that happened to me was that I almost fell down during a couple sudden stops. However, I do need some hand sanitizer after holding onto those bars…

Now then, the conference itself was sheer bliss. I was working 14-16 hour days, but they were the best 14-16 hour days I've ever had. I was running from appointment to appointment, seeing all the latest and greatest gaming has to offer and furiously scribbling notes along the way. In the evenings, I was hanging out at studio parties that featured open bars and a lot of happy people, life couldn't get much better.

It was around Day 3 that the epiphany hit.

"Wait a minute," I said to myself as I stopped cold while walking down the street, causing a six-person pileup behind me, "this feeling…this is the feeling that people who love their jobs have every single day."

Suddenly, I couldn't wait to go to my next event, regardless of what was being presented. My feet that had been aching for days suddenly didn't hurt anymore. I was tired, but it was the best kind of tired, the kind where you know that you're going to get up tomorrow and do it all over again, but you can't wait for tomorrow to come.

I don't get that feeling at my regular job. All I know is that every morning when I get up I silently hope that somehow, someway Ed McMahon has found me and is waiting with that big cardboard check that I didn't even register to win. Someday I'm hijacking that Prize Patrol van, and fleeing with its giant cardboard contents as far as the roads will take me.

Either that, or I wait for some random contact I made somewhere along the way to send me that special email, the one that offers me the job of my dreams, starting tomorrow, with relocation expenses covered and a salary that would make the Queen of England look like a pauper. Then I'd be the one parading around with a jeweled crown and scepter and using words like ragamuffin and urchin.

For now though, I am the ragamuffin, and I must accept my place in life. Other people love their jobs, I merely survive mine. Maybe someday I'll get that feeling of happiness again, but in the meantime I'll just keep "paying my dues," whatever that's supposed to mean.

Is Ed McMahon reading this?