Workaholics go to Meetings
Prologue: I’m tired
Who am I, anyway? How did I lure myself into this cold, thankless, unforgiving setting full of blood sucking leeches and money hungry sociopaths? How did I convince myself that I want to survive in an abyss of endless redundancy, stress, and utter frustration? This is pure torture, I tell you. Pure torture.
The more I thought about it, the more I realized that I belonged in a different place. My future, MY future, was uncertain. But one thing I knew for certain, I was unhappy. No, I was broken. A tiger jumping through hoops in a circus, I didn’t belong here. I belonged in the wild.
I couldn’t stand to walk into the place each morning. Maybe that’s why I was always late. There was always something – anything, that I would find to do that made me leave the apartment late. I would rush the moment I was out the door. I walked extra fast to the train, ran up the stairs, even made sure that I sat by the exact door that opens up to the exit escalator. But who was I kidding? If I really wanted to get to work on time, I would have.
Perhaps it was this “chronic lateness issue,” as my boss so acutely phrased it, that deteriorated my statute in this company. Perhaps I should have left a long time ago. I probably should have never even started. For some reason, I always saw the glass half full. For too long I saw potential for growth that didn’t exist. I was so convinced that the time would come, I even ignored obvious signs of contraction. The numbers were always in front of me: income, expenses, payroll. The entire company…wide open. Yet, the hope remained.
Through all the empty promises this firm handed out, the biggest smoke and mirror routine was performed for the employees. I understand now why we hired post-grads or recent grads. Kids are so gullible and naive. Watching the recruiters interview and test these 21-year-olds was like watching street artists shuffle cards. And they all fell for it. And always picked wrong. The most amusing thing about the experience was watching the reactions of the select few who stuck around more than a year. They looked at the incoming recruits (we hired as many as 7 at a time) with sorrow and even guilt, because some of them were responsible for putting these unsuspecting sheep in front of the wolf.
I catch myself jumping ahead. I digress. Let me take you to where it all began…
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